Help Us Cut VAT On Fruit Juice

From our friends at Innocent. If you’re a UK citizen you can help petition to remove VAT on fruit smoothies and juices.

“Help Us Cut VAT On Fruit Juice. Let’s get it down to 5%.

Some things just aren’t right. Tartan jeans for instance. And the fact that the government charges VAT on healthy fruit juices and smoothies. Seems wrong to us. Especially when other foods, like hotdogs and chips, remain tax free. Not quite encouraging healthy eating, is it?

That’s why we’ve set up a petition on the Prime Minister’s website to tell the government that they could help more people get to their five a day by removing this daft tax. To sign up go to

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/fruitjuiceVAT

It only takes 30 seconds to type in your name.

Thanks for your support,

Everyone at Innocent.”

If you’re bored, you can also check out their (amusing) label museum.

Quick Green News

Some green news in brief for you.

Sainsbury’s has announced that it will only sell line-caught cod and haddock, This means 10,000 tons of Icelandic cod and haddock it sells each year will be from sustainable sources.

Also Sainsbury’s announced it will stop selling eggs laid by battery hens, which is the same policy as Marks & Spencer and Waitrose.

Primark is going to sell a range of Fair Trade organic cotton tops. It aims to also reduce the environmental impact of plastic bags by 25 per cent next year. Campaigners state that Bangladesh factory workers producing clothes for Primark are paid only 5p an hour and can work up to 20 hours a day.

Marks & Spencer has launched a £200m plan to become one of the greenest companies depsite news that their chief executive, Stuart Rose, owns two Bentleys.

The Co-op is to launch a whisky bottle that will be the lightest on the market. The 70cl bottle will be 298g, over 50g lighter than previously. Co-op will then do this for other spirits.

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100 Ways To Save The Planet - Part 2

This is the second part of Life Goggles’ 100 Ways To Save The Planet. Part 1 can be found here. If you have any ideas or suggestions for part 3, please leave a comment at the end.

11. People who fill up a kettle and boil it to make just one cup of tea drive me mad. Or worse, boil it, then leave it for a bit and have to reboil it. Argh. Don’t boil more water in the kettle than you need to. If you always boil the amount of water needed for one cup rather than boiling a full kettle, you could save £30 a year.

12. Get an ethical job here. Not just for the UK, but also in Canada and America too.

13. Become a vegetarian. Not as easy as it sounds so if you can’t do it permanently, do it for one day a week. It’s said to produce one pound of beef involves 2,500 gallons of water - 40 times the amount of veg. There’s also the cost of raising cattle or other animals far exceeds that of vegetables. When you do eat meat, choose something local - it’s had less miles to travel in that CO2 producing lorry.

14. Buy an electricity monitor. You can get one from the Ethical Superstore and then measure how much electricity your using. It’s actually fun to see what happens when you switch the TV off or indeed put it on and the sight of the numbers rocketing up is enought to shock you sitting in silence - you learn to love reading.

15. Get a water butt. It’s so simple I don’t know why more people don’t have them to water their plants. I suppose it helps to have a garden and live somewhere where it rains, but if that’s you, you’ve no excuse. You can get them in all different sizes to fit your space and many come with kits to connect to your drainpipe to easily collect rainwater. Otherwise you could pick up a plastic barrell at a scrap/salvage yard and just dip your watering can in.

16. Recycle your old glasses. Life Goggles says how here.

17. Reuse envelopes. If you get junk mail, carefully open the envelope and you can always use it again, crossing out your name. It’ll also save you money. Some companies, some as EDF Energy already provide envelopes which can be reused and sent back to them.

18. Install solar energy in your home. It can heat your home as well as provide electricity. It’s not cheaper though but you can (in the UK at least) get grants to save energy. Try the Energy Saving Trust for starters but it’s worth ringing you current energy provider and asking them. Or Solar Savers could help too.

19. Get a lift to work. June 14 is National Lift Share Day in the UK at least, but you can share a ride to work or for pleasure any day, fo whatever reason. It’s estimated that the average liftsharer saves £1,000 and one tonne of CO2 every year. It’s boring driving on your own anyway.

20. Use energy saving lightbulbs. They might costs a bit more but they last a lot longer and are better for the environment. Plus the newer ones don’t take all night to light up. So your shins are safe from that coffee table.

Waste of Time or Art?

You decide. I like it.

Going Green With Robert Redford

I’ll let the big man say it all, but Robert Redford has launched The Green - a channel devoted to documentaries about green issues. Sounds good Bob.

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]

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