Appearing
this month on the shelves in WH Smith and Borders nationwide, new eco-living
directory BOOK OF GREEN is the most comprehensive guide for everybody to
genuinely and easily green their lifestyles.

With
the general public currently becoming more receptive to living a more
eco-friendly life, this completely free guide points the consumer in the right
direction – it includes hundreds of approved ethical providers in a wide range
of sectors including business services, health and beauty, home and garden,
green energy, travel, parenting and food & drink.  All the companies
in the directory are in some way mostly or completely environmentally friendly,
sustainable, fair trade, organic,  ethical and socially responsible.

Book
of Green is intended to show everybody how to easily reduce their carbon
footprint, live a healthy lifestyle and make  a personal positive 
impact on the environment by integrating truly ethical products and services
into their daily home and family lives.

With
an initial print run of 30,000, the guide comes in a handy A5 format and is
printed in vegetable inks on 100% recycled paper.  An online flip magazine
version is also available at www.bookofgreen.com 
 Book of Green will be available in WH Smiths this July, attached to the
front of Permaculture Magazine as well as distributed across the UK in high
street eco stores, online eco stores, and at events during the summer as well
as at the Eden Project and the Kent Eco Village, the Kent Show by The
Ecologist, July 17-19.

Book
of Green is co-founded by Sue Jueno (founder of Allthingseco) and Katie Keegan
(founder of One Green Earth),
 whose combined experience of 6 years in the eco/ethical business arena
has given them the experience, knowledge and contacts to create a guide for
green living which everybody can trust.

“Being
green is more than reducing the threat of climate change, it’s also about
ethical trading and personal health.  The companies found within Book of
Green provide solutions across all sectors through their products &
services to help build a positive foundation for your family’s future
generations,”  says Katie Keegan.

“With
credit crunch in mind and a passion for promoting green shoot businesses we
have made Book of Green extremely affordable to advertisers and free to the
public to show off exceptional companies that are solving environmental
problems and that will be leading us into the future,” says Sue Jueno.

Several million ethical consumers offer two ways to boost your business prosperity…

There is a new Ethical Junction member company going live very soon. It is called Your Ethical Startup (YES Club) and will be encouraging people to set up their own ethical businesses. Don’t worry! – rather than creating competition for existing Ethical Junction members, it will be focused on increasing awareness among consumers of the need to spend their budgets more thoughtfully from now on. In this way, YES Club is intended to create MORE business for existing ethical traders. It is also designed to enable more mutual support between ethical enterprises, this will be facilitated by the YES Forum, to be launched at the same time as YES Club.

YES has something you might find extremely
interesting: access to several million ethical consumers. If you would
like to attract some of these to your business as paying customers via
the new company, you might wish to consider the following:

1. Offering a discount to YES Club and YES
   Forum members. A discount offered at the YES launch could win you many
   new customers who will stay with you for years to come.
2. Running an event – perhaps a seminar,
   workshop or conference – during Spring or Summer of 2009. Again, YES
   members would need to be offered a discount. If you can trade it, you
   can teach it – why not open up a whole new revenue stream? And if
   you’re already running courses or other events, then this is your
   chance to promote them to several million new ethically-aware customers.
   

Please let us know as soon as possible if you
are interested in participating – the YES website launches shortly and
we would like to include as many special discounts and events as
possible.

Please contact YES here: info@ecobloomfield.com

Over the past few months, the ethical brand consultancy Scamper Branding have been pushing the boundaries of affordable web design and are now able to develop professional websites for a fraction of the usual cost.

“From our experience in web design and discussions with our clients, we found that there was a huge disparity between the cheap template websites that don’t meet clients needs, and custom designed websites that are very time consuming and therefore expensive to build” says Scamper’s Tom Greenwood.

“What many companies need is something in between, giving them a high
level of style and functionality at a price they can afford.”
By utilising the open source WordPress content management system (CMS)
and modifying the style and functionality of existing design themes,
Scamper are now able to give their clients advanced websites for the
cost of much more basic ones.

“We believe so strongly in this technique that we decided to practice
what we preach, and redesigned our own website according to these
principles. You can see the result at www.ScamperBranding.com” says
Vineeta Greenwood, co-founder of Scamper.

Now, to celebrate the launch of our new website, we are offering
Ethical Junction members free carbon neutral hosting with all WordPress
sites, as well as 10% off any sites ordered before the 1 April
2009.

19 September is Tea Time 

Who fancies a lovely cuppa with some clean water, food and shelter thrown in? World poverty seems like such a huge problem to tackle that we don’t know how to start – but here’s a chance to make a difference just by taking half an hour out of your day and enjoying a nice cup of your favourite tea, piece of cake and a good old gossip with your friends! It’s so easy… and a great excuse to put your feet up!

Christian Aid’s TEA TIME is a fundraising event which is so simple to get involved in and absolutely everyone is welcome – wherever on earth you live. You can hold a tea party anywhere you want – at home, at work, in schools, in the park or even in bed! Last year Tea Time parties were held from London to Sri Lanka, Haiti to Columbia – and people dunked everything from coconut biscuits to banana crunch cake into hundreds of different kinds of tea. And out of all the fun came a pot of almost £200,000 for poor communities around the world.

Teatime will be launched on Friday 19th September at 4pm. There are no rules as to how to hold a party.  Christian Aid’s tea time pack is full of tips and recipes to inspire.  Just ask everyone who attends to give a donation to Christian Aid, in return for a cup of tea and a biscuit or two. To find out more and sign up for your free Tea Time pack visit www.christianaid.org.uk/teatime or call 0870 076 7766.

3 Lotus Media are offering EJ members a fixed-price website build 

The offer is aimed at any start-up organisation or an exiting one that needs to refresh its current design cheaply.

The offer is as follows:

Business Starter Package £1500+ VAT
Basic logo design
Business card design
Word doc template design
4 page brochure website – e.g. Home, About Us, Services, Contact
500 business cards printed on recycled paper (charged out at  
approximately £120)
1 year green web & email hosting (normally charged out at £96)

Basic Terms and Conditions
Based on 3 days of design work charged at £70 per hour
Offer is for a brochure website only and not an e-commerce solution.
50% deposit must be placed in September to qualify

To find out more visit their website

The date for this year is Sunday 5 October from 10am – 5pm. in the Market Hall, Abergavenny. We have backing from Fairtrade Wales as well as local businesses and Abergavenny Council. There will be plenty of local and regional press coverage as well as BBC Wales.

Last year saw a huge attendance and we will increase this year. Stalls last year included – Love Zimbabwe, Goodies from the Gambia, Bag- Age, Bryn – y – Cwm project, Smouldering Sage,Biltong 2 U,Tropical Forest, Fairtrade Abergavenny & Crickhowell, Tools for self reliance, VSO, etc.

We also had fantastic catering from Scrumptious catering and Taste Zimbabwe. We will be having the Fairtrade fashion show again and the drumming workshop from Dave Roberts. Also, hopefully the amazing Chrys Blanchard and Abercapella. We have a school group performing African Dance and hope to be bringing over from Zimbabwe Sam Mtukudzi son of Oliver (Tuku) the most well known Zimbabwean artiste.

There will be a childrens area this year with face painting and a bouncy castle. Music and entertainment will be going on all day and there will be lots more to announce as we get nearer to the date. I realise that it is still relatively early, but it would help us enourmously if those who are interested in taking a stall this year could let me know as soon as possible. Looking forward to seeing you all in October.

Kind Regards,
David and Martha Holman.

Email: fairsfairfairs@mail2world.com
Telephone: 07879400897 / 07774608215 / 01873854055