Archive for the ‘Gaia’ Category

Posted on March 10, 2010 - by Andrew

Middlemist’s Red rescued by Chiswick House restoration

There are only two surviving blooms of the rare camellia; one is in Waitangi, New Zealand, and the other one is in Chiswick House in London.

It is thought that Middlemist’s Red has been present in Chiswick conservatory since the early 19th century. The plant is believed to have come from China, brought to Britain by John Middlemist of Shepherd’s Bush.

The camellia is thought to have arrived in the UK just after 1823 – only a decade after the conservatory first opened in 1813. The conservatory has stood, but slowly run down, over the centuries. At one point the home actually served as a lunatic asylum. The conservatory was hit by an unexploded bomb during World War II; it survived but all the glass was broken.

The current restoration of the conservatory was cost more than £12 million and was co-managed between Chiswick House and Gardens Trust and the English Heritage.

In Pure Spirit

Are you pleased to see such a rare planet safe and sound in a newly restored, historic conservatory? Or is £12m too much for projects such as this?

Posted on February 3, 2010 - by Andrew

Rwanda’s Forest of Hope: Gishwati National Conservation Park

Officials in Rwanda have announced they will increase the size of Gishwati National Conversation Park from 3,018 acres to 3,665 acres. That’s an increase of about 21%.

This is good news as it’ll reclaim land lost to small-scale agriculture that once connected the forst from the banks of the Sebeya River. The newly extended park is being called the Forest of Hope.

Dr Beck, director of the Conservation Program at Gishwait, said;

The water quality of the Sebeya River is linked to the health of local people and the national economy…the Sebeya is not only an important source of drinking water for local residents but it also provides hydroelectric power and water for beverage production downstream.

Notable beneficiaries of the project will be a group of endangered chimpanzees. It’s expected that growing Gishwati will be a challenge but a worthwhile one. Beck added;

The reforestation of Kinyenkanda is a perfect example of win-win-win sustainable conservation. There are local and national economic benefits, the chimpanzees and other fauna will enjoy expanded habitat, and the environmental quality of the river and the atmosphere will be enhanced.

In Pure Spirit

What do you think? Is this really a win-win-win scenario or does have Rwanda have countless other things it should be doing first?

Posted on January 31, 2010 - by Andrew

Five ethical Valentine’s Day gift ideas

It’s not always easy finding good gifts for Valentine’s Day. Making sure gifts are ethical and guilt free is a good start. Then all you need to do is find something noteworthy and you’re nearly there.

Here are give ethical Valentine’s Day gift suggestions that might spark some ideas.

Love in a Grobox

A box of glorious red flowers could turn into a Valentine’s Day gift that lasts a lifetime. What better way to say you want your relationship to bloom than with flowers?

Figs & Rouge Rambling Rose bodycare gift set

A carefully made selection of organic and natural bath and bodycare. This Valentine’s Day gift set treat is suitable for all skin types, and is especially good for dry or irritated skin.

Divine Heavenly Chocolate Recipes

Hmm! Valentine’s Day chocolate! Everyone gets chocolate though… so why not be a little different. This recipe set contains 100 irresistible recipes ranging from glorious chocolate cakes, sweets, pudding and pastries to stunning savoury dishes.

Choc-Affair Hot Chocolate Drink Melting Stick

This fairtrade gift is a really clever Valentine’s Day idea. You stir the stick into a mug of warm milk and the chocolate on the end melts… its fun to watch, do and then drink.

Organic Blue Bath and Massage Oil

This Valentine’s Day gift is a good idea because its entirely flexible. It can be used alone as a bath oil or together as a massage oil. It’s one of those gifts when it doesn’t matter who gives it to who; the suggestion is you can do something together.

In Pure Spirit
Do you look forward to Valentine’s Day or has it become too stressful or too commercial for you? What are your top tips for the day?

Disclaimer: The images in this post are affiliate links.

Posted on January 4, 2010 - by Andrew

Vote for the new EU Organic Logo

The European Union is working on a single logo to display on organic food. The idea is dead simple. A single logo, all across Europe, which lets you know that the food is organic and that “organic” meets a definition you’re familiar with.

Rather than simply having the red tape machine in Brussels churn out a logo they’ve spun out a competition to create the logo. The first round finished in June 2009 and collected candidate logos from the masses.

We’re on to the last round now. There are three logos left (all green) and you get to cast a vote for the one you like. The winning logo will move on to European fame some time later.

In Pure Spirit

Which logo did you vote for? What do you think of the idea of running a competition?

Posted on October 19, 2009 - by Andrew

Natoora relaunch site and hand out £50 (@natooracouk)

The online farmers’ market Natoora have redesigned and relaunched their website. To mark the occasion they’re giving new customers £50 off, there are conditions, you need to use the code Natoora50 before 15th November and can claim here*.

The new site looks slick and trustworthy. Natoora is already well known to ethical eaters and it seems that the brand is looking to grow into the corporate area with this new look and feel – perhaps targeting SMEs or even blue chips with the idea of sourcing good, fresh food for their employees.

If you’re not familiar with Natoora then it’s a simple walk through. Select from a range of top quality food and have it delivered to you. It’s not a supermarket. It’s a collective of farmers and that’s what makes it special.

It would be wrong to dismiss Natoora because of their strong connections with farmer communities. They mean to get their digital marketing exactly right. For a start they run an affiliate program (which In Pure Spirit is a member of; you’ll see the links in this post) and they’ve done a pretty good job of the SEO on the new site. The 301 redirect from their homepage to /shop/ is a hiccup but we can assume it was necessary. They’ve tried their best with the URLs, they’re short-ish, nod towards keywords but I wish they had hidden the .html elements as they’ll have a migration challenge on their next redesign. There’s the missing robots.txt file with the awkward redirect to the homepage too.

The site’s backlink profile looks healthy due to the foodie blogs who happily link to one another. There’s perhaps just the suggestion of an aggressive past with suspect pages like this one and rather a lot of ice cream pages.

Natoora also run a blog* of their own, have it on the right domain and brand it differently. They’re on Twitter as well and that’s ideal if you want to flirt with foodies, but they’ve not been there long and could do with more followers (tell them @inpurespirit said hi).

In Pure Spirit

What do you think of Natoora’s new site? Do you like it? Do you like it enough to shop there?

Disclaimer: Links marked with a star(*) are revenue links.

Posted on August 24, 2009 - by Andrew

UFOs clean the Osaka castle moat

They look like crash landed UFOs but these 3.4 ton disks are actually robotic water cleaning devices.

The robot cleaners are fully solar powered and cool themselves down during the day by squirting water up from the moat and splashing themselves. During the night their surface is covered with LEDs that flash on and off.

One disk has been deployed in the moat of Osaka Castle and the other for Osaka’s Dontoburi canal. Sadly, the alien cleaners aren’t commercially available as they’re not cost effective. They’ve been bought to run along with the 2009 Osaka Aqua Metropolis festival.

In Pure Spirit

What do you think? Would you like to see large disks like this floating along the waterways in the United Kingdom or do you think they’re odd, expensive, out of place and we should have better methods of keeping our water clean?

Posted on July 20, 2009 - by Andrew

Longest solar eclipse of the century due this week

The longest solar eclipse of the 21st century is due July 22nd.

The event will last 6 minutes and 26 seconds and it’ll be 2132 until a solar eclipse of a similar length is visible from Earth. The eclipse’s shadow will stretch up to 258km.

The eclipse will be visible from the world’s most densely populated countries; China and India.

Stargazers in the Indian state of Gujarat will be able to see the solar event first at (at about 4.30pm GMT). The path of the eclipse will mean that the shadow will race across India next; effecting the holy city of Varansai, touching Bangladesh, Nepal, most of Bhutan and then along China before it reaches the sea off Shanghai.

The event, however, lasts long enough it for the shadow to “make landfall” for a second time as it reaches the Ryukyu Islands. It’s after this when the shadow is spread across the Pacific Ocean that the maximum duration of totality will occur.

In total more than two billion people may be able to see the longest solar eclipse of the century.

There is, however, concern. In ancient China it was common to associate eclipses with warnings of forthcoming natural disasters or even the death of the emperor.

The Indian astrologer Raj Kumar Sharma has already described this month’s solar eclipse as a “very dangerous moment in the universe”. He told press; “If the sun, the leader of the stars, is sick, then definitely there’s going to be some bigger problems happening in the world”

In Pure Spirit

Are you planning to mark the solar eclipse in any way on the 22nd?

Posted on July 11, 2009 - by Andrew

Bundanoon bans bottled water

The Australian town of Bundanoon has raised the bar of ecological wisdom by voting to ban bottled water. Why? A tremendous amount of resources goes into bottled water; there’s the extraction, the packaging and then the transport. In many cases there’s the litter afterwards too.

In many countries the health quality standards of tap water are stricter than bottled water ones. For example, in the UK the quality of water form the tap is held to a higher standard than from the bottle. The reason is simple; problems with the mains supply are a horror to fix, effect thousands of people and are best detected and prevented early. Bottled water is easier to deal with.

Bundanoon is a small town with less than 2,500 in population but perhaps this is the starting moving in a more popular trend.

In Pure Spirit

Do you drink bottled water? Would you support a ban in your home town or city?

Posted on July 5, 2009 - by Andrew

Sheep in Scotland are being shrunk by global warming

Soay sheep have lived on the island of Hirta on the western coast of Scotland for a millennium. As a breed of cheep they’re smaller than the average sheep however research from the Imperial College in London suggests they’re getting smaller.

Very often natural selection favours larger sheep. The odds of the survival go up as the body size increases as the extra reserves of fat allow the sheep to survive through the winter.

In Hirta, however, climate change has been making winters shorter and milder. This is allowing generation after generation of sheep to spend more time grazing and less time dependant on the fat reserves.

In the past only the larger lambs would survive; having reached the size necessary to survive the winter. These days even the smaller lambs will survive the winter.

In Pure Spirit

What do you think? Is this a shame or could this be a positive effect of global warming?

Posted on June 30, 2009 - by Andrew

France faces fine for hamster neglect

The European Commission is taking steps to fine the French Government after a failure to protect the great hamster of Alsace. Only around 250 of the hamsters are believed to be left in the world.

If the French Government is found guilty then they may be fined as much as €17,000,000 (which is about €68,000 for each hamster).

The Commission had warned the French on a number of occasions that they were not taking sufficient steps to protect the hamsters’ natural environment. Now under the directives for the preservation of wildlife they’re pulling the French Government into Court.

Previously the French had attempted to protect the hamster by encouraging farmers to grow wheat or lucerne for the hamsters habitat. Efforts to protect the hamsters failed and the population dropped from 500 to 250 in just a matter of years.

In Pure Spirit

Are you a fan of actions like this or should the European Commission not be involved in attempting to fine entire countries?