It was Kermit

who first coined the phrase It’s not easy being green - but we’ve all come a long way since then!

I’m quite keen on doing things in a green way, so I thought I’d share some of the ways I manage to be a little bit green in my business.

Travelling

I think the fact that I work from home certainly helps my status in the green stakes: my commute to work is a stroll across the garden.  Not only lovely, relaxing and occasionally distracting (the pet rabbit, the weeds, the plants needing water…) but very definitely green in more ways than one!

My commute may well be a 20-second stroll but I do travel to the post office on a daily basis as well as to craft fairs and shows.  My nearest post office is a couple of miles away and too far to walk or cycle (I’m not just being lazy - I have a problem with my hip joint which excludes these activities for me).  However, I do always combine the journey with food shopping, banking and even occasional library-visiting.  Also, my car is a small-engined one which sips petrol very slowly instead of guzzling it.  Really, I do need a bigger vehicle … but in the meantime, my tiny car can house a surprising amount of stock for fairs and shows with its back seats folded down. 

Recycling

I have set up my studio so that it’s very easy to recycle: separate bins (which are actually cardboard boxes wrapped in binbags - actual recycled bins, which will eventually be recycled again) for recyclable and non-recyclable waste.  We’re lucky here in that we get a wheelie bin collection once a fortnight for recyclable waste, which makes life easier.  We’ve also got a wheelie bin for green waste, although most of our green waste goes on our own compost heap.

Packaging

All packaging which comes into the business gets reused for outgoing parcels. 

That’s not to say you’ll always get recycled packaging if you buy from us.  We buy bubble wrap and padded envelopes as we can never get enough of them, but we do have a source of extra recycled cardboard boxes delivered directly to the studio by Mr 1st Unique Gifts every day when he comes home from work!

This does mean I spend a fair bit of time chopping up boxes to make the packaging work, but the waste bits of card are used in the garden as mulch or placed on the compost heap.  Nothing is thrown away!

Repurposing

Lots of things in the studio are repurposed: the painting table is an old door on top of two trestle frames with basket drawers (these were used to be in a utility room in a previous life).  In the picture below, you can see we didn’t even get as far as taking the handles off the door before it became a table.  It’s never usually this tidy, and you can’t usually see the handle for the jars and other painting paraphenalia.

OK, then, this is what it more often looks like:

The sink was an old one which was about to be thrown out when I discovered it.  The pencil tubs are syrup and honey tins.  I cut up old T-shirts to use as paint rags.  I reuse honey jars for washing paintbrushes.  I make my own stay-wet palettes to ensure paint isn’t wasted by drying out. 

I even cut up old school summer dresses to make fabric ribbon ties on my plaques.  And oh, I have lots more ideas for upcycled products, which I hope will make it into my range one day.  I get a little bit excited by creative recycling, which I was doing long before it became fashionable - in the 1970’s, in fact, when I was probably considered a bit odd.

Energy Consumption

When we rebuilt the studio (yes, rebuilding was absolutely neccessary - it was a terrifying, dangerous mix of tin, rotten wood, asbestos and concrete held together by tangled ivy when we acquired it!) we made sure it was well-insulated.  However, we couldn’t have predicted the severity of the winter we’ve just had and its impact on our electicity consumption! 

There’s a plan in place for reducing that though!!

We are intalling a woodburning stove in the studio for winter heat.  This will be made even greener by the fact we chopped down over 40 overgrown trees recently (again, very necessary, this time for good neighbourliness and winter sun on the garden!)  We need to chop down some more, which we’ll be replanting with more manageable small trees, shrubs and a selection of fruit trees.  It does mean we’ve got a huge supply of wood to burn, and will always have at least some wood from our own trees and shrubs.

I managed to make myself some fingerless mitts which are fab for working in the cold: they were recycled from the sleeves of an old cardigan.  Nothing fancy but definitely welcome, they helped reduce fuel consumption in those cold, cold months - and they’re as green as green can be (even though they’re actually bright pink!).  The added bonus was that because they were made from something that would’ve been thrown away, it doesn’t matter how messy they get.

In the Garden

In the garden, we’re planning to hire a shredder to produce some chipped wood for the pathways and for mulching the beds.  We’ve a vegetable garden planned out, two greenhouses (already in the garden and in need of not much more than a good clearing and scrubbing), some fruit trees already in situ and more ready to plant.  There’s been lots of chainsawing going on to chop the tree waste up - and lots of stacking going on too, to dry the resulting logs out.  I’ve already mentioned the compost heap: as well as garden waste, it processes kitchen waste, the rabbit’s waste, and excess cardboard, paper and fabric into fabulous home-made compost for growing and mulching.

The pebbles in my garden were about to be thrown into a skip by my next-door neighbour when I leapt to their rescue!  This pebble feature isn’t quite finished yet:

I have a thing for pebbles (OK, maybe I need to get out more!) and I quite enjoyed wheelbarrowing several loads of them into my garden to recreate a little bit of the seaside in my garden.  They also provide hiding places for the hundreds of frogs who call my garden home.  I love the frogs - they certainly keep the slug population under control in the most organic manner possible.

Unfortunately, the neighbourhood cats seem to like the frogs too. Not for the same reasons though:

Nobody said it was easy being green.  But sometimes, the harder route is the better and more satisfying route! 

Image courtesy of http://www.greenpatriotposters.org