Posts Tagged ‘green’

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 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 May 3, 2009 - by Andrew

Extinction Sucks: Sea Turtles

There have been sea turtles on Earth for over 100 million years. In this week’s Extinction Sucks Aleisha Caruso and Ashleigh Young spring in to action to try and ensure we have sea turtles for many years to come.

There are seven species of sea turtles and all of them are under the threat of extinction. Problems range from turtle eggs being eaten by pigs, turtles choking on plastic bags mistaken for jellyfish and ghost nets.

Ghost nets are fishing nets either lost or abandoned which trap the sea turtle, keeping them below the surface until they suffer a horrible and slow death.

Aleisha and Ash arrange a ‘turtle tennis’ day (in keeping with the net theme) where they collect sponsorship money and sell their Extinction Sucks t-shirts in order to raise money. It’s worth checking out the Babblegum video to catch the snippet of the two girls playing tennis against a panda and a gorilla.

Money raised at the event is spent on a second hand quad bike that’ll become a hugely valuable asset in patrolling the beaches of Mapoon in the far north of Queensland. Mapoon is aboriginal land near Weipa but the Elders have given permission for the beaches to be checked for ghost nets and the turtles monitored.
Mapoon is an essential site for the ghost net project as all seven species of sea turtles can be found there. The vast beach, however, is extremely challenging to patrol on foot. Temperatures easily reach 40 degrees centigrade.   The quad bike allows more of the beach to be combed more quickly and more often.

Do check out the girls as they try and cross an ankle deep sea water inlet on the beach. What do you think of their ‘shark’?

In Pure Spirit

Some countries around the world have begun to introduce plastic bag taxes for supermarkets. Supermarkets, in turn, have started to charge consumers for the use of the bags. Do you think this is a good idea? Will initiatives like that really filter down to help the environment and animals like the sea turtles?

Posted on April 27, 2009 - by Andrew

Climate Rush protesters mark 100 year Suffragette anniversary by gluing themselves to a statue

A man and three women have glued themselves to the statue of Viscount Falkland outside the central lobby of the Houses of Parliament.

Exactly 100 years ago the Suffragette Margery Humes chained herself to the very same statue. She was removed by force as the police deployed chain clippers.

The 2009 April 27th group are believed to be climate protesters from Climate Rush. The protest is designed to be a wake-up call for the British government. Climate Rush are protesting against the government’s decision to allow a new evolution of coal power plants to be built in Britain.

The Climate Rush website promises a ‘year of protest’ and ‘deeds not words’. It is believed that the group is coordinating a Eurovision themed flash mob to strike Heathrow T1 on Saturday the 16th of May.

Police have sealed off the area which is otherwise normally available to members of the public who have been through the standard security checks.

In Pure Spirit

What do you think? Is this a good way to raise the profile of climate issues? Or is the group simply discrediting other environmental pressure groups?

The historic statue was slightly damaged when, 100 years ago, the police removed Margery Humes by force. Do you think Climate Rush cares if the statue is damaged this time around?

Posted on April 26, 2009 - by Andrew

Extinction Sucks: Tasmanian Devils

Some scientists believe that the wild Tasmanian Devil cannot be saved. One high risk strategy  may be to let the wild devils die out which would provide a chance to re-populate the island with disease free devils currently in captivity.

The Tasmanian Devil suffers from an unique extinction threat. The population is being wiped out by a contagious cancer – one that’s spread by biting.

This week the Extinction Sucks video features disturbing images of Tasmanian Devils with horrible cancerous growths on their head and tongue.

Has this horrible cancer been caused by man? Did we effect the environmental changes which led to the outbreak?

In an attempt to raise the profile of this disaster and raise money to buy camera traps Ashleigh Young and Aleisha Caruso organises a party night where guys dressed us devils sell kisses and angel cakes.

These camera traps will be used to record images of the devils in the wild and help the Devils in Danger charity record the spread of the cancer.

Will the Tasmanian Devil go the same way as the Tasmanian Tiger? This week’s Extinction Sucks: Tasmanian Devils is well worth a watch.

In Pure Spirit

Are you following this web video series? It’s sponsored by the WWF and represents one of the new initiatives green charities are trying in order to keep tapped into the web generation.

Posted on April 22, 2009 - by Andrew

Earth Day recycling tip: Get paid for recycling your old mobile

Happy Earth Day. Earth Day is an event designed to raise awareness of the myriad of ecological dangers our planet, our home, currently faces. If you wish to join this American charity then you can do so online.

You don’t need to be in America in order to help promote Earth Day or save the planet. Here’s a tip for United Kingdom residents.

You can turn your old phone into cash and in doing so help recycle it in an environmentally friendly way. Two cash for old phone companies to consider are:

• envirofone.com*
• Earth Mobile*

Each of these two programs function in a similar way; the worth of the phone you’re trading in depends on the make and model. Very old phones might be worth only £5 but newer or more expensive models are worth over £100. At the time of posting Earth Mobile is offering £200 to recycle the 16GB 3G iPhone.

In Pure Spirit

What are you doing to help promote Earth Day? Do you think it comes awfully close to the WWF’s Earth Hour which persuaded many cities around the globe to turn their lights off for an hour?

Have you used either of these two sites before? What are your observations? Would you recommend them?

* Caveat : In Pure Spirit makes revenue from marked affiliate links.

Posted on April 19, 2009 - by Andrew

Recycled cardboard space rocket

It is possible to do good and have fun at the same time. It is also possible to protect the environment and let the kids play at the same time.

This hugely entertaining life size recycled cardboard rocket is available from Big Green Smile and is a lot of fun.

The rocket, as well as encouraging recycling, encourages role-playing, safe physical activities and spatial awareness skills.

As the rocket is made from cardboard it can be decorated and accessorised. It can be folded flat when the party or the summer is over. Assembled its size is 70cm, by 70cm, by 170cm and once returned to its flat pack state it’s 92.cm, by 90.5cm by 5cm.

The Big Green Smile suggests that the rocket fits inside the boot of a card and is ideal for anyone running children’s parties. The rocket doesn’t take long to assemble, either. The other good news from the Big Green Smile is that the rocket’s designer has been working on such projects for over 20 years and has oodles of useful experience.

In Pure Spirit

What do you think? Would you use this recycled cardboard rocket at a summer party to entertain the children?

Posted on April 17, 2009 - by Andrew

Extinction Sucks: Asiatic Black Bears

This week’s Extinction Sucks episode from WWF’s pioneering web video features Ashleigh Young and Aleisha Caruso raising awareness of the plight of Asiatic Black Bears.

In parts of South East Asia these bears are milked for their bile. The bear bile is believed to be a cure for fever. It is found in everything from tea to toothpaste. Despite how wide spread the practice has been and still seems to be – there’s no proven benefit.

There are synthetic alternatives to the bile. The bear bile milking practice has only just been outlawed in Vietnam.

Bears are taken as cubs from the wild and kept in cages until they’re 1 or 2 years old. The young bears are then milked once or twice a week.

The hero charities of this Extinction Sucks episode are Free the Bears and Traffic.

Free the Bears is a charity which tries to find sanctuaries for rescued bears. These bears can never go back to the wild so need natural enclosures. Free the Bears is run by Mary Hutton who features in this episode.

Ashleigh and Aleisha plan a bear fundraiser so Free the Bears can buy robust toys for the bears to play with and try and redevelop their natural rummaging skills.

Dare-for-a-Bear contest to raise funds which involves Afro-Caribbean dance contest.

They then travel on to Vietnam, speak to Sulma Warne of Traffic, and try to understand the cultural atmosphere which would allow bear bile milking to persist and for bears to be cruelly kept in tiny cages.

In Pure Spirit

If you’d like to find out more about helping bears then you can read about them at WWF’s Panda.org.

Posted on April 17, 2009 - by Andrew

Homes at risk after flytippers dump 400 old tyres

Houses in Hatton, Warwick, England face the risk of flood after flytippers clogged a vital overflow ditch with hundreds of abandoned tyres.

The culvert at Brownleigh Green Lane, near the Waterman pub, has been visited by Warwick District Council environment officers who have spent hours trying to clear the blockage. The ditch is used as a vital overflow area for an active stream, with the tyres present and the ditch blocked the flood water heads straight for Hatton.

In 2006 the area was subject to bad floods when blocked drains caused the stream to overflow. It took up to 18 months for the area to recover.

A resident told the local newspaper, “Our neighbours were badly flooded because people stick things in this beck. It is horrendous.”

The council needed 15 hours of manual labour to drag each one of the 470 old car tyres from the overflow area. Another 80 were found in Red House Farm Lane about a mile away.

A spokesman for Warwick District Council defended the lack of local recycling facilities, “Unfortunately tyres in such volume cannot be tipped locally at the civic amenity site and arrangements with Warwickshire County Council needed to be made to tip on their account at a site near Gloucestershire.

“No additional cost was incurred as the teams are paid for as part of the council’s Integrated Waste Contract.

“Flytipping is a serious offence that incurs considerable costs to local tax payers.”

In Pure Spirit

Is flytipping a problem in your area? What sort of legal response do you think would be appropriate for any company caught tipping this quantity of tyres in the countryside?