Organ and Blood Donation Awareness

Of course, it’s a personal choice if you wish to donate your organs, but if you decide to you could be helping some of the 1,700 people in Australia, 50,000 people in Latin America, more that 170,000 people in Europe and the United States, and over 2 million people in China who are in need of an organ transplant. Without one, these people will probably die, and at the very least have a better standard of life.

In the UK it’s easy to become a donor and join some of the people who have enabled 3,000 people to have a new lease of life. Go here if you’re in the US, else try these worldwide links.

Giving blood is also a way of providing help to others. Again, in the UK it’s easy, just visit the blood donation website and sign up, and in the US go here.

How To Trace The Origin Of What You Buy

There are a few websites out there that provide ways to trace the origin of the food products you buy. Nature & More is a company that evaluates the quality of organic food to any company that signs up. Each product gets a code that you can then enter on their website to get the full history of the product.

Wheresyoursfrom and MyFreshEgg are sites that provide the traceability of eggs, whilst Lloyd Maunder provides it for their lamb, Borges for their olive oil and Dole for their organic fruit.

[Via: Trendwatching]

Find Yourself An Eco-friendly Dentist

Transcendentist is the USA’s first official eco-friendly dentist.

To achieve becoming the first dentist to receive green business certification from the Bay Area Green Business Program they have an impressive list of eco-friendly measures:

• The wallpapers are made of reclaimed paper pulp and bark.
• The floors were refinished with water-based polyurethane, the carpets are made of untreated wool, and the flooring is Marmoleum®, a natural alternative to vinyl which is made of flax, wood flour and rosins.
• Much of the furniture is made of recycled woods, and is covered in cottons, silks and wool and stuffed with kapok, which comes from a silk-cotton tree.
• Use only steam-based instrument sterilization, which contains no harmful chemicals.
• There is a special filtration system to allow environmentally sound disposal of old mercury fillings, to prevent pollution of the water system.
• All of the paper in the office is recycled, and they use digital patient charting to reduce paper use.
• They wrap instruments in surgical-grade cloth, not disposable plastic or paper.
• They use digital imaging (not traditional x-rays), which apparently means 75-90% less radiation for you and no toxic x-ray development chemicals.
• Instead of paper head rest covers and patient “bibs”, they are made of pure cotton terry cloth, washed on-site in an energy efficient washer and dryer using natural detergents and disinfectants.
• The office is cleaned only with environmentally safe cleaning methods.

Very nice.

[Via Springwise]

Why Don’t We Queue in the Pub?

The Home Office Guide “Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship” talks about pubs. It says:

“It is sometimes difficult to get served when pubs are busy: people do not queue, but the bar staff will try and serve those who have been waiting longest at the bar first.”

Whilst true, it doesn’t explain why. Why don’t we queue in pubs? We queue pretty much everywhere else, and you would think a place where people have consumed a large amount of alcohol is the ideal place for a bit of order and queuing. You don’t get a scrum at the front of the Post Office or HMV, each shouting at the counter staff in order to get served first. Starbucks would be a nightmare, with the caffeine deprived hoardes fighting out for their grande double mocha-hoca-choca-machino.

There are a couple of pubs that I know of that actually have queue barriers in place, I don’t know why it hasn’t caught on. You can even buy a pub queue management system with buttons on the bar that the bar staff can clear once serve in order, a bit like Argos. Until these do catch on, here’s some advice below.

How to Increase the Value of Your Home

There are a few easy ways to increase the value of your home. There are the obvious ways that you see on those TV shows, tidying, painting the walls, a new front door, gardening, scented candles and so on. However there is a much less obvious way.

Apparently, in order to increase the value of your home by around 6%, simply install some environmentally friendly features. According to price comparison website www.beatthatquote.com installing solar panels and/or a wind turbine(!) your home will be worth 6 percent more than a similar home that doesn’t have these features.

Mind you, installing solar panels is very expensive and payback is slow, over about 20 years. However for new build homes they are fast becoming a viable option.

What Happened To All The Milk Bottles?

When I was growing up into the fine figure of a man I am today, I used to like opening the new bottle of milk and when it was finished, washing it out and leaving it on the doorstep. In fact I used to like to try and amaze the milkman by leaving as many empty bottles as possible on the doorstep. Whether he was amazed or not remains to be seen as I was never up at 5am to see.

Anyway, having moved away we no longer have a milkman. I would have thought a block of flats would be ideal as he’d be done for the day after a couple of blocks, but I suppose there’s not much money in the cow juice game these days.

So we’re lumbered with plastic milk bottles that aren’t reused. Or are they? They can be recycled (remember to take the tops off as they’re a different type of plastic and also means the empty bottles can be crushed more easily) but also used in the home. I’ve scoured the web to find some uses for them. Many are garden related but I’ve missed about the one about peeing into them and pouring on your compost heap…

• Use the top part of drinks bottles as cloches for plants. (I had to look ‘cloches’ up. It means “1. A small glass or plastic cover for protecting young plants or 2. a woman’s close-fitting hat”. I take it they mean the first)
• Fill empty milk cartons with water and use instead of dumbells.
• Cut the tops off so you have a big pot fill full of soil and plants. Hang on the fence once the trailing plants have trailed and they look lovely dotted all over the fence.
• Use them as watering cans for the hanging baskets.
• Fill with water and freeze (remember to leave a gap at the top for the water to expand) and use as ice packs in your cool bag.
• Those two litre milk containers make good scoops. Leave the handle on and cut the other side in a diagonal line, cutting off the ‘neck’ at the same time and use it for chips.
• Cut the plastic milk bottles into strips and shape into labels for your plants using a permenant marker pen to write on them.
• Can use the empty bottles to pour the leftover oil from cooking in so you can throw it away instead of pouring down the sink and the problems that causes with the drains.
• Use a water-filled plastic milk bottle for the toilet cistern. This is the same as using a brick to reduce the amount of water used for each flush. It’s probably safer to get something like this, some water companies give them out for free, best to ask whichever you use.

Why Don’t You Take A Rural Retreat?

A couple of weeks ago, a few friends and I took a “rural retreat” through the aptly named Rural Retreats. We stayed in Norfolk, in a place near North Barsham and Walsingham, at a set of “cottages” called The Barshams.

Comprising of a few different joined cottages - High Barsham, was once a threshing barn and overlooks Stiffkey River valley. Despite the close neighbours all was pretty quiet. A shared spa and steam room can be booked and there is a games room (though no actual equipment could be found) if further entertainment is needed, which is likely with a longer stay (or kids).

I took a pretty quiet video tour of the place that gives an overview of the inside of the cottage/barn.

A few tips, some of which were covered in TheLondonPaper also.

• Some people like to sort out bedrooms in advance to save arguments. Though if you’re staying a weekend it doesn’t really matter.
• Book taxis in advance if no-one fancies driving to the local village. My friends did a great job finding one, but it would have been easier if we had planned earlier.
• Take plenty of food and drink, your local shop could be a long walk away if you’ve been drinking in the afternoon and fancy some snacks. Mind you, we had enough crisps for about 40 people.

Thanks to everyone who came!

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