The BBC News website features a series of photographs of life in a eco-friendly Celtic-style roundhouse. Tony Wrench and Jane Faith built the roundhouse 9 years ago in Pembrokeshire, and live a low impact life in it. The house is… Read More »Photos of life in an eco-roundhouse
For Anne Summers, going green started with the purchase of a set of Eco Balls and the delivery of some council recycling bins. Before she knew it, she’d accidentally started an online shop selling all those hard to find supplies for making your own, simple cleaning products that are kinder to the environment.
Anne launched Summer Naturals in April this year, stocking essential oils, white vinegar and bicarbonate of soda (in larger sizes than are easily available elsewhere), and lots more besides.
We asked Anne about her journey to becoming environmentally aware, and for her top cleaning recipes and tips.
Eco Street: I’m intrigued, how did the purchase of a set of Eco Balls lead to you changing the way you live?
Anne Summers: My very first step towards adopting a greener lifestyle came after I found a forum on the internet, the ladies on there were chatting about an holistic lifestyle. I didn’t know what holistic meant and I wasn’t prepared to admit my ignorance, but I was intrigued by their attitudes. What appealed to me most was that the discussions were rekindling memories of my childhood and how I was raised; it was all about natural lifestyles. My very first eco-purchase was a set of Eco Balls. I admit to buying them for economic reasons, I’d still not fully grasped the environmental thing. We were then delivered recycling bins; I’d read many discussions about recycling and was eager to participate. I now moan at my local council to improve their recycle facilities, recycling is such a rewarding thing to do. I then moved on to wanting to know how to make my own household cleaners, and decided to remove all chemicals from my home.
As posted at the Eco Street forum by ECO TV: Is your garden more rubbish dump than compost heap? Are you a green god/goddess in the kitchen and eco-disaster in the garden? Do you ever wonder why you never see… Read More »New TV series: green garden makeovers
We’re a little late on take-up with this, but never late than never. It’s Energy Efficiency Week this week (it started on Monday), a national campaign in the UK to bring attention to saving energy, money and the environment. With… Read More »Energy Efficiency Week 2006
Thousands of American homes and buildings will open their doors to the public today (7th Oct 2006) to give everyone the opportunity to experience solar power, solar heating, cooling, and hot-water, wind power, daylighting, and green building technologies. This is… Read More »US National Solar Tour starts today
It’s fine and well banging on about making our homes more eco-friendly, but it can seem a daunting tast, especially when you don’t know where to start. Take an existing home, with average insulation, the usual bog-standard energy supply and… Read More »Greener houses
I like the idea of popping down to the hardware shop to pick up some organic compost, a new pair of wellies and wind turbine. Ecologically, installing some sort of micro-powergeneration seems to be the right thing to do, but… Read More »You can do it if you B&Q it
Wondering where all the green homes are? Now there’s a directory to help you find them. Vivavi’s new Modern Green Living Home Directory promises to help users “design, build, remodel, furnish or find a green home.” The directory features green… Read More »The Smarter Home
The Association for Environment-Conscious Building has put forward its new CarbonLite programme in the hopes that it will be adopted by architects and builders as best practice, or perhaps the government would consider including it within building regulations. As it… Read More »CarbonLite sets the standard for carbon literacy in building