1
Don’t pick wild flowers – they often don’t grow back, so this can lead to loss of habitat.
2
Do take home any food containers, bags or wrappers – not just because litter looks rubbish (litter looks rubbish, geddit?), but because wild animals might think that the scent of them is actually food itself, and of course, if they eat these things they can become very ill or even die. They might also pose a tangling or suffocation risk.
3
If you’re walking the dog, make sure you keep it under control, so it doesn’t disturb wild birds and other animals.
Each year, one million sea birds, 100,000 marine mammals, and 50,000 fur seals are killed as a result of eating or being strangled by plastic, including sandwich bags and Styrofoam cups. Try to cut down on your use of these things.
Did you know that it takes twenty-eight per cent less energy to recycle paper than to produce paper from scratch? So you can help save the planet if you use paper recycling schemes, which are available at supermarkets and on street corners. But there are other ways to make paper go further:
1
Buy paper with at least thirty per cent recycled content in it in the first place.
2
Write on both sides of the paper and then recycle it again afterwards.
3
Make it your job at home to save paper, as well as recycle it. Sort through envelopes to see if there are any that can be used again to post things, or reused as scrap paper for shopping lists etc.
4
Don’t print out anything from a computer unless you’re sure you need to.
It’s estimated that every person in the UK throws away on average two trees’ worth of paper and card every year. It’s so easy to recycle paper, make sure you don’t waste a scrap.
Whenever you get a swanky paper bag from a posh shop instead of a plastic carrier, reuse it for shopping or to carry stuff to school. Of course, this last tip is for the sake of fashion, as well as for saving the planet. After all, what would you rather look like – a bag lady or a boutique lady?!
How many times have you struggled to think of a really good present for someone on their birthday or at Christmas? If you go green, you’ll be able to stun your mates and your family with some truly fab, fun, unusual gifts, while helping to save the planet at the same time.
Remember, it may be the thought that counts, but if you’re going to give someone a material gift, try to find something they’re going to use, otherwise it can be a waste of your time, money and the planet’s resources. If you give green consumables – such as organic teas, fair trade coffee, organic biscuits etc. – your family or friends will enjoy them all the more because they can tuck in with a clear conscience! If you choose gifts that are grown or made locally, this will save the environment from emissions created by transporting them from miles away. And don’t forget about vintage gifts – you’ll be able to afford higher-quality items secondhand than if you were thinking of buying them new, and it’s a form of recycling too.
Here are a few of our ideas for some of the green gifts we’d love to give or get ourselves . . .
1
Fair trade chocs.
2
Essential oils and aromatherapy products.
3
Toiletry lotions and potions made from natural, organic products. (It’s even better if you make these yourself – Lucy.)
4
Natural, beeswax candles.
5
Live, growing pot plants instead of cut flowers.
6
Packets of seeds – especially vegetables or wildflowers to grow. (Are you joking? Like, a packet of parsnips? – Nesta. OK, We’ll give you broccoli then – Lucy. Yeah, just because you don’t want them, it doesn’t mean other people won’t appreciate them – TJ. OK, let them have them then. Don’t ever let it be said that I am stingy – Nesta.)
7
Anything rechargeable. (We’ve heard of a mobile phone recharger that works by pedal power while you’re riding your bike – how cool is that? – TJ.)
8
Anything made from recycled materials. (I’ve seen some fab jewellery made from recycled glass – Lucy.)
9
Anything made from organic materials.
(A snuggly organic cotton bathrobe would do me nicely – Nesta.)
10
Carbon-neutral CDs (More and more artists are releasing these, including Massive Attack, Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Feeder and Sting.)
A great green gift is to make ‘promise’ vouchers for your mates, mum and dad, or brothers and sisters for things like:
one breakfast in bed
one babysitting session
one manicure
one pedicure
one massage
a make-up makeover
a hair makeover
an entire evening of pampering
a picnic in the park
an all-expenses-paid trip to the movies
one romantic meal for two
one car wash
one lawn-mowing session
a week of dog-walking
a week of washing up
a week of loading and unloading the dishwasher
a week of hanging out the washing
a week of ironing
a week of hoovering
a month of watering the plants
a month of pet-feeding and cleaning-out
a month of giving help with homework
a promise to lend your fave jacket/bag/dress/shoes on one special occasion
a promise to keep your bedroom tidy for eternity (Hang on, now that’s going a bit far . . . Izzie.)
These things are a bit pricey for you to buy on your own, but if you can club together with a couple of other people, they’d make great green presents:
1
iPod solar charger
2
solar-powered outdoor lanterns or a water feature
3
theatre or concert tickets (a pair – after all, who wants to go on their own?)
4
membership of a zoo or aquarium that has a conservation programme
5
membership of a museum or gallery (if you see a nice-looking boy roaming about, he might be brainy as well as buff)
6
a tree (if it’s not possible to give the person an actual tree to plant, there are lots of organisations who undertake tree planting)
7
the adoption of an endangered wild animal or sponsorship of an animal at a zoo or aquarium that does conservation work
8
give a goat! Or another gift from a charity such as the Oxfam Unwrapped selection (see www.oxfam.org.uk/shop) and World Vision (see www.greatgifts.org), where you choose a present such as school textbooks, seeds or vaccinations for people who need them. The person you buy the gift for gets a greetings card with details of what you’ve selected in their name. All the gifts make a huge difference.
When it comes to wrapping up your perfect pressies, don’t forget to buy recycled wrapping paper, and try to use it again, or recycle it again. For mates, you can always make your own wrapping paper from pages in unwanted magazines that have pictures of their fave celebs on. Imagine a present wrapped entirely in pics of Cristiano Ronaldo – swoonsome (almost better than the pressie itself, surely)!
And at Christmas and birthdays, instead of ripping paper off gifts, take it off carefully, roll and stash it for when you need to wrap a present yourself. We have one piece of silver and white paper which has become a bit of a joke with all of us because it has been doing the rounds for almost a year now and it’s become a challenge to see how long we can make it last without it ripping or falling apart.
Thousands and thousands of trees are chopped down every year to make birthday and Christmas cards. Here’s how to be greener when it comes to greetings:
1
Find a website that allows you to choose and send an e-card
. They often have music as well as pictures, so they’re a great alternative to traditional paper cards. Alternatively, use your computer to design your own card, and then email it rather than printing it out. You’ll not only be saving on paper, you’ll also be saving on the fuel the post office would have used to deliver your card.
2
Get together in a group to send a card, such as asking everyone in your class to sign a single birthday card, or getting everyone in your family to send someone one joint card instead of individual ones.
3
Get creative and make your cards. Try to use recycled paper, use bits of old cards or paint and draw your own images. (Lucy is particularly good at this, being the arty one, but Nesta has a good eye for choosing bits of old mags to use for collage-effect-type cards.)
4
Deliver it yourself by foot or bike (but not if you live in England and the recipient lives in Canada – that would be a bit extreme).
5
Recycle your cards when you’ve finished with them. Some shops have collection points for old Christmas cards.
Save money and go greener by sharing magazines with your mates. Instead of all buying copies of the same magazines every week or month, decide which ones you want, agree to buy a different mag each and then swap them round between you.
In 2008, the Woodland Trust collected over 70 million used Christmas cards for recycling. This prevented over 1400 tonnes of cards being dumped on landfill and nearly 2000 tonnes of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere. It also raised money for the Woodland Trust to plant 17,000 new trees in the UK. You can find out more at woodland-trust.org.uk.
Right, you’ve got to the end of the chapter – well done. Now comes the interesting bit – where you stop reading and decide to DO something. We hope you’ll do everything we’ve suggested, but you’ve got to start somewhere – so, flick back through the chapter and choose what you’re going to do first. Have a look at our green goals and then write your own!
Green things we are going to do TODAY:
Nesta:
Turn the TV off at the socket instead of leaving it on standby.
Lucy:
Turn off the tap while I’m cleaning my teeth.
TJ:
Offer to help with the big food shop.
Izzie:
Ask Mum if we can replace our ordinary lightbulbs with energy-saving ones.
Green things we are going to start doing THIS WEEK:
Izzie:
Try making my own beauty products.
Lucy:
Make a birthday card to give my dad.
Nesta:
Dig out the juicer and make gorgeous juices.
TJ:
Have showers instead of baths.
Now it’s your turn!
Three green things I am going to do TODAY:
Five green things I am going to start doing THIS WEEK:
A Note from Lucy
Hi, it’s Lucy again. I hope you’re getting into being a green teen by now. For me, I hadn’t realised that it was going to be so do-able as well as fun. This chapter includes my fave parts – the clothes and DVD swapping. It makes such good sense to share what we have and anyone who has read the Mates, Dates books will already know that I love searching for vintage clothing to use in my clothes design – I just never realised that I was being green at the same time!
So if you’ve read the last chapter and already made some changes to your life, you’re officially a groovy Green Girl – go you! Now it’s time to pull out a few more stops and find out how to be a Queen of Green.
Lucy X
What – there’s more? Groan — Nesta.
Nesta, shut up – Lucy.
Eighty-four per cent of a typical household’s waste can be recycled.
Recycling is soooo important because we’re stripping the planet of its resources faster than they can be replaced. So once things like oil, coal, natural gas and metals are gone, they’re gone. That’s it – no more – zip, zero, nada. It’s up to us to recycle what we’ve got, or face doing without in the future . . .
People often think that recycling is dirty and a faff but nearly everyone can recycle more – it’s just a matter of wanting to. Here are our recycling rules . . .
1
Don’t rely on anyone else to do it.
2
Contact your local council to find out which materials are recycled in your area, and whether they are collected or if you have to take them to a collection point. You can also find out where your nearest recycling centre is by going to www.recycle-more.co.uk. More and more areas also have local recycling schemes you can join where you’re provided with boxes and all your recycling is collected once a week or once a fortnight.
3
Ask your mum or dad if you can get a recycling bin with separate sections for different types of waste, or set up separate bins for different types of waste (e.g. paper/cardboard, glass, metals, plastic, compost, electricals, clothes, books etc.).
4
Write a list of all the items your family could recycle from now on and stick it up near the recycling bin/s.
5
Take charge of putting out each type of waste on collection day, or taking it to your local recycling banks.
Whenever you, your family or your mates want to update their old, boring mobile phone to a flashy new model, stop and think. Do you really need a new one just yet or can you hang on for a while longer, and avoid contributing to all the pollution caused by manufacturing processes and transportation. Surely you can sacrifice having an all-singing all-dancing new model for the sake of the planet? (Aaargh, if I must – Nesta.)
If you have to change your mobile phone, don’t just bin it. Mobile phones contain potentially hazardous materials which can seep out when they’re dumped into landfill sites and left to rot, damaging the environment.
There are hundreds of companies who will gladly rescue sad, cast-out mobile phones from a life of retirement and whisk them away to developing countries, where people are hugely glad of them.
Many mobile phone retail outlets will accept old models and accessories for recycling, and there are also hundreds of charities and community groups who collect old phones to recycle them in order to raise funds for their cause.
You can find out the simplest way for you to recycle your old phones at www.fonebak.com.
My mum had an old Nokia mobile that we used to laugh at because it was almost prehistoric, and then a famous fashion journalist wrote an article about the very same phone and how it had become a collector’s item and it was vintage. Now Mum uses her old phone with pride – Lucy.
TOP TIPS FOR GREEN QUEENS
Make sure you, your family and your mates aren’t throwing away your computer ink cartridges. Some shops will refill empty cartridges for a fraction of the price of new ones, so you’ll be saving money as well as the planet. Or if you log on to www.cartridgesave.co.uk, go to the recycling page and fill in your details, Cartridge Save will send you a bag in which to post back your old cartridges to them. It’s freepost and it’s easy. And for every cartridge recycled, a donation is made to The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a charity working for the rescue and rehabilitation back into the wild of orphans of many species, particularly rhinos and elephants. An easy-peasy one. Huzzah – Nesta.
If you meet your mates at a local coffee shop, try to choose fair trade and/or organic coffee. If your favourite café doesn’t give you the option, ask if they can put these items on their menu.
Every year we fill space equivalent to 28,450 football pitches with rubbish. Land is running out! So keep thinking: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
Not so long ago, clothes that were bought from charity shops or jumble sales were called ‘second-hand’. Now they’re called ‘vintage’. All the stars do it – well, maybe not the stars themselves, but their personal stylists certainly do. They’re all out there, scouring ‘vintage clothing boutiques’ (read Oxfam and the local hosp
ice shop), fighting each other over stylish dresses, funky casuals, show-stopping shoes and glamorous handbags. So why not join them – and me? I’ve found some fabola things, and, by recycling clothes like this, you’ll be saving energy and chemicals used in manufacturing processes and helping to cut down on the planet’s pollution from factories, as well as bagging a bargain. There’s nothing like the feeling of chancing upon a fab bit of fabric, a great shoe (Just the one? I think not – unless you’re Prince Charming – Nesta), a hot handbag – and knowing that you can guarantee when you go out no one else will be wearing the same thing! Going for a rummage for vintage clothes is one of my very fave ways of spending time. Look for slip dresses to wear over your jeans, retro T-shirts, parkas, beanies, vintage dresses, cut-price designer wear, cheap V-necks – and that’s just for starters. As if the low prices and prize finds weren’t enough, you’re also giving money to good causes so you get double the feel-good factor.
Mates, Dates and Saving the Planet Page 4
