DIY Cleaning Products: Tips

One of the problems we have found with making out own cleaning products is that they tend to solidify over time (especially if the area they are stored in gets cold overnight). We are talking here about recipes that use soap of some kind (for us that means, dish washing liquid, hand wash, and laundry detergent). Commercial products contain ingredients to stop that happening but not when you make it yourself. Here are some tips to solve this problem:

• Make sure you use the right amount of liquid and soap when you make up the recipe 
• Always give the bottle a shake before using.
• If it gets really thick then pour the bottle into a mixing bowl, add a little boiling water at a time while mixing with an electric mixer on low or a whisk. When it looks like the right consistency pour it back into the bottle.
• Ecostore soap makes products of a better consistency than Sunlight Soap. 

Let us know if you have any other issues.

While I'm talking about this, I found yet another source of soap; Trade Aid. You can buy their soaps from Trade Aid stores or online and they only cost $3. As everything Trade Aid sells is fair trade so these are sustainably  produced (even the palm oil!) and the workers get a fair wage. More info here. I have not yet tried these soaps in a recipe but I don't see any reason they would be much different to the Ecostore soaps as they have similar ingredients.

Anybody found another good source of soap?

DIY Cleaning Products & Ecostore

Like the new blog design? I got distracted when I was meant to be writing this post!

If you are looking for an more environmentally friendly alternative to sunlight soap that doesn't cost $10 a bar then try  Ecostore bar soaps. I picked up one for about $1.80 from New World. They are a bit smaller than the average bar soap so to get the same amount as 1/2 a bar of sunlight soap (as required in this recipe) you will need almost a whole bar (60g out of a total of 80g to be exact, use scales is my advice).

Now, they do contain palm oil and I have given Ecostore a lot of flak in the past about their use of so called 'sustainable' palm oil. But recently Ecostore have been using a programme called GreenPalm. This is how their website describes the programme:

"Ecostore supports the production of sustainable palm oil through the GreenPalm programme. This means that for every tonne of palm oil/palm kernel oil we use in the production of ecostore products we have paid a voluntary premium to a palm oil producer which is operating within the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm oil’s (RSPO) strict guidelines for social and environmental responsibility." - http://www.ecostore.co.nz/about/palmoil.html

The way I understand it is that for every tonne of palm oil Ecostore buys, they send a premium directly to RSPO sustainable growers regardless as to whether Ecostore actually bought any palm oil from those growers. This is necessary because at the moment it is impossible to know which grower grew a particular shipment of palm oil or whether any of it is sustainable. This is because palm oil from different growers is mixed up when it is processed. The GreenPalm programme means that sustainable growers are rewarded despite the lack of traceability in the industry.

This is a major improvement from Ecostore's previous policy ('we're a member of RSPO so it's all ok') but it still relies on the RSPO definitions and policies on what 'sustainable' palm oil is (which are not ideal) and on their auditing system (which, from what I've read is practically non-existent). More on the RSPO here.

So as far as I see it, GreenPalm certified palm oil is a big improvement and I think it is good enough to be supported as a step in the right direction, but it should not stop there!

The problem with bath toys...

When bub was around 12 weeks old, we attended a Plunket PEPE course which is designed to help out new mums by providing advice, support and education. The course itself was fantastic, and we would recommend these kinds of courses to just about everyone.

A negative was one comment that a guest speaker said which has been ringing around in my head ever since. She was talking about the importance of getting babies used to water (great stuff) and talked about bath toys. Apparently the ones that have 'squirting capabilities' get really mouldy within a month- even if you sterilise them. Her suggestion was to buy new ones from the $2 shop every month and dump the rest.
It horrified me that she was effectively promoting adding a bunch of these brightly coloured, mostly non-recyclable items to landfill every month. She didn't seem to understand my issue with it either, sadly enough.

So what do you do with a bunch of bath toys you can't use in the bath? It would be great if you could give us some suggestions!

Also, how do you deal with people who just simply dont understand (or want to)?

Thanks!

The Best Fish Guide

In this country, being an island nation, we tend to take our fish for granted. We have lots of coastline and a seemingly abundance of fish in our water. This would be fine if we were the only consumers of fish from our waters, but we are not. Unfortunately for many years our waters have been heavily overfished and some of the methods used are heavily damaging our marine environment.
According to Statistics New Zealand, in 2009 we exported $1302million worth of fish, crusteceans and molluscs.

In our household, one of us doesn't eat fish- period. Though occasionally a rare exception is made for fish caught by a friend.

For anyone concerned about whether the fish you eat is a sustainable choice, we recommend you check out NZ Forest and Bird's 'Best Fish Guide'. There's a wallet guide you can print off so that its always handy for the next time you buy fish.

Please do take some time to check out the information on the Forest and Bird website so that we can all try to make more informed choices when we buy our seafood.

Copyright Lyall Reynolds Photography 2011

Roundtable On Sustainable Palm Oil launch new Logo

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has launched a new logo, Read about it here. No idea if we will see it on products in NZ, but it raises some important issues. If you saw the logo on a product in NZ would it encourage people to buy it? Would that decision be based on sound information or simply because it sounds environmentally friendly? This blog article raises many issues, some of which I will look at here.

Lets get one thing straight, RSPO certified palm oil products are more environmentally friendly than non-certified palm oil products. The question is, are they good enough? I am a big fan of the idea that we don't need to buy ethically perfect products right now (many simply don't exist yet). What we need to do is buy the most ethical product that is available and create demand for positive change. But if palm oil free products are more ethical than RSPO certified products then staying palm oil free still the preferred option.


Whats the problem?

Auckland Zoo says "only around 4% of the world's palm oil is certifiably sustainable and this 4% cannot be traced back to the plantation that produced it... At present, being a member of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) - an industry led group, not an independent body - is still not a 100% guarantee that palm oil is from a sustainable source"

So even if a product carries the RSPO logo this is no guarantee that all of the palm palm oil used is sustainable. The RSPO at the end of the day is a voluntary, industry led organisation and has limits as to how much change it can make at the local level.


So if you have no palm oil free options then RSPO certified products could be worth buying. Or you could decide that on balance certified palm oil is better than the alternatives as Ecostore do, but I simply do not see how it could be justifed. Ecostore says "The other alternative to palm oil is a petrochemical, but this unsustainable." True, petrochemicals are unsustainable, one day they will run out; but is this a problem? I would rather we ran out of petrochemicals than orangutans. 


I could be wrong here, I'm no expert, what do you think?

Gecko thieves jailed - NZ Herald News

Gecko thieves jailed - NZ Herald News

"Two German men who admitted travelling to New Zealand to steal rare native geckos have been jailed."

It's great to see those that seek to plunder our native species for personal gain caught and punished, but four and a half months jail is pathetic, especially given the price these geckos would fetch on the black market. It is sad when foreign collectors place more value on our native species than our law does.

Hopefully the review that is underway will rectify this discrepancy.