www.everythingsgonegreen.co.uk

Farmers Markets are a great way for people to find local producers and cut down on the usually unseen environmental costs that globalisation brings.

Whenever there’s a local farmers market on we go down to see what we can do to assist with “localisation”. Afterall, if there is an oil crash and we all end up being unable to travel, we’re not going to be able to get our flowers from Kenya and beef from Argentina, so it makes sense to rely on local producers.

Farmers Markets also boost the local economy and stimulate the sense of local community.

And saying all this we’ll be down at our own local farmers market in Milford, Surrey on Sunday 18th May. We’re helping out on a stall and rolling our sleeves up to get involved, so let’s hope the weather and attendance are good.

Milford Farmers Markets are held at the Secretts Garden Centre and Farm Shop which is in Chapel Lane, Milford, Surrey GU8 5HU (We even put in a link to the map for you there). The market is open from 10:00am until 1:30pm so get there nice and early to get the best of what Surrey’s local farmers have to offer.

One of the big problems with litter is that the global big brands pump millions of pounds into promoting and advertising their products, they shift massive numbers of units, lots of profit is made, they all enjoy the spoils of their business and ultimately don’t care about the fact that their global brands are also creating massive amounts of rubbish!

The detritus from big brand produce litters every corner of this green & pleasant land and, quite frankly, we’re all tired of seeing it. And now to name and shame just one of these big brand polluters, one of these global litterers… one of Britain’s most popular alcoholic drinks…

FOSTERS LAGER

This scattering of Fosters Lager cans were littering a leafy area beside a path on a cycle home one night and every single one of those cans is a Fosters lager can. Now we’re not big fans of the mass-produced brands anyway, but for their mass-market by-products to litter our home town is not only rude & unsightly but it costs local taxpayers money too… somebody has to clean it up and that’s the council’s job.

Therefore your hard-earned pay, in the form of council tax, pays for street-cleaners and litter pickers to remove the trash.

So the point is this:

Shouldn’t mass-market global brands be contributing a good percentage of their profits toward cleaning up the by-products of their products? Should there be a litter tax whereby for every item of a certain brand/item that is swept up from public places there is a charge to the producer/manufacturer?

There are pros & cons to each solution but this approach would encourage corporate responsibility, stimulate social responsibility and make the world a cleaner place.

What do you think?

A few months ago Adnams brewery in Suffolk issued a new bottle design for their beers.

The new bottle has a revised label and states:

“Less glass in a bottle is more environmentally friendly. Adnams 500ml beer bottle is the lightest in the UK”

That’s very welcome news as the old bottles were based on an old 1920s Adnams design, which the new brown glass container also follows, but the old glass bottles were extremely heavy and used a lot of glass.

The new bottles are both good looking and, as mentioned, use a lot less glass, so that is a bonus for weight savings and recycling (think slightly lighter crates of ale to ship, less raw materials)
However, the question still remains: why do breweries not go back to the old idea of returnable bottles? Surely returning glass bottles (for a penny or 5) is better than collecting, smashing and re-making them?

Here at Everything’s Gone Green we’re great proponents of real ale, especially local real ale. Our local brewery is the Hog’s Back Brewery in Tongham, Surrey, just a couple of miles down the road across the Hampshire border. They brew HBB (Hog’s Back Bitter), TEA (Traditional English Ale) and, last weekends favourite session brew, Hop Garden Gold.

The beauty of real ale when compared to the “global brands” is that breweries supply the local area, stimulating & supporting local economies, transport costs are drastically reduced and there is less money wasted on huge advertising campaigns which aggressively promote bland & tasteless “beers” which are more manufactured than actually brewed with the care and attention that real ale gets.

This month CAMRA, the CAMpaign for Real Ale, piped up and put forth the view that we totally subscribe to… “Drink Real Ale and Save the Planet!”

Why? Well they go a step further than just buying bottles of local real ale - they promote the fact that you don’t have to recycle glass by simply supporting your local pub and its line of local real ales. They also point out that transport costs are kept down and that local pubs with local brews keeps local economies strong by supporting local jobs.

What are you waiting for? Go find your friendly local real ale pub and demand a point of the finest local ale.

As we reported back in January, Marks & Spencer decided to go public about going green with their great Plan A. Because there is no Plan B.

Spotted in an M&S store window in Scotland M&S’s Plan A statement says simply:

Five Years.

Five Comittments.

One World.

100 things to change.

And their five comittments are:

1. Climate Change
2. Waste
3. Sustainable Raw Materials
4. Fair Partner
5. Health

And just to elaborate on each of these:

1. Climate Change - To make UK and Irish M&S operations carbon neutral in 5 years.
2. Waste - By 2012, no M&S clothing or packaging to end up as landfill.
3. Sustainable Raw Materials - Making sure M&S raw materials come from the most sustainable sources available.
4. Fair Partner - M&S aim to be a fair partner to improve the lives of all in the supply chain.
5. Health - M&S want to help their customers & employees to choose a healthier lifestyle.

Now, let’s see if any other retailer is bold enough to genuinely jump on the green bandwagon and do something about this mess we’re cruising toward before it’s too late.

About a year ago now we were tipped-off about a website called Find Me a Milkman. Before we could even blog about the site or use it, there was a knock on the door and our local milkman was there drumming up business for the milk round. We signed up straight away and have been happy as hippies on a green planet since.

So why is having your milk delivered such a green option? Well, for starters, the milk-float is the classic green vehicle. Electric-powered and virtually silent, the milkman delivers your daily pint with very little in the way of emissions.

Secondly, every milk bottle goes back to the depot and is thoroughly sterilised before being re-used and re-filled. A milk bottle can be re-used between 12 and 40 times, better than tetrapak landfill cartons and HDPE re-cyclable plastic bottles. Now that’s green.

Tens of thousands of people have marched through Mexico City to protest at the rising price of Tortillas.

Tortillas, the flat corn bread and staple diet item for many Mexicans, has risen in price by over 400%. Many people blame the rise in demand for corn on the bio-fuels market where corn is converted to ethanol and used as an environmentally-friendly fuel in the emerging US ‘green’ car market.

The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement allowed Mexico to receive cheap corn imports from the United States, but the demand for bio-fuels has diverted corn sales to the more lucrative ethanol production market and thus corn supply to Mexico is reduced and corn prices are up accordingly.

Not surprisingly, the tens of thousands who demonstrated in Mexico City were angry about the soaring costs of tortillas as there is the possibility of malnourishment amongst the poorest people in Mexico.

Well, sort of…

We’ve got to admit that we were going to moan about the packaging of our daily delivery of Rachel’s Organic semi-skimmed milk.

We started buying organic milk from our local milkman and with the only organic variety being Rachel’s Organic, Britain’s first organic dairy, we were a bit disappointed to see our milk turn up in Tetra Pak cartons.

Our fruit juice turns up in glass bottles, which are sent back, washed and re-filled. But the Tetra Pak milk cartons, being made of a plastic and multi-layered waxed cardboard, are particularly difficult to recycle so they’re effectively bin jobs.

However, just as we were going to pen to paper and ask Rachel’s Organic what they were going to do about their choice of not so environmentally friendly packaging for their environmentally friendly dairy produce, that very morning our milk turns up in plastic HDPE bottles. That’s better than Tetra Pak cartons but still not as good as the classic old glass bottle, but we’ll see if this is a one-off and report back to you.

Would you believe it… today is Boil Better Day?

As part of Energy Saving Week the Energy Saving Trust are promoting that we all use a little less water in our kettles - by only boiling as much water as you need rather than “filling the kettle” we can all be a bit more energy efficient, save energy & save money by simply boiling better.

Right, that’s made me thirsty, I’m off to make a cup of tea…

The big “Eat Natural” logo got me first, then the “Blueberry, Pistachio & Yoghurt Bar. A luxurious bar full of premium quality ingredients… and nothing else.”

These are tasty, seasonal and totally natural… none of the artificial rubbish you find in products from the usual suspects and suitable for vegetarians and those on gluten-free diets.
You can buy Eat Natural products in a number of well known places but for a list of stockists go check out their website