Ever get a pang of the green eyed monster when you then of the services and variety that is on offer in the States?  Normally not buy into the convenient, disposable lifetyle that seems to dominate US life, but I have to admit that sometimes get it very right.

A perfect example of that is the genius, innovative  company namely, thredUP.  threUp is a new online kids clothing exchange which allows America’s busiest and greenest families to conveniently exchange kids clothing online. (more…)

I’m not sure if it was the sudden and dramatic change in the weather, but this week our house is full of sniffles, sneezing and aches and pains.  This includes my two and a half year old daughter Myah who seems to wait to go to a supermarket (or somewhere similarly public) to announce ‘Mummy, look I’ve a snotty nose’.   I’m finding it all very stressful, as unlike other multi tasking parents I know, I am not the well organised mother I should be and have found myself on several occasions routing around my pockets and sleeves to find not even a morsel of tissue, used or otherwise). (more…)

As the economy gradually recovers from the past year’s big slump, changes are expected in consumer behavior: according to a recent survey, in 2010 UK and American shoppers are to pay much more attention to transparency and ethical responsibility in their food and beverage purchases.

A survey by market research organization Mintel reveals that, despite a widespread growing confidence and adaptation to overcome the previous restraints, consumers will be adapting to the new economy, moving away from excessive spending toward moderation and higher attention to ethical sourcing and sustainability. (more…)

Hosting any dinner party can be a daunting task, not to mind say the big Christmas Dinner, so to help you relieve some of the stress, GreenMe have put together a guide that will help you make your party eco-friendlytable.

• He′s making a list, he′s checking it twice! Given the festive season we′re in, making a list is very good advice indeed.  Making a list of the food you will need for your Christmas dinner is an absolute must if you are to avoid copious waste.  More often than not, we tend to over buy for this day, by a mile!! Keep an eye out for how many you are having for dinner, and how many will still be around for leftovers!!
• Avoid paper napkins, they are a real waste and only add to an already enormous landfill that the holiday period creates. Use cloth napkins and make sure you wait for a full laundry load before you wash them!

(more…)

It never fails to amaze me that no matter how good my intentions, I still spend the last 4 weekends in the lead up to Christmas on the batter.  Whether it′s work related, partner related or family and friend related there always seem to be a plethora of dinners, parties or shindigs to attend. (more…)

Guide to Wall Insulation

Up to half of the heat loss from a house occurs through the walls. This can be reduced by two-thirds by insulating the walls.

Most houses built before about 1980 have no wall insulation. Many (though not all) houses built during the 1980s have some wall insulation. Houses built since the 1991 Building Regulations came into effect are required to have wall insulation.

Insulation may be placed on the outside, in the cavity or on the inside of a wall, without altering the overall insulation properties.

When considering wall insulation, first you should find out whether your house has cavity walls or solid walls. A  building contractor, BER Assessor or architect will be able to tell you if you have cavity walls in your new or older house.

Cavity wall insulation

The walls of many houses consist of two ‘leaves’ of brick or concrete block with a cavity or space between them to resist rain penetration.

In older houses insulation can be injected into this cavity through holes drilled through the outer leaf, by means of a blowing or pumping machine.

Since the work is done from outside, it cause minimum disturbances inside. The drilled holes, which are typically about 25mm (1 inch) in diameter and spaced a metre or so apart, are then filled to match the wall appearance as closely as possible. The job typically takes less than a day.

In relation to the pumping of your walls with a bonded bead system you would noticeably improve the overall thermal properties of your house and in turn reduce your energy bills for the winter months.

Suitability of Cavity Insulation

It is important before deciding to insulate existing cavity walls that you check their suitability for cavity insulation. This assessment will take account of the degree of exposure of the house to wind-driven rain and the construction details and condition of the walls. Any ventilation openings in the wall will also be checked to ensure that these will not be blocked by the insulation.

There are a number of issues you should be aware when filling your wall’s cavity:

If there were any frost or structural damage to any of the house’s external walls pumping of beads into the cavity would not be advised.

The width of the cavity between your external wall leaf and the installed aero-board should be at least 50mm.
 

If there is any problem with dampness in the internal leaf it would not be recommended to add the beads to the cavity as they would only increase the path for water to travel into the wall.

If the wall suffers from rain penetration at times, this problem must be remedied first.

In some cases, the walls may be found to be unsuitable for cavity insulation or may require some remedial work beforehand.

Savings

The cost of cavity wall insulation depends on a number of factors, including the width of the cavity, but it is typically in the region of €5 to €7 per square metre. For a typical semi-detached house, this gives a total cost of about €550-€700. With annual fuel savings of €200 to €320, the payback period will be in the region of 4 to 7 years.

You may be able to negotiate a lower price if you can persuade some of your neighbours to have their walls insulated at the same time.

Eco-Living, Eco-Loving!  Would you like to live without a mortgage or an electricity bill? Last weekend’s Eco-Living Festival in Drumnsa, Co. Leitrim showed you how.  The event was hosted and organized by Permaculture Ireland; permaculture, according to Wikipedia, “is an approach to designing human settlements and perennial agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in the natural ecologies…The intent is that, by rapidly training individuals in a core set of design principles, those individuals can design their own environments and build increasingly self-sufficient human settlements — ones that reduce society’s reliance on industrial systems of production and distribution.”  And the hosts of the event are living proof that the principles work – even in boggy “bad” Leitrim land.

Sian demonstrates mulching

Sian Cowman demonstrated the virtues (and taste!) of permaculture food: growing your own in a non-dig garden. Non-dig is great because it doesn’t disturb the crucial earthworms underneath and also, unlike in conventional farming, the precious topsoil doesn’t dry out and blow away.  Digging also releases CO2, and requires a lot of energy, human, animal, or machine.  In contrast, permaculture is all about mulch: take a 6-foot patch, and in September simply cut the grass and weeds in the area that you plan to plant, leave the cuttings in place, cover this with wet cardboard, cover that with straw and leave it sit until spring, when planting is easy and the soil is rich, and plants and herbs just love it.  There are far too many good ideas to mention here, but you can get more info at permacultureireland – it’s both the newest and the oldest way of living on the earth.

Permaculture shelter is embodied in Peter Cowman’s amazing is home: a 25 metre squared “econospace,” built by himself and friends for only €7,000, where he and his family live on their own wind-generated electricity.  No mortgage, no car, no connection to the grid: this family walk the green walk all the way to their outdoor bathtub, where they build a fire underneath and bathe under the stars! Check out Peter’s website for more information about courses and shelter-building.  Without a mortgage and a food bill, how would your life change?

The signs of change are everywhere: not just in the economy, but also in the enormous wave of new ventures that are using cutting-edge technology, sustainable objectives and social consciousness to create a new paradigm of private enterprise for the common good.  Umair Haque, the Harvard economist, eloquently describes the collapse of the “Zombieconomy” and what he calls Capitalism 1.0 evolving into Capitalism 2.0, or constructive capitalism.  He also talks about old business models that produced good incomes and bad outcomes giving way to an “institutional revolution,” coming up from the grass-roots of society and changing the world as we know it.

In fact, once you start looking, the amount of organisations and companies trying to do the right thing for people, nature and the planet is simply overwhelming and far more than I could ever fit into one blog post.  So I’ve divided them into three categories: digital, physical and consumable.

Today I’m listing my top 10 in the digital category: ways in which with simply a click you can change the world for the better. (with thanks to Mashable)

Digital Actions for good:

1. Change your iGoogle theme to help the hungry

2. Every time you use Windows Live™ Messenger or Windows Live Hotmail®, our free webmail service, they’ll share a portion of their advertising revenue with the cause you choose from among their partner social cause organizations

3. Teach your Granny to Text: The big book of small actions to change the world is out now.  Written by children, for children, it’s a technicolour ‘how to’ for doing things.  And changing things. How can you change the world?  We Are What We Do is a new kind of movement inspiring people to change the world one small action at a time.  Their philosophy is simple: small actions x lots of people = big change.  They have the 130 small things that you can do to change really big things. Pick an action, track it here, and see how it all adds up.

4. Seventy-one ways to give without opening your wallet: mostly tweeted ideas, very brief and some very good

5.  Good is – the magazine.  Subscribe and 100% of the fee supports a social action project

6. Changing the Present -  Like Bothar but even more gift ideas: roof tiles, tutoring for deaf children, books, tetanus injections, and more.

7. The Case Foundation – another giving website, but this has suggestions of things you can do as well as donations or gifts that benefit those in need.

8. World Concern – More giving again, but they also do HIV/AIDS prevention in Africa, water wells, orphans, education and help prevent child trafficking.

9. Good.ly For all you eco-bloggers, a url shortener that donates to charity for every address you shorten.  Most Irish charities aren’t signed up yet, but using it creates the potential demand so try it out.

10. Blackle is a black version of Google that consumes less wattage. Apparently, it takes 74 watts to power a white screen, but only 59 watts for a dark screen. The site aims to “save energy, one search at a time.” You can also follow it on Twitter for more simple energy-saving ideas.

Next time, I’ll list my favourite sites for consumable actions for good – or, to put it another way – Shopping!!!  And please let me know of your favourites too so we can spread the word…

What’s a green building?  One covered in solar panels and bristling with turbines?  One that proclaims its greenness by looking different?  One that costs 15% more than a ‘conventional’ building?

For British architect Howard Liddell, the answer is none of the above.

At a one-day symposium on sustainability in TCD recently, Liddell outlined his ideal green building: it looks conventional, costs no more to build, but is so well insulated and airtight that there is almost no need for heating, and certainly no need for what he calls “eco-bling”.

The main problem, as he sees it, is that technologies are an expensive add-on with a long payback time.  The sensible and cost-effective route to a green and eco-building is effective insulation.

Unfortunately, eco-bling is flavour of the month, and Liddell was particularly critical of new building regulations in some British local authorities that now require a minimum 10% of on-site renewable technologies — expensive and ineffective wind turbines on top of buildings, when they should be on remote, windy sites.

In an inspiring presentation, Liddell,  principal architect with the British-based Gaia Group, argued that we need to make insulation sexy. “Eco-minimalism, not eco-bling.”

Effective insulation alone, he said, could halve the energy demand, and significantly reduce fuel poverty.

The main challenge, in Ireland as in Britain, will be to retro-fit a high standard of insulation to existing buildings. What’s more, each building will need an individual solution.

And you can’t just fill cavity walls with foam, he argues: those walls were designed to breathe so, if you block them up, you simply create a moisture problem on the inside.

Likewise, it is not enough to seal every crack with gunge.  For a start, the gunge will crack, so you won’t get an airtight seal. And again, you have to worry about moisture buffering.

Other issues that he identified are: effective testing of a building’s air tightness; and indoor air quality in an airtight building (especially moisture content, and off-gassing from materials and furniture), making choice of materials essential.

To be truly ‘green’, he recommended using sheep’s wool insulation, as he felt there were issues with the chemicals used to treat insulation made from recycled newspaper.

In a wide ranging and fascinating talk, Liddell also recommended: mass-timber construction (not just beautiful to work with, but also good for sequestering carbon dioxide); ‘nail-free building’ (securing well designed, well fitting pieces with just a few screws), which doesn’t damage the wood and makes repairs and alterations, and recycling much easier; and low-flush toilets that use less than 2 litres of water — already achieved on aircraft toilets.

If Liddell is right, and every building leaves a customised solution, then on the plus side this would be a major job creation project architects, and the insulation and construction industries.

For more on Howard Liddell’s eco-minimalist architecture, check out his new book here.

Mary Mulvihill’s new guide to easy, sustainable living is Drive Like a Woman, Shop Like a Man (2009).  Click here to suggest a tip, and be in with a chance to win a copy of the book.

(c) Mary Mulvihill 2009  http://marymulvihill.net/

I came accross the following year planner on the Roscommon Coco site.  It’s a great little reminder for what you need to be doing for your compost at certain times through out the year.

SPRING:
•    Empty the compost bin
•    Spread finished compost on the lawn or garden
•    Keep any fallen leaves or woody material to add to the compost bin over the summer

SUMMER:
•    Cover kitchen waste with leaves, peat moss or soil
•    Poke or stir the compost regularly

AUTUMN:
•    Harvest the finished compost
•    Empty the compost bin
•    Set some leaves aside to add over the winter
•    Start a separate collection for leaf and yard waste

WINTER:
•    Keep using the compost bin regularly
•    Add leaves after each addition of kitchen scraps