All things green: Meat and the environment

Part of my time over the past weekend was spent, as is only right, in the local pub with my chums. After a pint or two, I found myself involved in a discussion about the most effective things you could do to ‘be green’ – a rather high-brow subject for the Kings Arms crowd.

A few daft suggestions were discounted (killing yourself, killing the heads of the oil companies, killing the heads of the oil companies and then yourself, etc) and a further set were ruled out for being too hard to sell (not having children, returning to prehistoric life). The sensible suggestions included not flying, not owning a car and someone (well, me actually) mentioned the touchy subject of not eating meat.

The fact is, the meat and dairy industry is the world’s single biggest producer of greenhouse gas, apart from nature’s own well-balanced systems. This is down to a number of contributing factors; the gas produced by the animals themselves, the energy-intensive way in which they are raised, the food that has to be grown and transported to feed them, the transport of the animals themselves (live or as meat) and so on. What’s more, modern farming methods are morally very dubious if you look into them, and I’m sure all visitors to this kind of website will be concerned about that.

While I’m all for vegetarianism, I appreciate this might not be easy for everyone. However if we all chose to eat less meat, perhaps being veggie for one or two days a week, then we’d shave a huge chunk off our carbon footprint. What’s more, with meat being one of the most expensive items in our shopping trolleys, the money we’d save could mean we might splash out on better-quality, ethically-produced meat when we did buy it. Better for us, better for the Earth and better for the animals.

I’d love to hear from any readers who have other ideas about how best to be green, and anyone with any thoughts on how our diet affects the environment. Could you cut meat out of your diet?

Paul

Haiti Devastation – Doing our bit to help!

Reading the newspapers, watching the television news, browsing the internet and using social networking sites it is certainly impossible to avoid the powerful and moving stories and images coming out of Haiti at the moment.

Following a massive earthquake last week the country and its’ capital, Port-au-Prince, have literally been shaken to the core.  Hundreds of thousands have died and many more are suffering injury and/or are homeless.  Families have been torn apart and aid is slowly starting to filter through in some areas but certainly not quickly enough.

I have personally donated to the DEC fund but wanted to do something on behalf of the company and our customers too.  So for the next 7 days we will donate £1 for every single order placed (irrespective of value) via our websites at www.originalorganics.co.uk or www.waterbuttsdirect.co.uk.  The donation will be made by us to the DEC appeal via their website.

To make a direct donation, please do so right now by visiting the Disasters Emergency Committee website at www.dec.org.uk

No words can in any way compensate the local people of Haiti, but the thoughts of all of us here at Original Organics are with them at this very trying time.

Thanks,
Liam

Home Made Riddles save the day!

Here at Original Organics we’re always trying to do our bit at reducing our own impact on the environment as well as helping others reduce theirs.  We recycle as much as we possibly can; we minimise our use of energy where possible; and, we try to use as little packaging as we can get away with whilst still ensuring customers receive their orders in good condition.

One area we’ve been wanting to crack for sometime, though, is the plastic powder waste in the small factory where we make our 100% recycled compost bins.  All our composters are made using 100% recycled plastic, which comes into us as a very fine green powder.  We already grind up the rejects back into the fine powder to minimise wastage – but that’s easy.  Where it’s not so easy is the small amount of powder that is dropped on the floor in the process of manually handling the plastic from the bags of raw material into the machine.  It’s a negligible amount in proportion to the amount we use – but when looked at exclusively it all adds up!  Because it ends up on the floor it’s immediately contaminated with other dirt and debris.

Then Clive, our MD, stumbled across this article about one man who to this day continues to make authentic and handmade beechwood and mesh-wire sieves – of all shapes and sizes.  We thought they had long gone!

So, we got in touch – and solved our problem in doing so!  No other sieve we’ve found has been able to successfully sort the proper plastic powder from the other ’stuff’ it gets contaminated with if it’s dropped – but this chap made us one which does the job perfectly.

His excellent sieves are made from beechwood and a galvanised wire mesh.  He makes them of all different shapes and sizes and used in many different industries – all from his stone workshop in the Peak District.  Amazing.

We liked them so much we’re now stocking his 18″ sieves as garden riddles.  As well as being ‘the real deal’ they are also extremely effective at improving the appearance of home made compost.  And they are of exceptionally high quality too!

You can find the riddles on our website for £22.90, just here.

All things green: ‘Not enough space’ is not an excuse!

My Patio Growing Plot!

As my writing depends on it, I am fortunate in that I have three allotments, all shared with my girlfriend Jeannine.  Thanks to the local council’s policy of splitting plots in half (to please twice the number of gardeners) the reality is that we have three half plots – which strikes me as half a plot less than we are entitled to!  Nonetheless, allotment waiting lists in most parts of the country now seem so long that you have to sign your grandchildren up, let alone yourself, so I count myself blessed!

We aren’t all lucky enough to have allotments or a large garden, but provided you’re not set on attaining complete self-sufficiency there is plenty you can do to grow your own in even a small space – perhaps a typical terraced-house garden, or even a patio or balcony.

Last summer I tested this theory by setting up an ultra-compact patio garden outside my kitchen door (you can see it above).  The area measures something like two metres by 80cm, and I carefully arranged planters, pots and old packing boxes to make use of the space.  These were filled with good quality compost, both home-made and shop-bought, because one trick to growing in small spaces is to make sure your plants are well fed.  The quantity and diversity of the food I managed to produce really surprised me, although of course such an intensive little plot needs some looking after.  Key to my success was the use of height – low-growing crops were interplanted with taller ones, and canes and support frames allowed climbing plants to double my ‘productive volume’.  I even had some tomatoes growing in hanging baskets – although the watering regime was at times inconvenient.

Apart from growing veg, you can also include other aspects of a well-rounded garden in a smaller plot.  Beneficial plants like marigolds and nasturtiums can be squeezed in, as can a rainwater harvesting system if you look out for a compact water butt (there are many such now available).  And at the end of the garden cycle (or is it the beginning?) don’t forget a composter.  Wormeries take up the minimum amount of room and will process your kitchen and some of your garden waste faster than any other design.

Perhaps the smallest possible growing area is a kitchen windowsill and, while no doubt limited, there are quite a few possibilities here.  Herbs should be your first option, as they are so expensive to buy fresh in shops but take up relatively little room – just one pot each of rosemary, mint, coriander and basil will transform countless dishes.  Another small-space star is a trough of cut-and-come-again salad, including some fast-growing Chinese leaves and rocket.  These will re-grow several times provided you don’t harvest them too hard.

Let me know how you get on.

Paul

Get a free Junior Wormery when you buy any 2 Wormeries!

I really can’t believe how quickly Christmas has launched itself upon us this year!

We’re running a Free Delivery promotion at the moment, which will run right up to Christmas and has been running since the end of November.  However, we’ve just launched a new, limited-time offer for those of you looking at our Wormeries.

For all customers who order any 2 Wormeries from www.originalorganics.co.uk we will now give you a Junior Wormery absolutely free.  So you could get 3 pressies for the price of 2.  Or, if you order 4 wormeries, you’ll get 2 FREE Junior Wormeries (and so on!).

Our Junior Wormery is absolutely excellent for kids to learn all about recycling, composting and gardening and it’s fascinating too.  It’s also a perfectly usable working Wormery (even though it’s on a smaller scale) so is suitable for single person use also.

3 Wormeries for the price of 2 and all of it delivered FREE?  Great value we think!

Have a look at our Wormeries now!

The Worm Works Capacity Error

Hello all!

A humble apology this afternoon for a rather embarrassing error we were alerted to earlier on today. We have for a little while been listing The Worm Works Wormery on our website with the incorrect capacity stated.

As soon as we were alerted we checked out the capacity for ourselves and immediately removed the offending text from our website. It is not in our nature to deliberately mislead customers and we are sorry this genuine error slipped through the net! We are currently trying to ascertain where the misleading information came from.

As an open and honest company we take very seriously our commitment to being 100% truthful with our customers and conducting our business in the most ethical manner possible. The dimensions shown on the website are correct, it is only the individual tray capacity that wasn’t. As surface area is more important then actual depth it makes little difference to the actual operation of the Wormery and The Worm Works, like our Original Wormery, remains completely suitable for the average food waste output of a family.

If anybody out there who has purchased The Worm Works from us prior to today is concerned, please feel free to email me directly – liam ( at ) originalorganics ( dot ) co ( dot ) uk.

Once again, my most sincere apologies for this error.

Liam Martin
Director

Why I support Gary!

A personal post this one, yes, but about a subject very close to my heart.  I am sure readers won’t mind me publicising my support!

Computer ‘hacker’ Gary McKinnon, who has Aspergers syndrome, is at serious risk of suicide, after the home secretary rejected a last-ditch attempt to prevent his extradition to the US.  Last week, Alan Johnson ordered McKinnon’s removal to the US on charges of breaching US military and NASA computers, despite claims by his lawyers that extradition would make the 43-year-old’s death “virtually certain”.

The secretary of state is of the firm view that McKinnon’s extradition would not be incompatible with his human  rights so his extradition to the USA must proceed forthwith.  Well I am of the utter conviction that the Secretary of state is wrong and morally bankrupt.

The decision, described by lawyers as “callous”, has prompted fresh fears about McKinnon’s well-being. Alan Johnsons  letter rejected new expert medical evidence that McKinnon’s health had deteriorated dramatically since losing his case in the high court in July, and meant that extradition would violate his right to life.

“Gary is at risk of suicide, I’m extremely worried about him,” said McKinnon’s mother, Janis Sharp.  ”This government is terrified of speaking up to America, and now they are allowing vulnerable people to be pursued for non-violent crime when they should be going after terrorists.”

Mckinnon’s lawyer, Karen Todner, said she planned to start a judicial review of the home secretary’s decision.  ”We cannot give up because in some ways it’s like dealing with a death row case, and we genuinely believe Gary’s life is at stake here,” she said.

So why do I Support Garry McKinnon? Why am I arguing with the appalling decision of the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson not to stop the extradition and why am I blogging about this rather than promoting Wormeries and recycling?

Is it because :-

- I, like many others believe that if he is to be tried, then he should stand trial here and face British justice.

- That releasing him to the mercy of a country that still executes juveniles and recently condoned and practised water boarding is abhorrent.

- He immediately confessed and didn’t realise he had done wrong.

- All he is guilty of is embarrassing the pentagon.

- That it is a vital and perhaps the first requirement of government that it protects its own citizens.

- That the USA should rather be harnessing his manifest talents, rather than prosecuting him.

- Aspergers syndrome is the  higher functioning end of the Autistic Spectrum Disorder and is a well known, serious, profound and lifelong condition.

- That as a compassionate country we should help our citizens rather than condemn them to a prison sentence on foreign soil

- That it is an embarrassment and disgrace that we inappropriately Kowtow to our American allies. Friends should be strong together, not in the others shadow.

- He is a very vulnerable man and with his family has already suffered quite unnecessarily and far too much.

- The computers that were hacked did not have adequate security in place. Anybody with a wireless connection has better protection.

- If the data was as important as US officials claim, then why was it not protected adequately?

- I am the father of a more severely Autistic son and have some insight into the nature of Autistic Spectrum Disorders.

- That Alan Johnson has an army of advisors and bureaucrats available to him but seems unable to understand the nature of Autism. A simple visit to www.nas.org.uk would resolve this!

- That it is far harder to extradite someone from the USA to Britain than visa versa – and this is simply wrong.

- I believe compassion, decency, understanding and the demands of natural justice outweigh any wish to win brownie points from  America.

Well yes it is each and every one of the above actually!  It appears to me that all Gary is guilty of is of being a high functioning autism ‘sufferer’ and something of a UFO ‘geek’.

If this rings any bells or touches any cords for you then please go here to sign the petition and to http://freegary.org.uk/ and follow Gary’s mum, Janis Sharp, on twitter.

Thank you for reading.

Clive Roberts (MD, Original Organics)

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter and WIN!

It’s good fun this ‘getting social’ at work.  Spending half my day on Facebook / Twitter / Blogs etc.. actually becomes totally legitimate .

For a little while now we’ve had a Facebook ‘page’, though we’ve not really done a lot with it until recently! However, a couple of weeks ago, we thought it would be worth jumping on the bandwagon and so we’ve joined the Twitter revolution too.  There’s so much going on out there.

This blog has been around for quite a bit longer but it would be fair to say we’ve certainly neglected it.  That’s my fault!  *Puts hands up* So, going forwards, we’re planning to keep it significantly better updated – and not for just a load of pushy sales stuff (although of course we’ll let you know right here about our excellent offers!) but also featuring interesting editorial, viewpoints and tips relating to all things gardening, composting, recycling, going green and more…

And as well as contributions from the team here, we’ll also be posting regular contributions from outside experts and contributors.  We don’t influence these external contributions at all – we just provide the platform for the content and hopefully it will give readers something far more interesting to look at when they come here.  If you’re interested in contributing – do get in touch!

We’ll be pushing updates from the Blog out through our facebook page and twitter feeds as well as right here.

You can WIN with Original Organics!

To celebrate all this, we have £100 to spend with Original Organics to give away… and we’ll be picking a follower at random on both Facebook and Twitter to win £50 each on January 4th 2010.  All you need to do is ‘follow’ us on Twitter or ‘Become a fan’ of us on Facebook to be in with a chance of winning.  We will put all the names in a hat (or maybe we’ll need a large ’sack’) and picking one from each site out at random.

NB.  Employees of Original Organics Ltd. and their families are excluded and their names won’t make it into the hat.  It will be possible to win twice if you follow us on both Facebook AND Twitter (though the chances of this happening are probably quite slim, right?)

Follow Original Organics Ltd. today!

Click here to visit our Twitter Page.

Click here to visit our Facebook Page.

Liam

To pee or not to pee: National Trust say “do it”!

Found this interesting piece on the Live for Gardening website earlier today.  The National Trust have installed a ‘pee bale’ alongside their Composters at Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire and the head gardner suggests male employees should relieve themselves here when the urge occurs.

The pee bale then gets added to the composter every now and then as an accelerator to speed the process up.

Urine has for a long time been master composters’ secret weapon – it really does work.  But if you’d rather not, have a look at some organic compost maker (accelerator) or Bokashi Bran instead!

Liam

All things green: A greener Christmas?

It’s four in the morning, the end of November. Not a cheery time to be lying awake worrying, but this morning I had good cause – I’ve realised Christmas is coming. This year at least my worries take an unusual and original form. My girlfriend and I have decided to boycott the whole thing, which means no presents, no family, no fancy meal, and hopefully no stress – just the two of us and the dog in the camper van somewhere in a wood in Norfolk. So why am I worrying? Because I can’t help feeling guilty that we’re not ‘playing along’ with the rest of the world!

Why our festive boycott, you may well ask. Well, mainly, it’s not exactly green is it? All the unwanted gifts shoved to the back of the cupboard, the packaging and transport of said gifts, the tonnes of wasted food and (call me scrooge if you will) those eye-wrenching, kilowatt-burning neon displays with which some people choose to adorn their homes! What’s more, far from being a happy family occasion, Christmas has become a time of emotional and financial stress for many of us. I would never suggest that an all-out ban is a good idea for everyone – this has the potential to be a very happy and rewarding time of year, particularly for kids. That said I do wish the public at large would stop and think before indulging themselves (and their egos) on the few shopping days they have left.

Before we ‘went the whole hog’, our household experimented with the idea of a green Christmas and it worked pretty well. The idea was that every aspect of the season be considered from an environmental perspective – in particular we were careful about the type and number of presents we bought each other.

We went so far as to prescribe four options for our seasonal generosity, which I present here for your consideration!

Option one – give the gift of time. Whether it be a couple of day’s labour on dad’s allotment, or just taking auntie for a Christmas walk, people will appreciate this kind of thoughtful effort every bit as much as they would an expensively-wrapped (but still generic) gift.

Option two – give a zero-carbon gift. This takes a little imagination, but can either take the form of a ‘real’ item (a fruit tree for the garden, credits for music or film downloads rather than a CD or DVD) or can involve a trip or excursion – perhaps a ticket to the theatre, with train fare included.

Option three – give something they need. If one of your family members is starting a new course, buy them something from the reading list. If they’re a keen gardener, offer to pay for next year’s seed order, and so on. It doesn’t take a genius to point out it’s better to receive something you really need, rather than something you would never buy for yourself.

Option four – make people think. An environmentally conscious gift (such as a wormery!) might be just the nudge some people need to make a few eco-friendly changes to their lifestyle. If friends and family are already pretty good at being green, they will value the sentiment (and the gift) all the more highly.

Paul Wagland

WaterButtsDirect Deal of the week

 

Big King Water Barrel

On special for the next week at WaterButtsDirect we have the excellent “Big King Robust Water Barrel”.  It’s one of our highest quality butts with a 280 litre capacity and it’s available this week with a stand, downpipe connector, Freshatank disc and watering can for only £99! The usual price for just the butt, stand and connector is over £100.

Check out our Deal of the week page to see this offer!

Enjoy!
Liam

All things green: Mushrooms!

Parasol Mushroom

Environmental issues are often so labeled with buzzwords and clichés that they become annoyingly over-familiar to the general public – I’ve noticed that the eyebrows of one or two of my friends have a habit of raising slightly when they hear the words ‘global warming’, for example.

That said, there are a few issues about which people seem to be disturbingly ignorant. Perhaps the most profound of these is peak oil – the fact that we are now (or soon will be) using up our oil reserves faster than we can discover new ones. This probably means the end of cheap energy and it has far reaching effects on every aspect of our lives. It’s not the end of the World say some (and they’re right), but it is (and you can sing this bit) the end of the World as we know it.

Here in Britain we’re uniquely well-placed to adapt to the challenges – we have unparalleled resources when it comes to alternative energy; we have a well-educated population with a history of resilience, adaptation and invention; we even have the ideal climate for growing food. What we need to develop is some kind of public will to see the changes through – a Blitz mentality if you like, and I really don’t think the comparison is over-egging the pudding. I don’t think such a thing will happen spontaneously, unless a very significant event takes place – something on the scale of Norfolk disappearing under water. So what we all need to do is to start putting into effect small changes, manageable steps and positive, sustainable solutions. As these become familiar we will move further and further away from the oil economy and ‘business as usual’, and we’ll develop a resilient society where quality of life is a more important measure of our success than gross domestic product.

I’d like to invite you all to think about small changes you can make to your lifestyle with this in mind. Can you walk to a local baker in the morning, rather than shopping at a supermarket out of town? You’ll get better bread from a local source, and the exercise is no bad thing. Or perhaps you can think of new uses for old things, rather than throwing them away?

On a similar note, in one of Joy’s posts to this blog last year she mentions the Turtle Bag and how versatile it is. She even asks readers to suggest alternative uses, and I have to say I think I have a pretty good one. Each morning, at about seven o’clock, I go out onto a little local nature reserve with my dog, Stig. Obviously this is primarily for Stig’s benefit, but this year I have been taking the opportunity to learn a bit about mushrooms. I’m now at the stage where I can confidently ID several tasty varieties and bring them home for breakfast. While it’s easy enough to stick my harvest into a normal bag as I pick them, I’ve always thought it slightly wasteful of all the spores the mushrooms release as they jiggle and shake all the way home. If only I had some kind of mesh bag, I could be releasing those spores all over the grass, ensuring good foraging for future seasons… you see where I’m going?

So there you are; an example of how easy it is to provide something for yourself (and a few parasol mushrooms are well worth the effort, believe me), and also to find a new and practical use for an existing resource.

Paul Wagland

Hi there! I’m Paul Wagland.

Hello folks, and thanks for reading my first post on the Original Organics blog.

Liam offered me the chance to share my thoughts on ‘all things green’ and of course I jumped at the chance.  Starting a blog is a bit like a new job, or maybe even your first day at school; a bit scary perhaps, but exciting too – and full of unexplored potential.

That’s how I feel about the big environmental issues that currently face us.  We know there are changes ahead of us, we’re not quite sure how it’ll all turn out and, increasingly, we know we have to do something right now to get ourselves on track.  We may have access to the resources (there’s plenty on display within these pages) but of course it takes more than that – we also need the will to succeed, a positive attitude and some common sense.  Just coming to a site like this shows you have the right qualities, so well done you for having the sense to realise something needs to be done and not for waiting until someone else tells you so!

I’ll be posting every couple of weeks, bringing you positive ideas and encouragement, but I hope also you’ll be adding your own energy, advice and thoughts as we go.

Paul Wagland

WaterButtsDirect Deal of the Week

This week’s Deal of the Week on WaterButtsDirect, the home of waterbutts, is the Garden Lake Waterbutt Kit, complete with Stand and Downpipe Connection Kit and with an excellent FreshaTank disc and Watering Can all for the excellent price of £47.00!  A saving of over 25% from the individual item prices.

Garden Lake Waterbutt

You can check out this offer over at WaterButtsDirect.

Cheerio,
Liam

New Wormeries page

Afternoon folks,

I just thought I’d post a quick Blog to say that we’ve just changed what is probably the most important page of our website – the Wormery page – hopefully for the better!

The Wormeries page is by far the most visited page of the Original Organics website and is the page which visitors land on from search results and our online ads, so it’s very important that it is effective.  It is our primary chance to show off our excellent products, convey to visitors that we’re good people to do business with – and hopefully convert them into paying customers and Wormery owners!

The old version of the page, whilst quite informative, was very long and didn’t make it easy to compare the available options.  The aim of this exercise was to tidy it up, make the page less cluttered and easier to use – but still provide visitors with the information they’re looking for.

I’ll be monitoring how it compares to the old page very closely over the coming weeks and will undoubtedly be making the odd tweak here and there to make it even easier to use.  But I’m sure you’ll agree it is quite an improvement.

Oh… and here’s how the wormeries page looked nearly 4 years ago!

If you have any comments, as ever, please do let us know!

Liam