Branded corporate gifts that help reduce waste

   Catching up with The Green Desk's Yasmin Halai-Carter at UKAware 2011  This weekend saw me scoot down to London again to visit UKAware, the UK's largest and longest running contemporary sustainable lifestyle exhibitionThis was my third annual visit and I have to admit, it was a great excuse to catch up with some of my old friends and have a good mooch around to see what's new.  As ever, I came away buzzing with excitement over the amazing projects I saw, but having had a press pack for the first time ever - and having been accompanied by my six year old, who is a magnet for freebies -  I also noticed I was laden...

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Chew your calories and drink water: Industrial beverages and tooth erosion

Dental erosion is a different problem from dental caries. Dental erosion is defined as the removal of minerals from the tooth structure via chemicals. Dental caries are the result of increased site-specific acidity due to bacterial fermentation of sugars.Still, both have the same general result, destruction of teeth structure.Losing teeth probably significantly accelerated death among our Paleolithic ancestors, as it does with modern hunter-gatherers. It is painful and difficult to eat nutritious foods when one has teeth problems, and chronic lack of proper nutrition is the beginning of the end.The table below, from Ehlen et al. (2008), shows...

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Wipe Out Waste Welly Boot Camp

I love my job!  That's if you can call being a roving rubbish-busting blogger a job, I suppose it's more of a vocation.  However, no matter what you call it,  I am just appreciative of the places I end up and the brilliant people I meet in the process.And this week my adventures took me from the East of England to the West Country, from Suffolk to Somerset, where I teamed up with a host of eco-mentors at a "Welly" Boot Camp for a national schools' award called Wipe Out Waste.  And trust me, this competition is so cool, Jools Holland has even produced the theme song.The Wipe Out Waste programme is the brainchild of the fabulous...

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Health markers varying inexplicably? Do some detective work with HCE

John was overweight, out of shape, and experiencing fatigue. What did he do? He removed foods rich in refined carbohydrates and sugars from his diet. He also ditched industrial seed oils and started exercising. He used HealthCorrelator for Excel (HCE) to keep track of several health-related numbers over time (see figure below).Over the period of time covered in the dataset, health markers steadily improved. For example, John’s HDL cholesterol went from a little under 40 mg/dl to just under 70; see chart below, one of many generated by HCE.However, John’s blood pressure varied strangely during that time, as you can see on the chart below...

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Wakey wakey, it's UKAware.

(photo taken during UKAware 2009)If you've got any free time on Friday of Saturday and can get into London, I've got a real treat for your diary, as the end of this week sees the launch of the 4th year of  UKAware, the UK's leading sustainable living show.  Running from Friday 25th to Saturday 26th March, at London Olympia, it promises a fun packed programme of activities, seminars and workshops as well as aisles full of eco and ethical companies highlighting their products and services.This will be the third year that I have trekked down to London to visit the show and I love it!  Not only does it give you a chance to keep...

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From St Edmundsbury's Zero Waste Week to Zero Waste Europe

Zero Waste Europe - representatives from 13 European countriesI hope you're prepared for another one of those moments where I proclaim, "I would never have guessed that when I signed up to St Edmundsbury's Zero Waste Week challenge, that I'd end up throwing out just a plaster or visiting landfill or going on the BBC............... or even still blogging about it three years later.Well, I trust that you're sitting down, because I most definitely could not have guessed that three years to the exact week that I took the Zero Waste Week challenge I would end up at an international strategy meeting in Brussels.Trangressing away from the question of...

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We share an ancestor who probably lived no more than 640 years ago

This post has been revised and re-published. The original comments are preserved below. Typically this is done with posts that attract many visits at the time they are published, and whose topics become particularly relevant or need to be re-addressed at a later date....

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Guest post:: Mrs B gives up rubbish for Lent

 Melanie Bennett blogs about living, riding and eating in Yorkshire over atwww.mrsbsstuffandnonsense.blogspot.comToday's post comes courtesy of regular Tweeter and blogger, MrsBYork, aka Melanie Bennett, whom I first 'met' when she left a comment on The Rubbish Diet several years ago and have since met properly during a visit to the city of York. When Mel told me last week that she was giving up rubbish for Lent, I was naturally intrigued to pick up on her story and asked if she'd mind writing a guest post.  I'll now leave you in Mel's company where she kindly shares news of her fantastic challenge. Over to you Mrs B..... I've never...

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Ideal Home Show engages bloggers in its 103rd year

It's been at least a whole decade since I visited the Ideal Home Show.  The last and only time I came was when I was working in London in the 1990s.  Gosh that actually makes it seem much longer...especially as I now realise that it was in fact some time last century.But there's nothing quite like being offered a press pass to get me racing to a top London lifestyle show that itself is now over a century old, and all because I wanted to have a proper nosey around the eco refit of a replica of No.1 Coronation Street.Yes, I admit to being a Corrie fan even from the olden days of Albert Tatlock and it was very interesting...

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Scrapping your car? Ever thought about doing it for charity?

 Tom Chance, founder of fundraising organisation Give A CarNow don't fall off your chairs at hearing from me twice in one month will you!  Well it is March you know, almost springtime, which means I'm coming out of my winter hibernation and getting out more.  I even ventured down to London AGAIN last week, to celebrate MyZeroWaste's shortlisting in the PEA Awards, where they were just pipped to the post by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Landshare campaign.  Great news and well-deserved for the Landshare team but MyZeroWaste was also a real winner in my eyes.The following day, while I was still in the big smoke,  I also...

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Saving energy on a supermarket sweep

A couple of weeks ago I attended a sponsored bloggers lunch at a sustainable restaurant in West Hampstead to mark the launch of Sainsbury's consumer energy-saving initiative, in conjunction with British Gas.British Gas and Sainsbury's had already partnered to offer customers gas and electricity services through Sainsbury's Energy but the buzz of the day or indeed that week was the launch of a new range of products and services that can actually save their customers energy while they shop!Yes I know, I too have got that same image of busy customers flocking to Sainsbury's and being wafted with natural fans and fruity cocktails, while the fresh...

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The China Study II: Fruit consumption and mortality

I ran several analyses on the effects of fruit consumption on mortality on the China Study II dataset using WarpPLS. For other China Study analyses, many using WarpPLS as well as HCE, click here.The results are pretty clear – fruit consumption has no significant effect on mortality.The bar charts figure below shows what seems to be a slight downward trend in mortality, in the 35-69 and 70-79 age ranges, apparently due to fruit consumption.As it turns out, that slight trend may be due to something else: in the China Study II dataset, fruit consumption is positively associated with both animal protein and fat consumption. And, as we have seen...

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