Category: Eco Friendly

Preparing for Winter!

15/9/2017

On these isles where winters are long, dark and storms roll into one another, the security of having a multi fuel stove brings so much peace of mind - providing you have enough fuel to keep the flames dancing throughout the darkest hours.

As the blood line to the island is the ferry service, which relies on good weather, it is pretty important to order and have delivered firewood and coal whilst the ferries operate consistently. Also, there is nothing worse than humping and dumping tonnes of coal and peat around during the wild Orkney weather.

So, we have had our coal delivery already, along with an unexpected tonne of peat. Our shipping container is bulging at the sides with sacks of coal and peat, along with the remnants of last years wood delivery and pallets waiting to be chopped into splinter thin cocktail sticks to get the fire roaring.

As there are very few trees on our island, scurrying around scavenging fallen branches is not really an option. Driftwood washed up on the beaches is always a welcome find whilst out beachcombing, but, thankfully shipwrecks these days are few and far between. Long gone are the days when locals would entice ships and fishing vessels onto craggy rocks with touches in the hope of causing a wreck! Broken shipping pallets which have been well dried out do make good kindling, although nails in the ash pan need to be removed prior to the ash added to the compost heap.

One thing that we do have an abundance of here on the isle is seaweed, and I am most interested in making seaweed briquettes to burn on the multi fuel stove. If successful, then this could well be a very cost effective and very green source of renewable heating!

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LIFE WITHOUT THE FRIDGE

12/8/2016

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We had a moment of revelation on a perfectly normal Tuesday lunchtime. There was nothing special about this particular Tuesday, nor anything amazing about the lunch that we had. But, as I was putting a bottle of tomato sauce back into the fridge, I noticed the light bulb flicker on in this cold cupboard. This in turn sparked a flash of an idea as I had a light bulb moment.

Why was I putting tomato sauce in the fridge? Because it said I should on the packaging. Now surely tomato sauce was created by the Italians to preserve tomatoes long before the refrigerator, hence the reason it is ladened with salt and vinegar.

I delved my head deeper into the icy abyss and pulled out a few jars, none of which needed to be in there, and also found some food that should have been eaten several days prior. Why were we using electricity to cool things in a cupboard that didn’t need to be kept cool?

We, as a couple and as consumers, have been convinced that we NEED to keep these condiments in the fridge, we have also been conditioned that we need a fridge! I questioned where my logic was leading me, I even thought that my thought was barmy!

What if. . . What if I turned the fridge off? Would our world come crashing down around us? Would we be social rejects for not powering a fridge that we don’t use? I pushed the switch. It was off. And it has stayed off for the past two years!

Our nans had pantries, cool cupboards where they kept their food and would not dream of paying good hard cash for electricity to keep it cold. They had developed natural methods of keeping food fresh, be it buying smaller quantities more frequently, preserving it by methods of pickling, drying, smoking or using a dampened clay flower pot to wick away the warmth from an item.

This fridge incident caused us to question so many aspects of our lives. It caused us to look at the things that surround us as really question if we need it. In many cases, we don’t. Items are marketed to us in such a way that the companies create an artificial need, that we “must have” or we will be outcasts of society.

Learn more about our journey here.

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our new eco toothbrushes

10/8/2016

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One of the points in our mission statement is that we want to be as eco friendly and as environmentally sound as we can be. We have therefore looked at many of our everyday items and reevaluated what we need, and what alternatives we have available to us.

We think that the less we send to the landfill the better and identified plastic as being our number one enemy. In an attempt to purge ourselves from this man-made material which takes anywhere between 450 and 1000 years to decompose we noticed that the one plastic thing we can’t do away with is a toothbrush. As my dentist is always reminding me, I should change my toothbrush every three months - that is over 300 toothbrushes that I would expect to send to the landfill in my lifetime!

So what are the options? Short of not brushing our teeth, we needed to find a toothbrush that was 100% natural and disposable in a suitable way. After a little looking and researching we finally chose an environmental bamboo toothbrush. It is fully biodegradable, quickly renewable and costs about the same that a plastic toothbrush does! And it comes in a biodegradable packaging too!

Everyone's a winner!

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Preparing for Winter!

LIFE WITHOUT THE FRIDGE

our new eco toothbrushes

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