Ganesha To Open New Store In Covent Garden

Ganesha, the friend of Life Goggles and ethical shop on London’s South Bank since 1995, is opening a new shop just off the iconic Covent Garden piazza.

Ganesha sources its products from talented, marginalised producers in India, Bangladesh and beyond.

Jo Lawbuary, co-founder, says: “We aim to expand on our success on the Southbank and bring a quality selection of home and personal accessories to a wider London audience. In short, we are delighted at the prospect of taking our fair trade thing ‘out there’.”

The shop opens its doors on March 7, just in time to celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight and will launch with a party in shop in the evening. And Life Goggles will be there. To get an idea of what they sell, visit the website or take a look at Life Goggles’ review of their Paisley Jute Shopper.

Interview With An Eco Coach

Anca Novacovici is an eco coach. What’s that I hear you ask? Well we asked that too.

Tell us about how you came to set up Eco-Coach and be one?
I have always had a passion for the environment, and have wanted to work in the field for quite some time. My interest has been in helping businesses become more environmentally-friendly, since businesses use a large amount of resources. However, at the time that I graduated from college, and later on, from grad school, sustainability consulting was not a well-known field. Therefore I went the more traditional management consulting route, hoping one day to be able to do what I am doing now. While I enjoyed my time in the management consulting arena, learned a lot and have met some amazing people, I decided to start Eco-Coach to combine my interest and skills from consulting with my passion for the environment.

How do you help people and businesses?
We educate individuals and businesses and provide them with the tools to help them be more eco-friendly. For individuals, we do this through workshops on different aspects of green living, home eco-audits, and a variety of related services. For businesses, we provide support through green business audits, sustainability planning and benchmarking, training and educational workshops, and LEED certification and consultations.

Why do people/companies come to you? Is it not something they can do themselves?
They come to us because we have the expertise to do it and we bring in past experience and best practices that will enable them to obtain a better solution in a shorter period of time than they probably would by doing it on their own. They can certainly do most of this themselves, but it would take them more time and resources; by working with us, this enables them to focus on their core business while we focus on helping them become more sustainable.

What’s been the most surprising thing that you’ve learnt from the reviews and consultations?
When I started the business, I thought individuals would be more willing to hire someone to work with them than would businesses. However, I have found the reverse to be true. Businesses are eager to become more sustainable, whether it is to save money, improve their brand image, or from a genuine desire to help the environment. Individuals are also interested, but most are more willing to take small steps and spend a minimal amount versus investing considerable time and money in becoming more eco-friendly.

What sort of things do you suggest?
Suggestions for businesses vary based on the situation, and can be either simple or more complicated, depending on resources and commitment. Some of the simpler recommendations include: purchasing wind power, implementing lighting changes, installing water saving fixtures, changing to eco-friendly products/vendors, greening existing services, and training and educating employees. More complex suggestions include implementing a sustainability plan, identifying ways to become carbon neutral, and making building-related changes.

Once you’ve finished with a business or person, do they stick to what you’ve told them?
From our experience, most businesses and individuals will take the suggestions and implement a majority. Though not all of them. Some clients have come back to us and asked for further recommendations, and we will do these as long as they have implemented all of the previous recommendations or have a good reason for not having done so.
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Marks And Spencer To Charge For Plastic Bags

A quick piece of news for you, the UK’s Marks & Spencer store is to charge for plastic bags beginning May 6th. Until then they are giving out free longer lasting bags. M&S have been heavily criticised for the amount of packaging their food has, and are apparently working on this too. Will this lead to an increase in the sales of dustbin liners?

Much more information can be found on the BBC.

How Cars Are Recycled

I’ve never really thought about it, but apparently cars are the most recycled consumer item in the US. This must be by size, not number as they beat newspapers and cans with 15m vehicles recycled every year. On average 84% of a vehicle can be recycled, and whilst re-use is the first option, the amount a vehicle can be recycled is impressive.

The Vehicle Recycling Partnership is a program of the United States Council for Automotive Research – a consortium of Chrysler, Ford and GM. Founded in 1992, it is “dedicated to finding vehicle recycling solutions that are sustainable, are environmentally friendly and fit within the current recycling infrastructure”.

The remaining 16% that cannot be recycled is mainly foam, rubber, fabric and certain plastics. Some of this is reused, but most of it is waste. They also look at the lifecycle of components, such as the waste created producing parts and assembling them. New car technologies, such as lithium-ion batteries present new problems for the team to address, not only in manufacture, but at end-of-life disposal. Currently 95% of all car batteries on the market are recycled from old batteries.

I was also impressed that they look at the energy use during the recycling process. As one GM Technical Fellow from GM’s Chemical and Environmental Sciences Research and Development department put it to me “There’s no point spending 10 minutes washing a glass jar in hot water just in order to recycle it – let’s minimise the energy cost and maximise the benefit”.

Green Tomato Kit Eco Product Review

The Green Tomato Kit has nothing to do with tomatoes. Well sort of. Green Tomato has a simple idea that it’s easy to be kinder to the planet by doing things like not buying those tomatoes on a two for one offer as you won’t eat them all. They’ve also set up a taxi service in London made up of Toyota Prius’(which, thanks to getting this kit has explained a mystery to me of seeing cars with funny looking apples on the side – they’re green tomatoes).

The Green Tomato Kit is pack to help those thinking of going green do it a little easier. As regular readers my know, I get annoyed by the packaging of some of the eco stuff I review – it’s all well and good being made of recycled plastic but it’s wrapped in polystyrene. Well the Green Tomato Kit came in biodegradable packaging made from potato starch and even the label with my address written on is biodegradable – made from corn starch by these guys.

And inside are a host of goodies. It’s all wrapped in a cotton reusable bag (not sure if it’s organic cotton) which is huge actually so good for your shopping. There’s then a water saving thingy to go in your cistern to help save water, two energy saving lightbulbs, radiator panels, some stickers and a thermometer.

Each is quite nifty in its own right. The thermometer, or ‘Thermo-Wobbler’ sticks to the wall and you can easily check if your house is too warm, or indeed if it’s too cold for the old folk or young nippers. The website’s quite good explaining all the stuff (and written in a chirpy tone – “have a cuddle” if you’re cold for example), although it does tell you similar things on the back of the stickers too (check there first, I thought there were no instructions…).

The sticker’s are obvious, but then they’re obvious to me, maybe not someone else. Indeed the pack is aimed at getting people to go green but don’t know where to start. The lightbulbs are nice, the bag, the water saver etc are all good too. The radiator panels are a cool edition too, something a little less obvious.

All in all, the Green Tomato Kit is a nice bit of, er, kit. It does what it says on the tin and as mentioned is a good introduction to the novice, great as a present. It’s not cheap at £9.99 plus postage and packaging, but it’s not expensive enough to make me say it’s overpriced. Go to www.greentomato.org to order yours and also take a look around the site, as I said it’s quite fun.

Heroes Episode Guide – Season 2 Chapter 8: Four Months Ago…

WARNING, PLOT SPOILERS!
Probably the best episode of the series so far. I always enjoy these sorts of ones – catching up with what’s happening in the intervening months or going into the future. And lots of things are revealed to us through Peter repairing his memory. Firstly the relationship between Peter and Adam isn’t made up. We learn more about the Company, Elle and Bob and what’s been going on since Peter exploded and why Nathan is looking good again. Although Nathan in the present day has been conspicuously absent for some reason.

And then there’s Niki and DL. We find out what happened to DL and why Niki turns to the Company for help. I still don’t know why DL couldn’t have let that bullet go through him but I suppose the death adds poignancy.

And it’s nice to get a bit of background on the twins, while it doesn’t really change things, we learn about their story. And it’s nice to see Sylar again – I’d almost forgotten about him!

While most of the episode is set in the past, Matt Parkman’s story is in the present. He’s still trying to find out what is happening to everyone and uses his developing powers to get his own way. Whether that will lead to further corruption like his father is anyone’s guess. We still don’t know what Angela’s power is but she seems to be able to resist Matt is some small way, not revealing who the woman in the photo is and does she do anything to Heidi? It’s hard to tell.

An enjoyable episode that reveals quite a lot but as usual gives more questions than answers – is Adam actually a good guy who wants to save the world?

Solar Powered Car From University Of Michigan

Besides the glitzy car manufacturers, one of the most interesting parts of the Detroit Auto Show 2008 were the solar cars from the University of Michigan.

The University of Michigan Solar Car Team is a non-profit, entirely student run organisation whose purpose is to design, finance, build, and race a solar-powered vehicle. They displayed two of their vehicles, the Momentum 2005 (1st place North American Solar Challenge, and 3rd place World Solar Challenge), and the Continuum 2007 (7th place World Solar Challenge – partly due to a crash).

The North American Solar Challenge was founded in 1989 and is now a 2,400 mile race between Dallas, Texas and Calgary, Alberta. The World Solar Challenge is the premiere solar car race in the world and takes place in Australia for 1,800 miles. Changes in the rules, such as the number of solar cells allowed and the driver having to sit upright necessitated changes in design from the 2005 Momentum to the 2007 Continuum. You can see the new solar cells that use parabolic mirrors in the 2007 design below.

Traveling on public highways, the vehicles can reach up to 87mph, converting solar energy to electricity through triple-junction cells, structured in three layers to maximise sunlight. The power captured is stored in high capacity lithium-ion or lithium-polymer battery packs.

For more informations, check out the University of Michigan Solar team website.

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