UK Dumping its e-waste on Africa???

Taken from http://www.recycle.co.uk/:

"Recent evidence indicates that large amount of e-waste, which is the term for obsolete or broken down electronic equipment, is being taken from the United Kingdom and dumped in countries all over Africa. Ghana and Nigeria are two countries in particular that have reported large amounts of e-waste being shipped illegally from the United Kingdom. The government of the UK says that the surging amounts of waste make it extremely difficult to regulate, and that many businesses think that they are dealing with legitimate waste disposal companies."

You can read the full article here.

Just posted today:

"Environmental watchdogs have halted an illegal shipment of waste headed for West Africa. Leaving from Scotland, the Environmental Agency managed to halt the shipment of thousands of old televisions and tyres that were being illegally sent to Western Africa. According to the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) its inspectors were able to stop four containers from being shipped to Nigeria and Ghana after a tip-off was received."

You can read the full article here.

Is this really what the world has come to, dumping its waste on other countries....countries who have enough poverty and suffering without having this! I have never heard of this before and had no idea that it was going on, I do have to admit that I have been naive enough to not ever question what really happens to e-waste before, I think I've just always presumed that we recycled what we could???? It saddens me to think that we care so less for our world to treat it like a huge rubbish dump.

I promise....

....we haven't forgotten about you all out there. Things have been p-r-e-t-t-y busy for both me and Rachel lately. Rachel, as its been the summer holidays for her two boys and me for all reasons linked to my little area of craftiness.

We have a list of topics that we will be writing about soon so I hope you're hanging in there.

Something that I tried this year that I haven't before was venturing out to the garden centres to pick up some vegetable plants. A) to save some money and B) the fact that I would def not be spraying all sorts of horrible things on them.

We bought tomatoes, peppers, strawberries and lots of herbs. I thought I'd start out quite small as I'm not the most green fingered person it has to be said. The tomatoes have grown in droves which is great because I LOVE cherry tomatoes as so did the strawberries which have all gone now for this year but they certainly were tasty. The pepper plant sadly I have to say was not a success.....we'll there was bound to be a casualty. I have come to the conclusion that the snails ate it as I never caught them at the crime. They started with the one and only pepper then finished off all the leaves too. If it survives I will be taking it into the house to see how it grows.

Normally our garden is kept quite neat and tidy but due to lack of time of late it has become quite overgrown and 'natural' ;) which has been great as we've had lots of birds visiting, happily munching on the stale bread and bird feeders that we've put up. The hedgehogs are back again, much to my delight, the second the security light pops on in the back garden I know shes there. We even have a birds nest in the tree at the bottom of the garden which I stumbled upon whilst picking blackberries. I was quite surprised how big the blackberry bush had grown at the bottom of the garden, in past years I've kept cutting it right back to keep it tidy but this year I've let it grow. I have picked so many tubs this year, I've frozen some and given lots away to friends and family. And I nearly fell over when I saw in Tesco's they were selling them for £3 a punnet and not a very big one at that!!

Next year I'd love to try growing my own potatoes in bags there are lots of places that sell these and some great tutorials on Youtube.

Do you grow your own veg or do you have any tips or advice for anyone wanting to try it? I'm still a novice at it all and would love to know how you keep those pesky snails at bay. We'd love to hear what you've been up to this summer.....and any 'green' activities you've been keeping up.

Great repurposing idea

Hi, Rachel here. Just popping in very quickly today to share a link with you (I've been hit by a horrid summer cold and am feeling a bit blah, so please forgive the brevity of this post!)

I recently spotted this idea for repurposing old cosmetic jars and thought it was very cute! I personally have a whole shoebox full of these kinds of blue glass jars (I'm a Neals Yard fan) that I cannot bear to throw away, or even to put in the recycling bins, so I thought this would be a really great way of re-using them. I've never made candles before, but have always fancied having a go, and this does look pretty easy, so I think it will be going on my list of things to do!

(Link originally found via this blog).

Do let us know if you give this a try, or if you have found any other repurposing ideas that we could share here.

Rachel x

Ingenious!

This beautiful crocheted flower necklace is the creation of our lovely friend Jane at Hooked Yarn.

What you probably don't realise though is that, in an incredibly inventive bit of repurposing, Jane has used old Morrisons carrier bags to create the yarn to make the flowers!

How clever is that! (And this isn't the first time Jane has done something like this - if you checked out all the Green Swap posts you might have noticed that she also crocheted a little trinket pot using old cassette tape!)

We think this is a brilliant example of how, with a little imagination, even the most dull and uninspiring items can be turned into something special. To read Jane's full post, click here.

Emma & Rachel x

Green Swap Links - part two

Apologies for taking so long to post this! My only excuse is that the heat has made me more lethargic than usual (!) and I still haven't been able to find all the links, so if I've missed you out please do email us asap and let us know where you posted about your swap goodies. In the meantime, do check out these lovely ladies:-

Floss
Daisy
Maria
and A Country Girl

Big thanks again to everyone who took part!

I realise that we've been a bit quiet over the last couple of months, but I've got a couple of ideas brewing so will hopefully have a few more posts for you soon! Watch this space...

Rachel & Emma x

Green Swap links - part one

Here, as promised, are the first batch of links to our Green Swap participants' posts. Sorry it's taken me a while to sort this - I can't seem to keep up with things at the moment - but I hope you'll take the time to follow the links and see all the wonderful things that people came up with for this swap. There have been some really ingenious ideas!

To see what Emma received from Jane, click here
To see what Lorraine received from me, click here
To see what I received from Lorraine, click here
To see what Annie received from Floss, click here
To see what Jane received from Emma, click here
To see what The French Frog sent her partner, Marigold Jam, click here
and to see what Gemma sent to The Mad House, click here

Obviously, there are still some links to come in, so I will be chasing those up and will hopefully post the rest very soon. Once we've heard from everyone, we'll do a proper round up post.

Rachel x

Green Swap Reminder!

Just a quick reminder that the deadline for sending out your green swap parcel is Monday 7th June. Please do drop us a line and let us know once you have blogged about your swap parcel so that we can all come and see what you sent and, once everyone has received their parcels, we'll do a little round up post.

Thanks again to everyone who is taking part.

Rachel & Emma xx