Electronic Devices Prevent Proper Sleep

Sorry for the time lapse since my last post, it's been a busy two weeks getting ready for another operation this Friday. I've also been setting up a new business and that's taken off quicker than I ever imagined so it's been all go on that front too!

Things might be a little hit and miss for a few weeks while I'm recovering or I could be posting daily from boredom - we'll wait and see! But either way bear with me, I've got lots of exciting things to share with you over the coming months. :)

For now I wanted to share this article with you:

Light From Electronic Devices Prevents Proper Night's Sleep

The results of the study are really interesting and I've experienced first hand the difference having no devices can make. I have to put my hand up and say I've been sleeping with either a lamp or fairy lights on pretty much my entire life. When I was old enough to go without a night light I was sleeping in the attic room with a ladder, so I had a small light to stop me falling in the night and I never really grew out of that habit.

Since reading the above report I thought I'd experiment a little, first banning our mobiles from the bedroom (I'm a 4am facebook surfer) and then turning the fairy lights off too. I found my quality of sleep improved instantly - just 3 nights in and I'm falling asleep much faster, being less restless and waking up naturally before my alarm rather than groaning and hitting snooze. Mid-night bathroom visits have become a bit riskier and we need to find a solution to the loud ticking of our new alarm clock, but overall I'm very happy with the results. :)

And of course I have to mention the eco benefit of not having the light on all night - a habit I was reluctant to break but am glad I did!

What do you think? Are you tempted to have a technology ban in the bedroom to see the results? Let me know in the comments below. :)

Cut your bills to pay for your luxuries!

At the moment we're cutting back on the luxuries so we can afford our bills. Now it's time to cut back on our bills to afford our luxuries!

My easter present from mum was a little unusual this year, but I love it. She got me Ideal Home magazine, which is full of really expensive design ideas that I will be copying for half the price, and interesting articles that led me to todays blog.

They have a wonderful article on Oliver Heath - a TV presenter who completely remodeled his house to be as eco friendly as possible. I'm not suggesting you go to quite the effort he has, spending £440,00 to buy the house and a further £130,000 in refubishment (!) but there are steps you can take that don't empty your bank account. Oliver estimates that it will take just 10 years to make back the refurbishment money with the savings he will make, which is incredible. If he can make back £130,000 in 10 years then we're all capable of making some pretty hefty savings ourselves with the right steps.


You need to start with the most obvious thing: changing your habits. Being green is a lifetime goal, not an instant save. Think of each habit you change as saving you 5p every time you remember. Add in just 1 habit a day and you'll only save £18.25 a year, but add 3 habits a day and you've saved £54.75!

Do you leave the door open when you take the bin out? Or leave lights on in various rooms even when no one is in them? How about leaving the shower running for 5 minutes to 'warm up' while you're getting ready? I'm not suggesting you lock yourself out of the house, sit in the dark and take a cold shower in the morning. That would be my worst nightmare! But pull the door almost closed, flick the light off when you'll be out for more than a few minutes and only leave your shower running the 30 seconds it needs to warm up before getting in.

Other ideas include keeping the doors in your house closed, only boil the water you need, switch things off instead of standby, don't leave things plugged in if you're not using them. All of these suggestions don't sound like they add up to much, but over the course of a year you'd be surprised.

Next you move on to simple solutions; conserve your heat and save water. A quick run down shows what you can do and how much you will save per year:

Seal drafts around doors, windows and loft hatches: £55
Insulate your hot water cylinder with a 75mm jacket: £40
Switch an old boiler to an A-rated condensing boiler: £100-£300
Fit a low-flow shower head: £90 (based on water-meter bills for a household of 4)

Swap incandescent lightbulbs to fluorescents: £55+ over the bulbs' life.
Swap a 70W halogen bulb with a 6W LED light: £70 over its' life.
It doesn't sound like much, less than £5/year saved on a lightbulb. But think of the bigger picture; most people will have 10-20 bulbs in their house as a conservative figure. That's £50-£100/year!

Insulate your loft to 270mm thick insulation and you can save £175/year. Add cavity wall insulation into the equation and you'll add a further £135/year. (based on a 3-bed semi detached house)

The final and biggest step is to start generating your own energy. This is where it gets a little complicated, so I'll be devoting another blog to that one!

So there you have it, some quick and painless steps to make your house more energy efficient. What habits will you be changing? Write them in comments below and we'll all try them together!

Post Sixteen: The Importance of a Green Business

The modern customer is looking for more than just great service these days, they're looking to see if your company has a conscience and isn't just profiteering. Fairtrade has taken huge steps in recent years to ensure better conditions for third world farmers and without consumer motivation it wouldn't have been possible. This is proof that today you need to think of more than just how your shop looks and whether your front of house is smiling.

One of the ways to show you care is to make sure you are up to date on your Green policies. Recycle, Reduce, Re-use is one of the best philosophies you can stick to when trying to improve your business. It can be practiced in any type of industry but I'll be focusing on the Hospitality Industry since that's the one I currently work in.

The Hospitality Industry sends a huge amount of food to landfill each year by overestimating their needs, using inefficient equipment and not doing all they can to minimise waste. I work in a coffee shop so I know we're limited by health & safety standards left right and centre, but that doesn't mean we can't take some big steps towards making the industry more environmentally friendly.

Our industry relies on the planet more so than others; our products come directly from the earth and without it we're out of business. If we don't keep the rainforests alive, we lose packaging. If plants soak up chemicals we are endangering our customers. The animals in turn eat these toxic plants and then our meat because contaminated. It's a vicious cycle that ultimately ends with us being closed.

Looking at it from a reverse view there's a much more positive image we can create. Support the Rainforest Association and there will always be trees for your packaging. Use organic products and organically raised animals and no one will be exposed to chemicals. Reducing your carbon footprint actually cuts your costs and raises your profile to customers. That's why more companies are turning to these policies to give their businesses a makeover.

From recycleable packaging to vegetable based inks, reusable containers, energy saving appliances, the resources are all there to make things as easy as possible for you. In this day and age there is no excuse to sit back ignoring the issues that people are crying out to be acknowledged. If your company can take even the smallest step you'll be changing the planet for the better. To give you an idea of what you can do here are some small examples I've already implemented here at The Witches Brew.

Fairtrade products and locally produced foods wherever possible.
Cut down your carbon footprint by reducing the distance your products have to travel. All of our coffee and hot chocolate is Fairtrade and our cakes and crisps are from local suppliers.

Only order what you need.
Buying in bulk only saves you money if you're going to use all of it, so companies who buy in by the hundreds and end up with a lot of wastage are actually just throwing money into landfills. We have fresh cakes ordered each week and usually stick to minimum orders of everything else we stock.

Use compostable cutlery.
Or napkins, takeaway cups, there are a whole host of compostable products out there you can use. Check out Vegware products for loads of ideas. We're introducing new compostable products as we run out of their throwaway counterparts.

Re-purpose everything you can.
Keep waste out of landfills by seeing if there's another use for it first. Our used coffee grounds are used to keep bugs off plants, down the drains as a de-odoriser, a tint for fixing wood furniture.. Check out some more ideas here. Old tins/pots become plant pots or pen pots. Empty handwash bottles become vases - Neal's Yard bottles are especially pretty for this idea.

Have your own compost heap.
There are loads of products these days that stop pests being an issue with a compost heap, so why not create your own? Throw all your food wastage onto the heap then find a local company or gardening group that will be happy to use it for you. We don't do this particular idea, but it's something I've looked into and would be viable in a business bigger than ours.


Is your business or the company you work for taking these steps? Are there any other steps you can think of that I haven't mentioned here? Get in touch, I'd love to hear from you. :)

Post Thirteen: The Sustainable Wardrobe

Good Afternoon!

The sun is shining, I'm in a flowery maxi-dress to mark the occassion and the sunglasses are tentatively in my handbag. I've got pink nails with white crackle on them and a flowery headband on and my only concession to the chill is a long cardigan. It's definitely getting close to summer weather even if we have only just started spring! So following on from this post about your summer wardrobe I wanted to do a blog about how you can make your wardrobe more sustainable and eco-friendly.

I found a brilliant article by Amisha Ghadiali called 12 Rules To Dress By which you can read here. It has a fab print-out that you can keep in your wardrobe to remind you of the rules before you go shopping and a little chart where you can keep track of how sustainable any new additions are.

If you want the full run-down on ways to keep your wardrobe up to date and still eco-friendly you'll need to read the article, but the basic principles are:

Do you really need new? I love the term pre-loved that's now used to describe clothes from charity shops or something you've been given by a friend. We're not talking your grandmas cast offs here, getting a group of friends together to swap clothes is a great socialising opportunity and you all walk away with a new outfit.

Research Ethical Designers. Green is the new black on the fashion scene, which means it's becoming so much easier to buy clothes made from organic or recycled fabrics, or that ensure fair trading standards are met for their suppliers.

Clear out your wardrobe. Not only will you find clothes you forgot you had and will now be wearing all the time again, you'll get extra space in your wardrobe once you give the stuff you don't want to charity. Now you can fill that space with pre-loved, sustainable clothing instead!

Get creative! You can pick up a sewing machine for the price of a new handbag and with it you can make hundreds of new creations - customise your old clothes, use old clothes to make a jar of hearts or even turn old clothes into fashion accessories. A fancy cuff from a dress/top can easily be turned into a new bracelet!


I'm going to be printing off the chart and writing down everything that goes into my wardrobe this year. Hopefully it'll get more environmentally friendly as the year goes on! Who wants to join me?

Post Ten: Green Living

Good morning!

I sit writing this gazing out onto a world of fog, so I thought what better way to cheer up than to share some new day-to-day green tips and some exciting news from me!

We'll start with the green tips. I follow RecycleBank UK on facebook and they're always posting interesting articles, tips and other things that I find fascinating. Today they posted an article 30 Days To A Greener Life which is basically 30 tips for you to try out - either 1 a day for a month, or just to encorporate a few into your day to day habits. These tips are pain-free ways to become more environmentally friendly, so I wanted to put it on paper (metaphorically that is!) that I'm comitting to the following tips. (NB: I'm only going to put the things I don't already do below. I already follow some of their tips.)

1. Start some good water habits.

I already turn the tap off while brushing my teeth, time to add in the hand washing! As for the shower, I've cut down from 30 minutes to 15 and that's the best I can do. Sorry planet. :(

5. Banish stand-by.

Our house is full of electrical equipment. Not all of it's mine but anything within my control will get unplugged when I'm done with it. I can also comit to doing this at work - only bare essentials like the fridge will be left on overnight.

11. Make a meal plan to avoid waste.

I've made an inventory of what we have in the cupboard and I'm only making meals that can be done with what's there. The only things I'm buying in at the moment are meat and vegetables. Plus I'm planning meals a few days in advance so that my goal of only shopping twice a week can be met.

16. Carry a reusable bag.

I already carry one in the boot of the car, I'm actually comitting to remember to take it in the shop!

27. Head for the local library.

Once I finish my boxset of The Sookie Stackhouse Series (True Blood to you tv fanatics) I will be searching out my local library and stocking up on some good books!


So those are my promises to the environment. Once they become habits rather than something I do consciously, I'll take another look at the list and pick some more!

As for my exciting news... *drum roll*

Tom and I have decided to go travelling! This is instead of saving for a flat, so the direction of this blog is going to shift ever so slightly but in a much more exciting way! In my first post one of my Facts About Me was that I want to go travelling, but circumstances have made that difficult lately. Things have changed about a bit recently which has allowed us to think about taking some time out to travel. :) To be honest, my tips about making pillow covers instead of buying and cool things to make for your house aren't going to stop anyway. I love that sort of stuff as a hobby so you'll get just as much of it! However now they'll be interspersed with tips on how to travel lightly, cheaply and safely!

The plan is to spend quite a long time saving, but it's never too early to start a little project book with hints and tips. So to get the ball rolling, have any of you been travelling and have tips you can share with me?

Mission accomplished, fog forgotten. ;)