To mark National Science and Engineering week What on Earth campaign which is raising awareness of UK plants and animals facing habitat destruction and homelessness, free wildflower seeds are on offer on. The aim is to get as many people across the land to go outside into their parks and gardens and to take photos of the plants and creatures they don’t recognise. In exchange, www.whatonearth.org.uk will send each person a packet of seeds specially designed to grow a range of plants that will encourage a greater level of biodiversity. (Subject to availability).

It couldn’t be simpler or more fun. All you need to do is upload a snap of something you don’t recognise that you spot in your garden go to www.whatonearth.org.uk and you will receive native varieties of wildflower which will encourage greater biodiversity in your back garden or flower box.

The aim of what on earth is to spot, collect and identify as many species as possible over the course of the week, painting a fascinating picture of UK wildlife for us all to observe and enjoy. Organised in partnership with The Open University iSpot website, NEWS specialists from all fields of natural science will examine, identify and catalogue as many finds as they can over the course of the week and beyond.

That’s not all; a green roof will be awarded to a school in the area which has shown most support for National Science & Engineering Week. What on Earth’s campaign and uploaded the most pictures.

So whether you are an avid nature watcher or you just happen to find something unusual crawling around in your garden take a picture and submit it to www.whatonearth.org.uk

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The cardboard box changed the world, but that was 150 years ago.  Since then this fabulously versatile material has enjoyed a modest press, but in the environmentally sensitive, cost-conscious world of 2010 its time may have come.

Red-Inc in Brighton is proud to have just been awarded the official supplier status of Cardboard Future Products for the South East. The product and company sit well with their philosophy and values, they are great company to do business with and have a great product that ticks all the boxes. They will be show casing one of these fantastic products very soon and will hold stock of them for next day delivery.

You might like to have one in your office as a demo, use it, and let them know how you get on with it and the reactions people give you. I guarantee it will cause a stir, and the questions will be one we all will want to know “Is it strong enough?”

They make excellent permanent desks and alternatively can be used at events and promotional days.

If you are interested in this product please feel free to contact red-inc.net on 0845 180 0005

This spring cardboardfuture.com launch a range of fun and practical furniture products for the home and office made entirely of pristine corrugated board designed and built in England to mirror the mood of the times.

Simple, clean design combined with clever engineering makes these products extremely light, immensely strong, fully functional and excellent value for money.

Starting with the stunning Paperweight desk, they are rolling out a comprehensive product range to include storage, pedestals, book shelves, wardrobes, beds, and tables in a wide range of shapes and sizes.

Check out the full story on www.cardboardfuture.com

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Having run late with the green procurement workshop on Monday it left me no time to search the Brighton lanes for a gift for my friend’s Birthday. I remember reading about a company called @purenuffstuff on my twitter follower list so made contact today to find out a little more about their products. I was so impressed with the philosophy of their organisation I wanted to share it with our readers. These products would tick all the boxes if you’re looking for an ideal valentines present.

purenuffstuff.co.uk is owned by Helen and Emily, a pair of friends happily living and working in Cornwall. They became interested in skin care, when they started doing research into what they were putting on their skin. Helen started making soap for her family in her kitchen about 8 years ago and their interest and expertise has just grown from there.

Helen’s background as a quality control chemist and Emily’s history in business management give them the skills to run a cosmetics business, and still learn a huge amount from the customers they have built up. Douglas and Dean joined them in July of 2007 and brought with them some 11 years of soap-making experience. Doug having taught a number of other companies how to make soap decided he’d have more control and scope to experiment using his experience with Purenuffstuff.co.uk. Dean’s organisational experience and attention to detail means that he controls the day to day running of the operation and makes sure that you get exactly what you ordered.

As a company purenuffstuff.co.uk are committed to bringing you some of the most natural cosmetics and skincare around and at a price that means you can use them every day rather than as a special treat. The team lovingly hand make every product in small batches, ensuring that it’s all lovely and fresh and you can enjoy the full 12 months shelf-life.

Most of the product development is customer led and they take note of all feedback and desires of all of their customers. Each product is developed to deal with specific areas of the body and the daily stresses they undergo. Because of the production methods used they can offer customers a bespoke service and alter the essential oil blends if they’d prefer something else – check out the Custom Made Section, they’re the only company in the country that offers this service so take advantage of it.

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For some years now hot topic in any office environment has been about climate change and reducing your carbon footprint with everyday items such as paper and envelopes. The major of London’s Green Procurement Code was formed to support London based organisations committed to reducing their environment impact through responsible purchasing. Their ultimate aim was to transform London’s waste into a reusable resource and reduce the impact on landfill.

London welcomed a less polluted city, businesses became more environmentally friendly overnight and unless you had environmental accreditations the door was now closed if you wanted to introduce your product and services.

Corporate companies outside of London invested thousands in their business to introduce things like using electric vans in London, paper recycling schemes as part of delivery service, for many of the larger city businesses it also brought an influx of unwelcomed cold calling companies. Perhaps companies who almost bought the accreditations didn’t truly understand what the code was meant to achieve and thought just having the accreditation made people obliged to speak with them.

Ten years ago Brighton became a city and implementing green initiatives has been top of the agenda for many organisations big and small. Now with the Green Party hot favourites to win the Brighton Pavilion constituency in the next general election more businesses are looking at responsible purchasing and getting involved with community projects.

A Brighton based company recently run a free lunch time workshop to introduce responsible purchasing methods to local businesses and provided real time working case studies that showed client reviews that demonstrated a 20% commercial saving on the previous year, and an incredible 36% reduction in deliveries.

If your’e looking beyond just accreditations and logos alone Red-Inc are keen to highlight that by driving and managing efficiencies throughout the whole purchasing cycle you will naturally make your organisation “Green” which will also save staff time and company money along the way.

Red-Inc support charities in the form of their unique “Payback” scheme, last year donating an incredible £2000 off their bottom line. One such inspiration was cyclist Dan Harrison in his epic one man unassisted journey from London to Africa to hand deliver aid parcels to 10 orphanages.

The charity Better Life Cycle has one goal; to give some of the world’s most disadvantaged children a better life. Dan Harrison sets off from London on August 22^nd 2009 on an epic solo cycle through Europe, the Middle East and Africa; arriving in Cape Town autumn 2010. To date Dan has raised an amazing £24,820. Follow Dan on Twitter

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Changing your G-rated boiler for an A-rated model.

With another few months of severe cold spells the announcement of the Government boiler scrappage scheme is being met with a warm welcome. The scheme is reduce down on CO2 emissions caused by domestic heating.

As a new boiler have a much more efficient way to use less fuel this will not only reduce the CO2 but streamline peoples fuel bills. By changing a G-Rated boiler to the more recent A-rated model the average sized house could save over £200 per annum. The scheme is open to 125,000 householders in England living in an owned or privately rented home.

How can you tell if your boiler is G-rated?

A good quick test for gas boilers is to see if it has a permanent pilot light -if it has then it is very likely to be a G-rated boiler. If it is gas fired and over fifteen years old it is likely to be eligible. If it is oil fired and over twenty five years old, it is likely to be eligible.

The information is on the energy saving trust website and it will guide you through the process of how to register for the UK Government’s boiler scrappage scheme. How you get your £400 cashback voucher by scrapping your G-rated boiler and replacing it with an A-rated boiler or renewable heat technology. You can apply by clicking here

Only householders and landlords who privately own and rent dwellings are eligible to apply for a voucher. Boiler installers and manufacturers, local authority registered social landlords, and housing associations are not eligible to apply.

Vouchers can be redeemed against a boiler from manufacturer which is for A-rated or equivalent gas, oil or LPG boilers, boilers with a Passive Flue Heat Recovery Device, Micro CHP units or Microgeneration Certification Scheme-registered biomass boilers and heat pumps. Solar Thermal is also eligible if combined with an eligible boiler replacement. Electric boilers are not eligible.

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For some the luxury of designer clothes brings debt.

All designer clothing brands promote sustainability I think they be pleased to see a website that reduces the need to buy NEW so often and extends the life of  their quality brands.

Fashion habits have become more affordable for everyone, companies like eBay extended the shelf life of a piece of clothing with their online auction site, It changed many peoples NEED for new. Would you know if the person on the train next to you was wearing a second hand Henley T-Shirt? Or a winter Gucci coat? NO. But what if he or she got it for FREE?

Sustainability is about creating processes that have the ability to maintain themselves indefinitely. Commercial cotton farming for example is far from sustainable: spraying copious amounts of harmful chemicals to increase yields, not only reduces the quality of cotton, but also has harmful and often fatal consequences for farmers working in close proximity with fertilizers. Throwing millions of tones of clothes into landfill sites is also not very Eco friendly.

A website called CovertCandy does its bit for sustainable fashion by providing an alternative means to recycle clothes. They don’t produce any clothes themselves; instead they provide a unique platform that allows their users to exchange clothes with each other. This means clothes get worn instead of thrown away, and no resources are wasted producing clothes that go unworn.

CovertCandy clothing exchange community provides a new way to exchange clothes online. The process is really simple and easy to use. Upload your old or vintage clothes to the site and sell them for credits (points). With the credits you earn you can then purchase new clothes from thousands of other stylish users using the platform. Fashion exchange is a growing trend, and the website offers a unique and pioneering platform that will help you get a new look totally free.

I know if I pass on a few of my designer vintage shirts, jumpers and jeans I could go a whole year with a new look at no cost.

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What does an environmental management company do?

The first stage of the green house client services is to create you a fully bespoke system for your business that falls in line with your corporate goals and aspirations.

The green house will complete a waste audit and waste stream analysis of your company and will discover these necessary aspects of your environmental management systems.

A waste audit is the term they give to understanding the systems and processes your company has in place for dealing with waste and recycling.

The green house looks under the hood of your business to understand everything that is required to build a better solution for your environmental management needs.

• The typical things that are uncovered in a waste audit are:
• The amount of waste your business produces
• The types of waste streams your business produces
• The total waste collection capacity your company has (and is paying for)
• The logistics network your company is using to have its collections provided
• The bottlenecks in service provision
• Feedback from key resources on performance of your services
• Percentages of your waste that is going to landfill
• The total cost of your services including hidden costs such as bin rentals and waste transfer notes

A waste audit is the first step in providing a detailed proposal for a better system to manage your waste and recycling but it can be used as a stand-alone product to allow you to benchmark your current services or produce reports on your performance.

In recent years there have been a dramatic number of new measures introduced by local government, UK government and from Europe that affects businesses and how they deal with the waste that they produce.

Environmental Management

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The London Removals Company that cares about you and the environment.

Ois Removals Ltd are a Central London removals and storage company specialising in all aspects of moving for flats and apartments within the Central and Greater London area, they have a specialised fleet of modern fully equipped removal vehicles and they cover all postcodes within these areas and up to 100 miles radius destination.

They can provide any type of removal service you require from a light van and man service to a full service, you can contact their Sales team during office hours from Monday to Saturday and unlike most businesses of today it’s a Freephone number 0800 7835702 (5 lines) they can offer you professional and honest advice on what service you are likely to require and what the guaranteed charges for providing that service will be.

Or if you prefer, they can arrange for one of their removal surveyors to visit your property and advise you in person. They are members in good standing of both the National Guild of Removers and Storers and the Road Haulage Association and they can guarantee that you will receive a completely skilled, competitive and efficient service from all their staff from start to finish.

At Ois Removals Limited they are able to provide you with a complete packing service prior to your removal day if so required, their packers are fully trained in dealing with antiques, glass, china, paintings and high value items and you can be assured your goods will be dealt with correctly. The Packing service is where they prepack and wrap all your belongings usually the day before the move, all packing materials are included.

Alternatively, if you prefer to self-pack, they have a range of packaging materials available to purchase.

What Makes Ois Removals Limited So Nice To Deal With

Ois Removals Ltd are committed to running their company in the most environmentally friendly way.

As they mainly use LPG vehicles for their operations they have become one of the greenest removal companies of their size range operating in the Greater London area.

Provided below are details of all the things they have been doing as a company to protect the environment, both locally in London and on a global scale.

They complete 95% of removals using Liquid Petroleum Gas removal vehicles which have very low environmentally damaging emissions. Many of their competitors use older diesel vans that have a greater impact on the environment.

They offer a free collection service to all of their customers to collect and recycle all used packing materials after the removal is complete, their packing materials are sourced from a local company within 2 miles of their warehouse, this company in turn supplies very high quality and durable materials sourced from as locally as possible and where possible they re-use recycled materials.

Instead of disposing of unwanted and excess household furniture and household effects in landfill they recycle and donate where possible to Oxfam’s Furniture shop in Streatham, South London with whom they also supply a reduced rate continuous contract for deliveries and collections on a weekly basis.

They have invested in Satellite navigation and Tracker systems for all their removal vehicles in order to travel to and from removal jobs as efficiently as possible and therefore decrease the impact their removal vehicles have on the local environment both by air and noise pollution.

They try to run as Eco Friendly an office as possible and recycle and reuse as much waste paper and other office waste as possible.

OIS Removals Limited were featured on London Tonight

Tel : 0800 7835 702 | Website : http://www.oisremovals.co.uk

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Washing Machine Repair or Replace?

They don’t make them like they used to, cheaper parts, metal being replaced for plastic, we’re talking about common household appliances.

Refrigerators, washers and dryers, microwave ovens and stoves are necessities of modern living, but getting one to last more than a decade is a challenge, in part, because of technology.

Fear not, Affordable Appliances have the parts to keep your appliances working.

Added features, such as water dispensers, programmable timers and thermostats, are making repairs costlier and, in some cases, more expensive than a replacement, but an environmentally friendly company Affordable Appliance Repairs have now launched there new website and extended a dedicated team of specialist repair staff to cope with the amount of repairs carried out around Worthing and West Sussex.

So, when do you pay to have an appliance fixed or replaced?

Local appliance repair experts from Affordable Appliance Repairs said, “If the cost of a repair is half of what a replacement appliance would cost, trade in the repair and buy a good refurbished model from us, or we have a range of manufactures for a new one.

In terms of appliance makers, they service all major brands, Hotpoint, Indesit, Ariston, Zanussi, Bosch, Creda, Miele, Hoover, Beko and many more.

When a decision is made to buy new don’t buy more features than you are really going to use the more bells and whistles it has, the greater the chance that one of those features will have a problem one day.

Affordable Appliance Repairs Top Tips

DON’T overloaded washers

Households with children are usually the toughest on washers and dryers; it may seem like they’re running constantly.

One large load can be a lot more work on the machine versus a couple of smaller loads
Overloading washers takes years off its life expectancy.

A washing machine may have a 20-pound capacity, and that’s with the clothes being damp You might get two hooded sweatshirts and a pair of jeans in there, and you are at capacity. Transmissions tend to fail; they can’t take heavy loads.

Front-load washers, which use less water than top-loading machines, have to be very well balanced on the floor.

Washing machines of today are high tech; their computers can ‘read’ if there is any issue and shut the machine down. Sometimes, the machine components can be fine, but the computer thinks differently.

Front loaders are more prone to costly repairs, require more maintenance and have a life expectancy of between 10 to 12 years.

Clothes dryers will last longer if the lint trap is cleaned after each use. At least once a year, remove the vent that sends exhaust outside and vacuum. You even may find a missing sock behind the dryer.

The most common dryer repair is replacement of the thermal fuse, a heat-sensitive fuse designed to blow if the dryer overheats. It’s an inexpensive part, but all dryers tend to have thermal fuses, and, when it blows, you get no heat.

Dishwashers should last a minimum of five years, though 10 years is not out of the question, depending on the model, you can extend the life of a dishwasher by rinsing the dishes before running the washer.

Visit www.affordableappliancerepair.co.uk

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By using selloldphone.co.uk you can now trade in your mobile phones and receive real value; that’s real money in your hand.

The mission to allow their customers to get value out of those existing unused mobile phones and be able to put it to good use.

Mobile phones sold or donated through selloldphone.co.uk are given new life and those that can’t be refurbished are recycled according to EU Standards.

Selloldphone.co.uk makes your unused mobile phones available to those who can use them, while keeping them out of the landfill sites.

They have developed a national program to remove discarded mobile phones from the country’s environment while directly benefiting charitable organizations and individuals. By recycling, you give new life to old technology and keep those toxic e-waste materials from causing harm to our environment.

Why Recycle

Why recycle your mobile phone well the simply answer is its easy money for you and the facts are that more than 80 million phones are discarded every year.

There are estimated to be 125 million redundant mobile phones sitting in desk drawers and attics gathering dust at any one time it is also estimated half of these are discarded in landfill sites.

Discarded mobile phones can leak toxic waste into river systems, contaminating agricultural land; they contain dangerous chemicals such as cadmium which can be highly carcinogenic.

They also can contain lead, nickel, mercury or lithium to name but a few dangerous metals.
Lead can also cause both liver and neurological problems; many of these elements cannot decompose; Lithium, if it comes into contact with water, can cause fires in landfills.

Other health problems such as genetic or reproductive defects, nervous system problems can also be caused by these dangerous chemicals.

Visit www.selloldphone.co.uk

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Posted under Broadband & Mobile Phones, Environment