Organic silverpolish

I read an interesting thing today that I had to try.

Line a ceramic or glass container with aluminium foil (or use an aluminium pan). Fill it up with boiling water and and add one tablespoon of baking soda and one tablespoon of salt. Drop in your silver pieces and make sure they touch both the foil and each other. Then just sit back and watch it work. When they are bright and shiny again (takes just a minute), fish them out, rinse them off and dry with a clean soft cloth.

Some of my napkin-rings were really black and not everything went away. To finish those last black parts I mixed baking soda with a little bit of water to a paste and just rubbed it for a few seconds. Now they're all shiny. Really easy and cheap and no chemicals!

Meat Free Monday

Today we had italian/american inspired vegetarian burgers with fresh vegetables and feta-cheese mix.

For four persons you need;

8 burgers
8 large leafs of lettuce to be used instead of bread
freshly sliced cucumber
freshly sliced tomatoes
toasted onion
sliced cheddarcheese

Fetacheese-mix;
2dl turkish yoghurt
150g fetacheese
1/2 jar of sundried tomatoes
1 clove of garlic
salt and pepper
fresh basil

Crush the feta-cheese into the yoghurt. Chopp the sundried tomatoes into small pieces and put that in the mix together with pressed garlic, salt and pepper. Add a teaspoon or two of the oil from the sundried tomatoes to add flavour. Finish the mix with a few leaves of chopped basil.

Put your burger together and enjoy!

Organic Toothbrush

30 million toothbrushes are disposed of in Australia alone each year. Used toothbrushes produces 1000 tonnes of plastic landfill that won't degrade for generations to come.

The environmental toothbrush is made of bamboo and is 100 percent biodegradable. The use of bamboo causes no deforestation and no pollution since it's a fast-growing grass and sensitive to pesticides. These toothbrushes lasts for as long as your ordinary ones. When you're done with it you can put it on your compost and the entire brush will turn into soil.

The toothbrushes are cheap, 36AUD (SEK255 or USD37) for a pack of 12, and they ship worldwide.

Check it out and order your own at environmentaltoothbrush.com.au

Neutral

Neutral is a Swedish brand approved by the Swedish Asthma and Allergy foundation. They have a lot of different products from skincare to laundry detergent. There are also special products for children and infants.

All products are free from perfume, synthetic dyes and unnecessary additives and some products are marked with Svanen ecolabel (the Swan).

On their web-page you can find good tips on how to prevent allergies.

You can find Neutral in your regular supermarket.

La Pluma Rosé

Today I tried a new organic rosé wine. La Pluma is a spanish wine from producers Julià & Navinès. The grapes are a mix of tempranillo, merlot and cabernet sauvignon. It has a great light red colour and a taste of raspberries and pomegranate.

This wine was really delicious as a pre-dinner drink and we continued with the same wine for our barbecue dinner. It was perfect with grilled pork.

At 79 SEK/11 USD at the Swedish wineshop (Systembolaget) this is really a bargain for those warm summer nights.

Power of consumption

Nobody can do it alone, but with the small steps and choices we make every day, we can all do our part. That's the most important thing I want to show with this blog. We can really do it together. All consumers of food, drink, clothes, fuel, skincare etc etc can put the pressure on our governments and all companies to work for a better and more sustainable future for all of us simply by choosing what we spend our money on.

-Buying organic milk/wine/juice/coffee instead of regular shows our farmers that we don't want to drink chemicals and hormones.
-Buying toys painted with non-toxic paint or made of non-toxic plastic shows our toy-stores that they need to produce and sell things that won't give off poison when our children put them in their mouth.
-Buying organic skincare will tell the producers that we don't want to rub chemicals on the biggest organ we have; our skin.
-Using public transportation whenever possible and buy cars with alternative fuel-sources will show the oil-industry that enough is enough.

If we keep asking at our local stores for those products and keep buying the things that are good for us those things will be produced in a larger scale. We can make the power of money work in our favour.

Yes we can!

Plastic is not so fantastic in LA

Today Los Angeles is the 14th city in California and the largest city in the US to ban disposable plastic bags at the check-out counters in grocery stores. The ban will take effect later this year after an environmental impact report. The city has 7500 grocery stores, and they will all have to comply with this. The larger ones within six months and the smaller ones within a year.

Three billions of plastic bags goes to waste each year in L.A alone so undoubtedly this will have a huge impact on the environment. Altogether California uses over 12 billions of plastic bags every year and only 5 percent is being recycled.

From the beginning the ban also included paperbags, but this was not a part of the deciscion this time. Instead customers will be charged 10 cents per paper bag at the store. In two years the city will conduct a study to determine if the ban should also include paperbags.

There has been a lot of discussions about the loss of jobs for people that produces those plastic bags. This is a great example on how to move forward; Projectgreenbag. Environmentally friendly and keeping employment within California as well.

More information about plastic waste can be found at the Plastic Pollution Coalitions website.