Hippy Girl Blog

Energy saving for the future

admin — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 16:03:09 +0000

Saving energy, looking after the world we live in and building a greener future are all things that have become popular subjects in the mass media, and consequently have become trendy for many people. I think that this is all well and good, and I would never suggest that it was not a move in the right direction, however, it seems as if people’s care of such environmental issues only goes so far.

The general person on the street may now be recycling more and watching how much water they use or how many journeys they make in the car, but there is so much more that could be done by so many people, if only they actually had real passion about making permanent lifestyle changes and making a bigger difference. Freetricity is just one example of how we can change the way we run our homes to become more environmentally friendly, for a longer term solution. If you are unsure of what products are right for you, then there are plenty of freetricity reviews available to read for help and advice. There are many other things that can be done, such as making changes to water usage by collecting rain water from every house in the country. Imagine how much fresh water could be collected and used for toilet flushing and gardening etc if everyone installed a water storage tank into their guttering systems.

Any changes towards a more environmentally friendly lifestyle has got to be a positive thing, but for those who care more about the future of the planet, should be actively seeking out ways to cut down their impact and then promote this to others in their circle of friends and family. It does not take much for people to listen to what you have been doing in your home and realize that it is a great idea for them too. Word of mouth is very powerful when it comes to teaching people about important things.

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Recycled can ash trays

admin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:03:04 +0000

If you enjoy drinking a can of fizzy drink every now and then and also try to recycle as much as possible, you may be interested to know that there is a great way of using old cans to make fun and useful ash trays. If you are not a smoker then they can be used for many other reasons such as a change pot, key holder, or a table decoration. They can be given to friends, given out as presents or even sold at markets or craft fairs. It is a really great way to recycle waste into useable objects, and it is simple to do. You could even sell these useful items on eBy or Etsy, and you won’t have to worry about Enigin Scam Busters flaggin up your product, as they are 100% recycled!

It is always advisable for adults to supervise children in such activities to ensure safety.

Collect your old Coca Cola, Pepsi or any other fizzy drink can and rinse it out with cold water.
Cut the top section off of the can using a sharp pair of scissors or a knife. This should be done just below the rim, where the can straightens out.
Discard of the top section of the can that has been cut off.
Cut down the length of the can from the top to the bottom to just before it meets the bottom rim.
Repeat this step, cutting the can into segments of around 1 inch thick all the way around.
Next fan out those segments so that they are all at 90 degrees to the base of the can. They should all be about equal widths.
Choose one segment to start off on. Fold it over to the left hand side so that it sits on top of the one next to it. The fold should be right at the base of the segment, leaving no space underneath.
Now fold the segment back underneath the one to the left of it so that it wraps back on itself neatly.
Now repeat the last two steps for each segment moving around from your start point until you are back at the beginning.
You should be left with a smart looking ash tray that is similar in shape to the head of a flower.

The finished result is a great ash tray that will be a real talking point for anyone that sees it. It is a great feeling to turn trash into useable objects and this is just one way of doing that. There are many other similar projects that can be done in order to recycle goods and it can even make you a little bit of extra cash along the way.

Dreaming of a green Christmas

admin — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:03:28 +0000

Christmas is one of my favourite times of the year. Lots of excuses to get dressed up in the gorgeous fair trade dresses I bought online with my birthday money; plenty of chocolates and delicious puddings and no reason not to eat them; and best of all, snow! Well, we don’t always get snow at Christmas, but the only good thing about climate change is that our winters have got a little more extreme in recent years, making the prospect of a white Christmas just a teensy bit more likely….

Unfortunately, Christmas is also a very wasteful time and there’s nothing that gets me on my high horse more than people being wasteful. Every Christmas morning I have to bite my tongue and not deliver the recycling lecture I’ve been preparing all year! My old-fashioned uncle, who works doing the finest plastering Oxshott has to offer, always finds my hippy lectures amusing. Not quite the effect I was aiming for, but at least he listens. I’ve learned over the years that people are not at their most receptive to new ideas first thing on Christmas morning. The kids are too busy screaming and running round and round the house waving their new toys in the air; Mum and Granny are arguing over how long the Turkey needs to be in the oven; and Dad has already got his beady eyes on the cans of lager chilling in the fridge.

Besides, I can always volunteer to do the tidying up – an offer that is never refused – and sort glossy from matt as I go along! This may sound tragic, but one year when I got roped into helping in the kitchen rather than dealing with the world paper mountain in our front room, I actually sneaked downstairs after everyone had gone to bed and grabbed as much of the paper as I could out of the bin! At least, all the wrapping paper that hadn’t ended up soaked in turkey juices…

Complicated life- why a bad thing?

admin — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:33:13 +0000

My friends often complain about the fact that life has become very complicated. I find it very amusing when a person employed as a data quality management department head complains about complications in life. Had life not being complicated, she would have never been employed in the 1st place. Had we lived a simple life, we would have never faced the requirement of managing quality of data. It is obvious that we would have never bothered with such complicated systems. However, we have done so and that is the reason why hundreds and thousands of individuals are employed.

When I make such an argument, my friends criticize me for oversimplifying the issue. They say that complications in life cannot be justified by pointing out that it helps employing lots of people. Well, what is the point of having a society with a large number of persons unemployed just because life is simple? With such a life be a happy one? We are seeing the consequences of suppression of masses in various African countries.
When people are unemployed, they are obviously going to protest and this will affect the stability of the social order. It is easy to criticize the system when you are enjoying yourself and have a steady job and lots of money in your pocket. However, when you find yourself without money or stability in life, you will automatically criticize the system for not taking care of you. When that happens, you will not be bothered with simplicity in life.

You will be focused on filling your stomach and caring for your family members. In my opinion, it is advisable to accept that we like the system the way it is but we just want more and more for our selves. I find this to be a very immature approach and believe that we must try to adopt a balanced view where we focus on the pros and cons of different realities in life.

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Organic vs. Non Organic

admin — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 15:03:42 +0000

The basic idea of having organic food is to have it the way the nature originally intended to serve it. Any modification in the way the food grows would make it less than organic, and therefore less healthy. You might try to keep a check on your diet by eating all the healthy food like green vegetables, fruits, drinking milk etc. But have you ever thought that what you have on your dining table and looks full of health might actually not be healthy. It could have been sprayed with chemicals. Many times even after you wash them you will not be able to take off the chemicals, especially from vegetables like tomato which would absorb the chemical due to its thin skin. And now think about the cows which eat fodder that has been sprayed with chemicals, what kind of milk do you think these cows produce? You could be drinking milk, which is meant to be healthy, but is it really healthy? The kind of food that we eat has a direct impact on our growth. The more we eat food that is served just the way the nature intended to serve it in the first place, the closer we get to a healthy life.

One day as I was at the Diesel Wakefield centre, getting my car fixed, I saw another customer carrying a transparent plastic bag and in it was a pack of organic mushroom and organic skimmed milk. Anything organic is slightly costly, so I wondered if she has spent extra money to buy organic why not rather buy organic whole milk. But no, that would have natural fat in it, which would help in weight gain. But the point is that’s how nature intended it to be and nothing can be healthier than that. Skimmed milk is also nutritious, but it cannot be as healthy as the organic whole milk.

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The Only Way Forward

admin — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:03:09 +0000

Gas central heating was the way forward. Gas was cheap, it burned cleanly, and it made our homes nice and toasty. The problem these days is that the price of natural gas sky rocketed and we are all held hostage to the big energy suppliers. What is a honest hippy girl to do? A lot of people I know have installed wood burners in their homes and have sourced local supplies of waste logs from tree surgeons and the like. They continue to keep their gas central heating systems and put them on timers so they can get a little bit of warmth to wake up to. One option that entails some initial investment, but is a long term sustainable solution is to buy bio diesel fuel and heat your home with it. This would mean putting in a diesel based home heating system. These are not that popular in the United Kingdom, but in the long run, they can offer options for home owners to create zero carbon homes.Bio diesel has certainly grown up from the days when me and my friends went to the local chippy, got their waste oil, filtered it and poured it directly into the tank of our camper van. Bio fuels are big business. You want to make sure that you find an ethical supplier that produces bio fuels from as much waste material as possible and that they are 100% renewable. The next step is finding a good used aga to install in the kitchen.

Green Office

admin — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:03:21 +0000

When you turn on the TV, listen to the radio, or get online you will be bombarded with the phrase “go green”. Because of global warming there has been an increased concern about the sustainability of our planet. Entire industries are being targeted for ignoring the warning signs of the environment. No matter if your company is London builders or a paper mill, to truly be a 21st century business one has to be on top of environmental issues. It doesn’t mean you have to invest thousands of dollars into going green, it just requires you to do a few things.

It may just take one person to cause an organization to start on the green path. Every small change is a big change. The following ideas are meant to help you and your business become green:

In the Office:

1. The copiers and printers should be on settings that make double sided copies.

2. Remove the desktop printers and use larger copiers or printers for more efficiency.

3. Reports should be distributed digitally.

4. Don’t use a separate fax cover sheet, use sticky notes.

5. Think twice about how you format a document, if a document is barely four pages make it three by widening the margins and changing the font.

6. Post one copy of any general memos and put on a board for everyone to see instead of printing out several other copies.

7. Make sure that there are recycle bins next to every garbage can.

For the building itself:

1. Put in low-flow toilets to help reduce the consumption of water.

2. With a fluorescent light that has multi-bulbs take out one of the bulbs. The room will still be bright but the electric bill will be reduced.

3. Recycle any unwanted furniture in the office.

4. Water the plants at night to help reduce water loss from evaporation.

These are just a few ways you can help your business become green. It all starts with you!

Low Carbon Transportation

admin — Thu, 26 May 2011 11:33:06 +0000

I was so depressed with the new report on train travel in the UK, it basically said that the government shouldn’t be subsidising it because it is only used by a small percentage of the population (I believe the figure was twelve percent). I thought these people were supposed to be smarter than the rest of us as they were all Oxbridge educated. I am not, but I know clearly that one of the reasons that poor people don’t use the trains is that they are so darned expensive. If you raise the prices that will make them even less affordable for the masses. Train travel is the ultimate low carbon alternative to car driving, when it is cheaper to take your own vehicle, you are actually encouraging people to destroy the environment with economic incentives. Cannot the government figure into the budget the cost to the environment of expensive rail travel? What about traffic congestion? Shouldn’t they figure in the value of having less congested motorways into the savings for rail travel? It is so last century to make economic projections that don’t take into account the environmental and social costs to policies. It is this thinking that has caused corporations to profit from destroying the rain forest that acts as the lungs for the planet earth. The company makes the profit, but does not need to deal with the economic impacts of the global environmental devastation. It is not as simple as taking out military insurance if you are going to go to war, you need to think systematically.

Foraging and Friends

admin — Tue, 03 May 2011 10:33:06 +0000

It seems that the big question these days is how to have a cool, ethical job, where you don’t have to work too hard, can help save the planet, and make money too. I was just in Bristol visiting some friends and the council in the face of cuts, still maintains a great play scheme with play workers sent out to parks and green spaces to work with local kids of every age. My friend, who was a newly qualified teacher and looking for Special Needs Teaching Jobs, got a great part time appointment at the woodland. Many people who do her job just replicate the old ways, giving the kids balls, and encouraging them to play footy and such.My mate, however, takes the kids on wild foraging adventures through the woodlands. She sets up different types of treasure hunts and races.The races are brilliant in that they help the kids burn off energy, get them engages in this naturally competitive way, but they also make the kids engage in a direct and relevant way with nature.Last week she did this great wild garlic race where the kids had to race to the beds, pick one leaf at a time, pass it off to the next person who had to tear it into bits and then the next one set off again. It may sound simple or stupid, but these were kids from a housing estate close to the woodland who didn’t use it at all, getting everybody into nature is brilliant.

Yoga your way to a yummy body

admin — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 10:25:24 +0000

I’ve always been a bog fan of yoga, whether the common Ashtanga variety that appears in celebrity fitness DVDs or the trickier Hatha yoga, which not only requires more dedication, but is also as much about meditation and relaxation as it is about getting fit! I try to mix it up a bit in my weekly routine – a bit of Ashtanga to work off all those skips full of chocolate biscuits that I eat just to get me through a shift at work, coupled with some Hatha sessions to keep me nicely centred and calm.
I know a lot of people are sceptical about the relaxing qualities of yoga; I think they’re suspicious that when meditation and mental disciplines are mentioned, we’re trying to get them involved in a cult! You can take whatever you want out of a yoga session, really. Even if you come along approaching it as a pure and simple exercise class, I guarantee you’ll leave with a sense of calm and happiness – as well as feeling like you’ve had a really good workout.
In fact, you should choose your yoga venue carefully, depending on what you hope to get out of a class. If you want to use yoga’s magnificent toning abilities to shape up then find a local gym that offers classes; if you, like me, are more interested in the mental and spiritual side of the sessions, then find a local Buddhist centre which will offer yoga classes that focus more on your mind than your body. I find that I can’t start the day without going through my “Salutes to the Sun”. It helps to wake me up, body and mind; and I’m fairly sure I’ve lost some weight doing it too!