Lighting The Wind

Another piece of eco product news for you, one that is not only environmentally friendly (at least in the way that it’s powered), but looks cool too.

The Firewinder, also known as the Original Windlight, is a decorative and completely wind-powered outdoor light from the UK-based Firewinder Company that transforms the ebb and flow of the wind into an upwardly spiraling glowing light. Wind from any direction spins a small turbine on the helix-shaped device, thereby lighting up LEDs along its outer edge.

With light winds of at least 3 mph, the Firewinder emits a dim glow, but as winds increase, so too does the brilliance of its light. In variable winds, the result is a pulsing, twisting glow that appears to float in mid-air. The Firewinder can be hung or mounted to a post or wall, and it’s made of recyclable materials; no batteries or wires are required. It will be available starting late summer in the UK priced at £99.95.

You can watch it in action below:

[Via: Springwise]

Interview With An Eco Coach

Anca Novacovici is an eco coach. What’s that I hear you ask? Well we asked that too.

Tell us about how you came to set up Eco-Coach and be one?
I have always had a passion for the environment, and have wanted to work in the field for quite some time. My interest has been in helping businesses become more environmentally-friendly, since businesses use a large amount of resources. However, at the time that I graduated from college, and later on, from grad school, sustainability consulting was not a well-known field. Therefore I went the more traditional management consulting route, hoping one day to be able to do what I am doing now. While I enjoyed my time in the management consulting arena, learned a lot and have met some amazing people, I decided to start Eco-Coach to combine my interest and skills from consulting with my passion for the environment.

How do you help people and businesses?
We educate individuals and businesses and provide them with the tools to help them be more eco-friendly. For individuals, we do this through workshops on different aspects of green living, home eco-audits, and a variety of related services. For businesses, we provide support through green business audits, sustainability planning and benchmarking, training and educational workshops, and LEED certification and consultations.

Why do people/companies come to you? Is it not something they can do themselves?
They come to us because we have the expertise to do it and we bring in past experience and best practices that will enable them to obtain a better solution in a shorter period of time than they probably would by doing it on their own. They can certainly do most of this themselves, but it would take them more time and resources; by working with us, this enables them to focus on their core business while we focus on helping them become more sustainable.

What’s been the most surprising thing that you’ve learnt from the reviews and consultations?
When I started the business, I thought individuals would be more willing to hire someone to work with them than would businesses. However, I have found the reverse to be true. Businesses are eager to become more sustainable, whether it is to save money, improve their brand image, or from a genuine desire to help the environment. Individuals are also interested, but most are more willing to take small steps and spend a minimal amount versus investing considerable time and money in becoming more eco-friendly.

What sort of things do you suggest?
Suggestions for businesses vary based on the situation, and can be either simple or more complicated, depending on resources and commitment. Some of the simpler recommendations include: purchasing wind power, implementing lighting changes, installing water saving fixtures, changing to eco-friendly products/vendors, greening existing services, and training and educating employees. More complex suggestions include implementing a sustainability plan, identifying ways to become carbon neutral, and making building-related changes.

Once you’ve finished with a business or person, do they stick to what you’ve told them?
From our experience, most businesses and individuals will take the suggestions and implement a majority. Though not all of them. Some clients have come back to us and asked for further recommendations, and we will do these as long as they have implemented all of the previous recommendations or have a good reason for not having done so.
[Read more]

Bulldog Natural Grooming Shave Gel Product Review

I try to shave as little as possible, but as I don’t want a beard (unlike Adam), and my wife complains, it means “as little as possible” is almost every day. I tend to think shave gels and creams are pretty much alike, some are cheap and some expensive but they all do the same job. Then we were sent some Bulldog Natural Grooming Shave Gel.

It didn’t change my world massively, but I was impressed. For example, as I was testing it for the first time, this is the conversation I had with my wife:

“Something smells good!?”
Me: “It’s me!”
“No, seriously, something smells new and different.”
Me: “I know, it’s ME!”

She was right to a degree, it wasn’t really me but the shave gel. Made with seven essential oils, paraban free with Aloe Vera (apparently for cooling and softening), Jojoba (a natural moisturiser) and Konjac Mannan (for, er, “slip”), there are a full list of ingredients plus a downloadable explanation to what each ingredient is, on the Bulldog website. The gel had an almost menthol flavour and tingled on my lips, and as I had a cold at the time, actually helped me :).

Besides the product itself, I like the humour on the packaging, for example the back states “Unless you’re a geography teacher or a communist revolutionary [or Adam] you’ll have to shave sometime”. Besides that, there’s not much left to say. it’s nice to use a decent shave gel that has been naturally sourced. My face was fine afterwards, no more ugly than usual so I guess it works well.

Bulldog are a small company based in London. Currently their products are just available in the UK and through our new Life Goggles Reviews and Shop page.

Eco Funerals

Number 28 of our 100 Ways To Save The Planet is to have a green funeral, mentioning Arka Original Funerals and Ecopod. However there is an even more extreme measure you can go to - freeze-dried burials.

Critics say that unless sufficient safeguards are in place for eco-burials, the human remains inside those coffins can pose a hazard since they may contain toxic metals and other substances that can seep into groundwater.

Which is why various companies are promoting high-tech methods that allow cadavers to decompose while avoiding potential environmental hazards. Some of the techniques may seem strange, but they eliminate the messy embalming fluids, concrete crypts and metallic caskets used in traditional burials. Promessa Organic are a Swedish company whose technology begins by freezing a body to -18C. A bath in liquid nitrogen cools the corpse even further, making it brittle. Next, vibrations render it into powder, and later the water that makes up the largest part of human bodies is evaporated by means of a vacuum chamber. Finally, ground polluting metals - such as mercury from tooth fillings - are removed, and the now-purified powder is placed in a small, corn starch casket. Once buried, casket and remains fully decompose in 6–12 months.

[Via: Springwise]

Could You Live Without Toilet Paper?

Once again the BBC have an interesting article on a family in New York trying to live without toilet paper, shampoo or other toiletries.

No Impact Man, or Colin Beavan as he’s known, is trying to reduce the amount of toiletries his family uses as part of the latest stage of his involvement in environmentally friendly or sustainable projects around the city.

The first stage of the one-year experiment was to reduce rubbish. The family buys only second-hand goods and takes a hamper to the market. Food is bought every other day from the nearby farmers’ market on Union Square, and put in the hamper without wrapping. The family then stopped using all carbon-producing transport, so they now walk or cycle. They then shut down electricity in the flat - no more dishwasher, fridge or washing machine.

Now they are trying to reduce the amount of water they use, from the 80-100 gallons (303-379 litres) a day used by the average American, down to seven!! The average European uses about 150 litres or water a day, not because they wash less(!) but due to having smaller gardens, small bathrooms, smaller washing machines and so on.

Not everyone wants to go to these extremes, but could you manage it? I’m not sure I could…

How To Be A Green Student

It’s almost time to go back to school, college or university and it’s a great time to start environmentally practices which will last a life time. There are many things a student can do to be green, just check out our 100 Ways To Save The Planet, but here are some specific ways that you can do to be green:

Dorm Room
There are many little things you can do in your room to be green. Check the lightbulbs are energy saving, switch off computers and unplug chargers. But you can also be environmentally friendly in the bed linen you buy - organic sheets and pillow cases, as well as silk filled duvets can be found at So Organic for the UK and Gaiam in the US. A quick Goggle search will help. They’re not cheap but should last a long time.

Washing and Ironing
Don’t do it. Well okay you’re far removed from the typical image of unwashed, dishevelled student, but you can cut down on washing and ironing. Group together to do a joint wash and use eco-friendly washing powder and fabric condition like from Ecover or Seventh Generation.

Drinking
Water: don’t keep buying those plastic bottles. Get yourself a stainless steel water bottle that will last a lifetime and you can still fill it up with filtered water - why not use the water fountains on campus?
Alcohol: it’s tough to be green while drinking. But there are many organic beers out there, try the micro breweries or in the UK the Sam Smith chain of pubs does a range of organic drinks.

Writing
There’s one thing that studying involves, and that’s a lot of writing. You can now get pencils using wood from sustainable forests, notepads made from juice cartons, pens from plastic cups and car parts, pencil cases and mousemats from tyres (tires). They’re everywhere now, try So Organic again in the UK or Goodkind Pen in the US. Even if you pen isn’t recycled, get one that can be refilled, Staples sells refillable pens and Pilot make a range too.

Books
Buy used. As simple as that. Look on noticeboards for students selling theres if there isn’t a secondhand bookshop around. And if you have to buy new see what sort of paper it’s printed on, if it isn’t recycled or environmentally friendly, ask your course tutor why not?

Air Fresheners
For whatever you need a fresher (or different) smell in your room, steer clear of the spray type air fresheners. Use natural oils, lavenders or light a natural beeswax candle which has a nice smell.

Dress Green
Buy organic cotton clothes or ones made from hemp. If that’s beyond your budget, buy used or vintage clothes - not only is vintage trendy at the moment, it’s better for the environment to re-use.

Look Green
Buy a plant. It will make the room look nicer and is said to lead to fresher air. And you can never have enough of that.

Live Green
Try and been green in everything you do - take a bike or walk to your class. Don’t have a car. Try and change the attitude of others and start a behavioural pattern that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

Where To Start - 3 Simple Steps To Going Green

There are three easy steps to making yourself green. These are not the only steps, you can read our 100 Ways To Save The Planet post for that, and not massive steps either, but these are the three ways to start you on the road to becoming a green person - reduce, reuse and recycle.

Step 1: Reduce

Reducing the amount of ’stuff’ you use is the first and most important step to being green. As Life Goggles’ recycling expert said: “While it’s better to recycle than throw away, it’s best not to use something at all.”

But was does that mean in a practical sense? Simply it means not wasting things and deciding whether you actually need something in the first place.

So where to start? Wastage can be anything from putting too much water in the kettle using more energy and more water than you needed, leaving your phone plugged in when it’s fully charged, or leaving lights on. It’s also about walking to the shops rather than using petrol and damaging the environment in your car or carrying than newspaper and bottle of coke home in your hand rather than using another plastic bag.

These days it’s all about packaging that you end up throwing away. Even if your pears are packaged in biodegradable plastic and a cardboard tray - do you really need them? Just put them loose into your basket, not much harm will come to them. Fruit like bananas especially don’t need a bag to go in - they already have a protective skin on. Do you need the microwave plugged in all the time or can you do without a bath every night and take a shower.

If you don’t use it, then you don’t need to reuse it and then you don’t need to recycle it.

Step 2: Reuse

Obviously you do have to use some things, so reusing them is still better than recycling - that takes a lot of energy and effort. To use an example from above, most people can’t go without taking a shower every day. But that water doesn’t have to go to waste. If you use natural products to clean yourself you can fill up the watering can or the dishbowl while you’re in there. Sound ridiculous? People who have a water meter certainly notice the difference - cheaper bills.

Some people go by the mantra - everything can be used three times. A worn out bed sheet can be converted to pillow cases and then can be used a scrap cloths before they are finally thrown away.

Everyone seems to be banging on about plastic bags and quite rightly. If you can refuse to have one, great, but if you have to have one, use one from the last shop you did or use a organic cotton bag or even using one of the many ‘bags for life’ is better than nothing.

However, reusing is about more than plastic bags. It’s reusing everything and anything - you can even ‘reuse’ food waste by composting it.

But sometimes you won’t even think of reusing certain things - what do you do with old half tins of paint, useless spectacles or old cassette tapes? Even if you can’t reuse something, someone else can. There are ways to reuse a lot of things, especially environmentally unfriendly items that are hard to dispose of. Take a look around Life Goggles for more ideas.

Reusing is the ultimate, pain free recycling.

Step 3: Recycle

When you’ve cut back all you can, reused everything possible and are finally still left with something to go in the bin, it might be able to be recycled. While recycling takes a lot of energy, it’s a lot less than to produce another one of the things you’re about to throw away. An aluminium can for example takes 80% less energy to recycle than to make a brand new one.

The obvious things that can be recycled are glass, aluminium and paper/card - if you do it at home and the office it can make a difference. Plastic can also be recycled, you’ll just need to check which types your council can do.

And even more awkward things can be recycled. For example Tetra-Paks - such as those orange juice cartons that are cardboard with aluminium inside and a plastic lid- can be recycled now, check here for details.

It can take a little effort, but it’s possible to get your rubbish bin to miss you as you throw less and less away. But what’s next?

Step 4: …

Yep, there’s a step 4 and 5 and 6 and so on. Once you’ve got the green bug, there’s no stopping you. You’ll find you start spreading the word to others, ringing up the council, organising collections and getting kids involved. In fact it’s they’re future you’re trying to help, maybe they’ll be getting you involved!

So make a start, have a look around Life Goggles and if you can’t find what you want, ask us, we’re nice people. Honest. You could read our very popular 100 quick and easy ways to save the planet. If you have less time, try our top 10 tips to reduce your carbon footprint.

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