It’s tempting to buy clothes at rock-bottom prices, but often these fall apart in a few weeks. As well as being un-green, they’re usually made by poor people who work in terrible conditions for very low wages. So decide that you’ll buy two good tops which will look gorgeous all year, instead of ten cheap ones which will look awful after a couple of washes.
A great way that you and your mates can do more to save the planet is to pool your resources – just because you’ve had enough of certain possessions, it doesn’t mean that they’re no good to your mates. Hold a clothes-swapping party two or three times a year, when your mates bring all the clothes they’re definitely not going to wear any more. Lay on a few nibbles and some music, and have a laugh trying stuff on. It’s amazing how what looks rubbish on one person can look a million dollars on another! As well as having a good night, you’ll all be able to add some new interest to your wardrobe for the season without outlaying any dosh at all – and you’ll be helping the environment at the same time by avoiding manufacturing.
TOP TIPS FOR GREEN QUEENS
When it comes to saving the planet, dry-cleaning is bad news. Dry-cleaners use chemicals rather than water to get out stains, which react with gases in the atmosphere to form a brownish haze, polluting the skies. On top of this, one dry-cleaning chemical can cause cancer in animals. And if that wasn’t bad enough, just think about all the plastic bags and metal hangers dry-cleaners use, which is really wasteful! So next time you’re thinking of buying something with Dry clean only on the label, think of the planet and choose one you can wash at home.
A lot of waste is caused by people buying stuff they don’t really need. So make sure you and your mates don’t spend all your free time at the shops – plan something fun like swimming or bowling instead.
Lucy again – one of my fave things is taking cast-off clothes and transforming them into fab new outfits. It’s easy – with a bit of innovation, anyone can give old clothes a totally new look. I invested in a sewing machine a while back, because customising vintage clothes has become my main hobby – in fact I’m sure you’ll see the LL label (Lucy Lovering designs) in the shops one of these days. In the meantime, here are some of my ideas for creating your own unique clothes from second-hand stuff that will beat the high street fashions hands down:
1
Add a second-hand belt to an outfit for instant impact.
2
Add material to turn a pelmet-style super-mini skirt into a boho long one.
3
Cut a frumpy long skirt into a sassy short one.
4
Shorten long trousers into cropped styles
5
Mix and (mis)match old and new styles – for instance, take a prom dress and add Gothic accessories for a funky new twist.
6
Mix and (mis)match fabrics, such as teaming tartan with polkadots, to breathe new life into old fashions.
7
For jeans, try cutting off waistbands, fraying pockets, adding iron-on transfers or gems, or getting rid of the legs and adding a ra-ra bottom.
8
Cut fabric to create bold angles and lines – for instance, changing the hemline or neckline of a plain black dress can make it appear much more fashionable and fun.
9
Add or change details such as:
buttons
fake fur
lace
fabric paint
rhinestones
beads
sequins
iron-on transfers
fabric appliqués
10
Customise bags by adding any wild accessories you can lay your hands on, such as earrings, hairclips, patches, badges, studs, buttons, tassels, dangly strings of beads etc.
For a really unique look, wear all of the above at once – Nesta.
Nesta, I think it’s time you took your medication – Lucy.
What, what? I was just getting into it – Nesta.
Then don’t – Lucy.
A girl can’t win – Nesta.
TOP TIPS FOR GREEN QUEENS
When you do buy new clothes, go for eco-friendly fabrics.
Choose organic cotton if you possibly can, because non-organic cotton plants are treated with enormous amounts of pesticides and fertilisers, which also damage the health of cotton pickers, who are often young women like us. Some high street shops are now stocking organic T-shirts and jeans at reasonable prices.
Unbleached cotton is much better for the environment than pure white cotton.
Rayon is a good choice for clothes because it’s made from trees and plants, so it involves fewer manufacturing processes to make it.
Try to avoid buying non-iron items, because even though they’re great for saving time and effort, they’re probably treated with formaldehyde, which is poisonous to many living things.
Silk is a dodgy fabric when it comes to planet-saving, because many chemicals are used during its manufacture.
When you and your mates want to makeover your bedrooms, you can have some great days out while helping to save the planet too. Look in charity shops, car boot sales and salvage yards for room accessories such as lampshades, cushion covers, rugs, vases and picture frames etc. People get rid of all sorts of really good quality stuff at give-away prices, especially in the posh areas of town. It’s just a matter of rooting it out – and that’s where mates come in handy to help. A long hard search is a great excuse to relax over a cappuccino and a muffin afterwards too. Here are some of our fave interior design themes, to get you thinking of ideas:
Bollywood
1960s
pink (there are many, many different shades)
goth (black and red or purple)
cool blues and greens
Morocco
your fave film
Far East (Chinese/Japanese)
rock ’n’ roll
different textures (e.g. silky, furry, wool, suede)
French boudoir (lots of white, gold, pastels and glass)
African
Start a CD and DVD exchange with your mates. You’ll be able to hear and watch a lot more music and movies – while feeling ecologically smug at the same time. (Of course you can be even greener by buying them second-hand in the first place, from charity shops or online stores.)
If you have a garden, whether it’s a small patch of mud and weeds, or a sweeping lawn with overflowing flowerbeds and shrub borders, you have the scope to help the planet. It’s not about aspiring to win a prize at the Chelsea Flower Show, it’s all about connecting with nature and encouraging your garden wildlife. This doesn’t mean that you have to help moles dig holes and go out cheering on squirrels. The countryside is changing and disappearing, so many creatures and plants out there are having a hard time surviving. By making some small changes to your garden, you can make a big difference to them and to the environment as a whole. (Help a hedgehog! Save a slug! Befriend a beetle! – Izzie.) Here are some ideas how:
1
If you’re lucky enough to have a decent-sized garden, ask your parents if you can have your own corner to dedicate to growing wildflowers. (You can buy packets of wildflower seeds at any garden centre.) This will provide a habitat for loads of lovely wild creatures.
2
See if you can provide shelter for a particular species: for instance, install a bird box to encourage birds to nest in your garden, or a bat box – bats are an endangered species. They’re also natural predators of night-flying insects like moths and flies, so a bat box will help to keep your patio insect-free on summer evenings, leaving you to enjoy your barbecue or simply lounge about with a cool drink watching the sunset unpestered by pesky pests.
3
Add a light-coloured rock to your garden to encourage butterflies to bask on it in the early-morning sun (make sure it’s a few feet high for protection against predators), or ask your parents to help you drill holes in a block of untreated wood and hang it under the eaves of your house as a resting sp
ot for tired, solitary bees (yes, seriously).
4
Put out scraps of food for the birds – bits of stale bread, leftover bacon rinds, egg shells etc. will all help birds survive hard winters.
Providing water in your garden is the number one way to attract wildlife. Persuade your parents to put in a pond if you can, but if that’s going a bit too far, don’t worry – adding a bird bath is almost as good. You don’t have to splash out on a fancy-schmancy stone sculpture – just turn a dustbin lid upside down and fill it with water and all sorts of thirsty little creatures will love you for it.
TOP TIPS FOR GREEN QUEENS
If you’re not naturally green-fingered, this one’s for you . . . The very best thing you can do in your garden to help save the planet is in fact to do nothing at all! Tell your family that instead of pruning and dead-heading in autumn, it’s much better to leave all the dead material in your garden all winter.
This helps to protect the living parts of plants from frost – after all, it’s what happens in nature.
It leaves seed heads for birds to nibble on.
The dead stems of plants will provide homes for helpful garden creatures such as ladybirds.
If you have room in your garden, convince your parents to leave one corner as a totally wild, untouched area. All sorts of animals will gratefully use the shelter.
Who would ever have thought that the very best sort of gardening is to do nothing at all?
On average, every person in Europe throws away the equivalent of two thousand eight hundred banana skins in food waste every year. Read on to find out how to cut down your family’s food waste.
A brilliant way of reducing the amount of rubbish sent to landfill is to scrounge a tiny bit of your garden to turn into a compost heap. It doesn’t have to look like a huge stinking mound of rotting food either (which is essentially what a compost heap is – whiff!). You can get neat and tidy compost bins in all sorts of shapes and sizes – many local councils sell them at discount prices or even give them away free. Make it your job to collect your family’s food waste and put it in the composter, and spare a couple of hours to sweep up fallen leaves in the autumn and add them too (instead of your dad burning them on a bonfire and contributing to air pollution), and you’re well on the way to being a Green Queen. Not only will you be reducing your family’s rubbish, but you’ll end up with brilliant fertiliser for the garden, which will mean whoever looks after the garden in your house won’t have to buy un-green manufactured products. Double yay!
Here’s what you can feed your compost heap with:
fruit and vegetable peelings
left-over fruit and vegetables
tea bags
coffee grounds
grass cuttings
hedge trimmings
any other dead plant matter
Don’t include meat, cheese or fish, as you’ll attract unwanted furry friends such as rats into your garden.
A dripping tap can waste up to four litres of water every day. An easy problem to solve – turn it off or call the plumber!
See if you can collect rain to water your garden, rather than using water from the tap. Ask your parents if you can put a water butt somewhere inconspicuous. You may need some help to install it – it’s fairly easy to do (make sure you remember to prop it up on blocks so you can get a watering can underneath!), but it’s a bulky thing to handle. So rope in your mates or use it as an excuse to get chatting to a boy or two who can give you a hand. Some local authorities sell cheap water butts, or try www.raincatch.com or www.water-tanks.net.
In the average household, central heating produces enough carbon dioxide to fill more than 200,000 party balloons. Read on to make sure you’re not using more than you need.
One of the best things you can do to save burning fossil fuels and making global warming worse is to make your heating more efficient. This is something you’ll need to persuade the rest of the family to get into – they’ll thank you for it as it will save them money in the long run.
Here’s how:
1
On cold, dark winter nights, go around your house drawing all the curtains and shutting the doors to all the rooms – it’s amazing how much toastier this keeps everywhere, and all it takes is a bit of effort.
2
Paste some kitchen foil behind the radiator in your bedroom (and other radiators if your family agree) with the shiny side facing into the room. This acts as a type of insulation by reflecting heat back into the room.
3
Get your parents to turn the thermostat on your central heating down by one degree so that it doesn’t come on automatically as often.
4
Make sure that the timer on your hot water heater is only set to times of day when you really need hot water, not on the ‘all day’ setting.
Ask your mum or dad if they can set your central heating to cut out thirty minutes before the last person usually goes to bed. It takes a while for a house to cool down, so it should stay comfortably warm until everyone’s safely tucked up!
Did you know that every time your clothes are sploshing round in the washing machine, you’re using up the planet’s water supply and burning fossil fuels for electricity? We didn’t. But it doesn’t mean that you have to give up washing your clothes and go round smelling niffy in order to save the planet. (Phew – Nesta.) All you have to do is be more conscious of the environment when it comes to doing your laundry.
1
Make sure your family only use the washing machine for full loads – if you’ve got just one or two things that need an urgent wash, do them by hand.
2
Detergents pollute the water system, so encourage your family to use environmentally-friendly washing powders or liquids.
3
Even better, invest in a set of eco washing balls, which you can use instead of washing powder or liquid. (We’re told they work by producing ionized oxygen that gets water molecules to penetrate deep into clothing fibres to lift dirt away – but don’t ask us exactly what this means; they just work, OK?) They may seem expensive, but they last for one thousand washes, so they actually save money in the long term – and, of course, they’re much better for the environment. You can buy them from the Internet – just search for ‘eco balls’. (Your brother’s filthy football kit might be too much of a challenge, though, so keep some eco-washing powder in the cupboard just for extreme cases!)
4
Persuade your family to stop using fabric softeners – they’re not necessary, and it just means more chemicals going down the drain – literally.
5
Ask your family to wash their clothes in cooler water, unless they’re very dirty. Studies have shown that clothes get just as clean at thirty degrees as at forty degrees, and far less energy is used to heat the water.
6
Whenever possible, hang washing out on the clothes line to dry naturally, instead of using the time-saving but energy-eating tumble drier. (Drying them in the open air makes clothes smell lovely and fresh too.) In colder weather, hang out clothes on an indoor clothes drier or over radiators (if they’re on already).
For an easy way to save water, ask your parents if you can put water-filled plastic bottles in your loo cisterns. It means that the cistern doesn’t need so much water to fill it up, so the amount of water used with each flush is reduced.
Since the 1950s, over seventy-two thousand synthetic chemicals have been introduced into cleaning products. These are poisonous to the environment and don’t break down naturally over time. How can we stop this madness? Keep reading . . .
Try to cut down on cleaning products because they contain harsh chemicals that are damaging to the environment. (Yay! I mean, yay, cut down on cleaning because it is way boring, not because it is damaging to the environment – Izzie.)
Also, using too many cleaning products is actually causing problems such as an increase in childhood asthma and eczema. All this doesn’t mean you should cut
out cleaning! Instead, suggest to whoever does most of the cleaning in your house (My mum, she’s obsessive – Izzie) that you can help out on a regular basis, and you want to make a couple of your own cleaning products. No one’s ever going to turn down an offer of help with the cleaning. (You don’t know my mum. She likes to do it properly –Izzie.)
Mates, Dates and Saving the Planet Page 5