Sharing the environmental attributes
of the original WowWallet, wewow’s latest innovation can be produced
from FSC accredited stock or 100% recycled board and does not require
any matt or gloss laminate.  Furthermore, the wallet can be accompanied
by an FSC accredited booklet, with the option to use vegetable based
inks. 

More information on wewow’s range of
eco-friendly optical media packaging can be found at http://www.wewow.co.uk/wowwallet.asp

Throughout the months of June
and July, top chefs including Atul Kochhar (Benares restaurant), Vivek
Singh (Cinnamon Club & Cinnamon Kitchen), Navin Bhatia (Dockmasters
House), Mehernosh and Sherin Mody (La Porte des Indes), Sriram
Aylur (Quilon), Kuldeep Singh (Mela), Ajay Chopra (Mint Leaf Restaurant
and Bar, and Mint Leaf Lounge and Bar) and Sanjay Anand (Madhu’s)
will all come together to support Food For Thought
by adding a voluntary £1 to every bill in their restaurants. 

Hunger and malnutrition are
common experiences for families living in rural India.  Over the
months of June and July, the top Indian eateries will be joining forces
with charity Find Your Feet to strive to ensure that hunger and poverty
become experiences of the past for thousands of families living in northern
India.  The money raised from the Food for Thought promotion will
help FYF develop and expand its work to reach a further 6,000 families
in the coming year – so that 24,000 families have the opportunity to
build a better future.   

Recognized as their country’s
greatest culinary exports, these top chefs feel they are best placed
to raise the awareness of the plight of hunger and poverty that still
affects millions of families in rural India.

“Sharing a meal with good
company is one of life’s great pleasures. While we are enjoying the
delicate spices and vibrant flavours of our food, thousands of people
in my home state of Jharkhand in India are going to bed hungry every
day. I’m proud to be an ambassador for Find Your Feet’s Food
for Thought promotion.  Together, we can help make sure some
of the poorest families in rural India have enough food to eat not just
today but all year round.”

Atul Kochhar,
Chef Director, Benares 
 

“Food has given us (the chefs)a
great living and  has propelled us into the media spotlight. We
must now use our status to in turn bring food to families in rural India
that are suffering from hunger and malnutrition.”

Vivek Singh,
Chief Executive and Chef, Cinnamon Club & Kitchen 
 

To celebrate the launch of the
Food for Thought promotion, the chefs held a champagne reception at
Langtry’s Restaurant, Cadogan Hotel just off Sloane Street. Guests
included top food journalists and supporters of Find Your Feet and were
treated to mouth-watering canapés created by the award-winning Indian
chefs in the elegant surroundings of the historic Langtry’s restaurant.

For more information visit http://fyf.org.uk/news/foodforthought.htm

SUMMER MADNESS AT ETHICAL BOUTIQUE, PURITY. 25% OFF ALL TOPS AND DRESSES FOR 1 WEEK ONLY

Celebrate summer with ethical boutique Purity.  Now the sun is out it’s time to start
thinking about updating your wardrobe.  What better way  than with a
pretty new dress, perfect for those long hot days.  Dresses are cool
and comfortable to wear and here at Purity we have something for
everyone and for ONE WEEK ONLY ALL DRESSES ARE 25% OFF  We have
a great range of day dresses from People Tree, the Dot ruffle dress is
perfect for keeping you cool while looking chic and smart enough for
the office.  If it’s some thing more casual you are after then we have
a fabulous selection from Giggle and Komodo,  who have both produced a
fantastic range of pretty feminine frocks.  Our favourites are the
Jessie dress from Giggle and the Adriana dress from Komodo.

If we can’t tempt you with a new dress how about a new top for the summer, ALL TOPS ARE 25 % OFF TOO.  We have basic tees and vests by People Tree or more styled tops like the Betty top with Kavina embroidery from Giggle.

This is too good to miss, so check out www.purityStyle.com between midday Friday 5th June and midnight Friday 12th June.

“Who’s?
Glass is a fresh, young, environmentally aware glass-making company
that specialises in unique, handcrafted recycled glassware. 
The fundamental ethos
of Who’s? Glass is to make the recycling of a used glass bottle as
environmentally friendly as possible – to transform, what in effect
is discarded domestic
or commercial waste, into contemporary useable glassware products.”
 

Established
in May 2008 and set in the picturesque port town of Bideford North
Devon, Who’s? Glass conveys
the essence and tranquillity of Devon’s rolling windswept moors and
turquoise green seas.  Who’s? Glass is a company committed to
the environment and is proud to offer a
clean alternative to the UK’s polluting glass making industry. 
Since the first bottle was collected, washed and reshaped, Who’s?
Glass has gone from strength to strength as Devon’s first and, at
present, only glass company specialising in recycled bottle
glassware.  And so the journey began….

Who’s?
Glass is made up of three talented
glassmakers, comprising of two generations of experience in this
genuine family
affair.  Lars Anders Persson is a Swedish Master Glassmaker with
over 40 years experience in the glass making industry. Lars has
helped create pieces for companies such as Tiffany & Co., Cartier
and Wedgwood, amongst many others, and has worked for some of the
world’s top glass houses.  Working alongside Lars is his
eldest son Anders, who has over 16 years experience in the glass
industry and is a keen participant in new technical developments in
recycled glass.  The youngest son, Matthew, completes the team. 
Matthew is a multi-award winning glass designer who has
designed ranges for some
of Britain’s top high street stores and last
year won the prestigious ‘Gift Of The Year’ award – made in the
UK category. As a group they are individual,
talented and outstandingly
creative and are committed in their quest to establish Who’s? Glass
as the UK’s leading producer of innovative recycled
glassware products.

ORGANIC PLACES TO STAY – UK AND IRELAND – 3RD EDITION

Available now from Green Books here.

Your organic lifestyle away from home – Linda Moss – Revised and updated edition, now including Ireland
Are you looking for a bed and breakfast, guesthouse or hotel that serves organic food?
Would you like to self-cater in a cottage on an organic farm and have an organic vegetable box delivered? Or would you prefer to camp on an organic smallholding with the possibility of buying the holding’s own fresh organic produce?

This completely revised and updated edition, with over 175 new entries, now includes a selection of organic places to stay in Ireland and gives you all the information you need for an ‘organic holiday’. It includes:….

• bed and breakfasts, guest houses and small hotels offering organic, local and sometimes home-grown produce

• self-catering accommodation on organic farms, generally in renovated farm buildings

• camp sites on organic farms and smallholdings, ranging from those where you pitch your own tent to more luxurious camping in a yurt

There are four new symbols in the third edition of the book, so you can see at a glance if meals containing organic produce or fresh organic produce to buy are available either on-site or within five miles of your holiday accommodation. The book includes 588 accommodation entries.

The Author: Linda Moss created www.organicholidays.co.uk ten years ago. She is married with three grown up children and two grandchildren, and has lived in Guiseley, West Yorkshire all her life.

GreenUnion
is absolutely delighted to have partnered with CRED, the original
Fair
Trade Jewellers.
With a passion for beauty fashioned from fair trade and
environmentally responsible materials, we would say that CRED’s
jewellery is simply the purest in the world.

Buying
jewellery is the most personal purchase one ever makes. What you wear
speaks to the world of what is intimately valuable to you. It is a
timeless purchase that should reflect the values you aspire to;
personal expression, freedom of choice, social and environmental
well-being and exquisite beauty.

From
the mountains of Bolivia, lush jungles of Colombia,
the Brazilian wilds, and savannas of Tanzania,
CRED’s rich diversity of sourcing partners ensures that highest
standards are delivered to the purest jewellery in the world. All the
gold & platinum CRED uses is cyanide and mercury free and comes
from their partners Oro
Verde,
their silver is 100% recycled and their conflict
free diamonds
and traceable coloured gemstones all come with the CRED
quality assurance certificate.

To
celebrate our partnership, during June and July we’re giving everyone
a chance to win
an elegant and contemporary recycled silver, satin finished CRED
ring, designed by Laura Strand, worth £70.00.

Visit
http://www.greenunion.co.uk
for more information.

Cranfield offers free re-skilling opportunities

 Cranfield
University is to offer individuals directly impacted by the current economic
crisis an opportunity to re-skill and redirect their careers to take advantage
of identified skills shortages in areas such as environmental technology.

The
University is offering free places on
selected short courses under the HEFCE Economic Challenge Investment
Fund (ECIF) for sector re-skilling.

The
courses are intended to help qualified individuals who have recently been made
redundant to secure employment with a new employer, potentially in a new
sector.  The initiative will also help
businesses who are looking to re-skill their employees in preparation for the
economic up-turn.

Courses
are available in a number of sectors from environment and materials.

Dr
Brian McIntosh, Programme Leader for Cranfield’s postgraduate Water programme,
said: “This funding will enable us to address the re-skilling needs of
individuals and businesses, and to address growing skills shortages in the UK,
such as in the environmental technology and utility sectors.”

The University received almost £500,000 overall through the ECIF, of which
nearly £150,000 will focus on offering engineers and scientists expertise and
development to help them secure a sustainable future

For
further information, please visit www.cranfield.ac.uk/sas/reskill

Claim your holiday expenses responsibly and get away from it all!

Following the news that many MPs have been
falsely claiming expenses, online travel agent responsibletravel.com is
giving holidaymakers the chance to save money at no cost to their
fellow taxpayers. Travellers can claim money off their holidays to the
equivalent of £6million – the total figure claimed by UK MPs in travel
expenses last year.

Holiday vouchers worth £50 and £100 are being given away by the website at the following link:
www.responsibletravel.com/claimexpenses

Paul Snudden, director, responsibletravel.com said:
“At a time
when public confidence in the political system is at a low and many
politicians are perceived as ‘irresponsible’ this is a chance for
holidaymakers to get away from it all. Purse strings are already tight
this year so hopefully it’ll give taxpayers a helping hand. However,
MPs are not eligible so need not apply.”

Holidaymakers who register for the deal will receive a choice of
either a £50 voucher to use towards a holiday worth £750 or more, or a
£100 voucher to use towards a holiday worth £1500 or more.

Vouchers must be claimed by 30th June 2009 and used to book a
holiday before 31st July 2009 (departure date can be any time). Only
one voucher to be used per booking.

Subject to full terms & conditions including:

When did you last disinfect your tissue paper?

Since
the start of this ’swine flu’ scare, there has been an increase in the
government-sponsored advertising with the slogan ‘Catch it. Bin it.
Kill it’.

Well, it has certainly killed much of
my hankie business which is usually in full flow this time of year, it
being hayfever season. And you know what is even more exasperating?
They are using MY tax money to bring you this advertising, effectively ruining my business.

This
admonition to ‘bin it’ suggests that disposable tissue paper is more
hygienic than cloth hankies. One school website says explicitly that
cloth hankies are to be avoided. But when was the last time you
disinfected a piece of tissue paper?

So, being the researcher
that I am I took a closer look at my internet search results for ’swine
flu and hankie’. Here are some of my conclusions:…

(1) The habit
of covering one’s mouth with a hankie or tissue when one sneezes or
coughs is no longer a habit amongst some of the younger people in this
country. One writer complained about a mother letting her young child
cough and sneeze and letting the outflow of solids and liquids spray
all around the train carriage they were sharing, with no sign of guilt
or remorse.

Another reported how a hoodie stood next to him at a
traffic junction and started emptying the contents of his nasal
passages onto the streets, and not always hitting the target.

Yet another suggested that “[s]urely the idea of people covering their mouths when they cough or sneeze is commonsensical, and a mannerly thing we should all learn from an early age”.

(2)
It is therefore a question of ‘catch it’ in the first place. The
emphasis on paper tissue is misplaced, a sign that this campaign was
probably designed by young people who do not know what a handkerchief
is.

Compare the current campaign to this World War II poster above:

Then, when tissue paper was non-existent, a cloth handkerchief did the job.

(3) Cloth hankies are still doing the job.

My husband is immunocompromised. He only uses hankies.

I suffer from hayfever. I use cloth hankies. Swopped back from tissue paper some years ago.

My
son only uses cloth hankies. He loves the ones with his name
embroidered in very large letters so no one throws them away … again.
(We suspect that some of his hankies had gone missing because other
children did not realize that it was ‘lost property’ and not a funny
kind of stretchy tissue to be put in the bin.)

My son also has one of the best attendance records in class, better than those who use only tissue paper.

(4)
Sure, we put our used hankies back in our pockets. Some people say,
“Yuck! Keeping all those bacteria in your pocket can’t be good.” But at
least we keep our own bacteria to ourselves.

There is a Chinese saying: disease enters through one’s mouth. Conversely, what comes out of us can’t kill us. Might kill someone else, but not us. And that is the point: we must use a hankie to cover our mouth when we sneeze in order not to infect other people.

We wash our hankies. We dry them in the sun. We iron them. We are effectively killing any bacteria that might still be lurking.

When did you last disinfect a paper tissue?

Wash tissue paper? Yes, done that many times, by accident. They always end up in bits and stick to your dark colour clothes.

Dry them? They always end up in a hardened glob, does it not, in a bin or wherever?

Iron tissue paper? Never.

(5)
Used tissue paper left in open bins which might not be emptied for
several days = bacteria to share with all and sundry. Surely this is
even more “Yuck”.

In summary then, I suspect that the NHS
campaign is targetted at people who do not use either tissue paper or
cloth hankies in the first place. To suggest that paper is better than
cloth is misplaced.

I wonder if my accountant could claim some
money back from the revenue people for ruining my business. Or should I
bring a case to the advertising complaints/standards folk? Anyone out
there with expert advice for me?

Add a touch of natural luxury to your bedroom with an organicduvet from Natural Home Products (www.naturalhome-products.com).The luxuriousness of Natural Home Products’ range of organic and natural duvetsmakes you wonder how you ever made do with anything less. Handmade by craftsmenin southern Bavaria, the duvets are made from only the finest natural andorganic materials and are completely free of chemical additives.

The choice of duvets offered by Natural Home Products is itself a luxury. No longer do you just decide which weight of duvet to buy; at NaturalHome-Products.co.uk there are a number of covers and fillings to suit every taste and every season. Their natural duvets for summertime include organic Cotton for a light covering to keep you cool, with percale weave organic cotton covers, whilst the organic Merino Lambswool duvets are still light, but offer a little more cosiness and come with a choice of percale, sateen or jersey covers. Alternatively, the natural wild Silk Tussah duvets are luxuriously light – hugging the body while keeping it refreshingly cool – and are made from the silk of wild Tussah caterpillars (gathered after the moth emerges), while the organic Camel hair down summer duvets are perfect for an English summer when it can be sultry one night and chilly the next: Camel down has an outstanding ability to compensate and regulate extremes of both temperature and moisture.

All of the duvets from Natural Home Products come with a breathable storage bag so that they may be kept dust free when not in use. Natural Home Products will even add Cotton ties to the duvets, so that summer and four season duvets can be tied together for use during the coldest months of the year.

With double the weight of the summer duvets and perfect for the cooler months, the Four Season duvets also come in organic Cotton, organic Merino Lambswool or Camel hair down, giving a choice of the light covering of Cotton through to the warm and snug nest that is Camel hair down.

For those who want to be extra warm and snug, but still with a light, comfortable covering, Natural Home Products sew two duvets together, trapping a thermal pocket of air between them, to create their super warm winter duvets. So, for those who want the luxurious freshness of Silk all year round there is the natural wild Silk Tussah winter duvets or, at the other end of the warmth scale, there is perhaps the most luxurious of them all, the natural Yak hair down winter duvets, which combine wonderful warmth with a light, sleek and airy feel. In between, the choice includes organic Cotton, organic Merino Lambswool and Camel hair down.

You probably didn’t even know there was so much choice available in a duvet, and once you have tried a luxury natural duvet from Natural Home Products, you’ll never go back to anything less. Not only does an organic duvet help to alleviate many allergies, they are a pampering addition to anyone’s bedroom.

Visit www.naturalhome-products.com to see the full range of natural bedroom products, from latex mattresses to organic pillows and much more.