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The Great Summer Declutter: Why Tidying Up Can Be an Environmental Act

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  The Great Summer Declutter: Why Tidying Up Can Be an Environmental Act Hook: Decluttering is only green if the clutter does not simply migrate from your house to landfill. Summer has a dangerous effect on the British householder. The sun comes out, the garage door is opened, and suddenly we discover that our home has been quietly breeding cardboard boxes, mystery cables, half-used paint tins, old tools, garden equipment, broken chargers and things that “might come in useful one day”. The traditional response is simple: hire a skip, throw everything into it, feel virtuous for three hours, and then quietly start buying replacements for half the things we have just thrown away. That is not really decluttering. That is environmental relocation. A genuinely green declutter is different. It is slower, more thoughtful and, occasionally, more annoying. It asks not simply, “Do I want this?” but also, “Could this be repaired, reused, shared, sold, donated, repurposed or used before I buy a...
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The Barbecue Problem: Can Summer Food Be Greener Without Becoming Miserable?

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  The Barbecue Problem: Can Summer Food Be Greener Without Becoming Miserable? Hook: The problem with a summer barbecue is not the sausage. It is often the mountain of plastic plates, half-eaten buns and forgotten salad wilting in the sun. There are few things more British than deciding it is finally warm enough to eat outside, dragging the barbecue from the shed, discovering it is full of last year’s ash, and then confidently declaring that dinner will be ready “in about twenty minutes”. Two hours later, somebody is eating a blackened sausage in a roll, somebody else is wondering whether the chicken is supposed to be that colour, and a large bowl of salad is slowly giving up the will to live beside a packet of slightly sweaty burger cheese. Summer food should be joyful. It should involve family, friends, smoke, sunshine, laughter, and somebody’s uncle explaining that he has “a system” for lighting charcoal. But summer eating can also produce a surprising amount of waste: plastic p...
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The Summer Heat Survival Guide: Keeping Cool Without Cooking the Climate

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  The Summer Heat Survival Guide: Keeping Cool Without Cooking the Climate A Well-Insulated House Is Not Just a Winter Jumper “A well-insulated house is not just a winter jumper. In summer, it can become a cool box.” That sounds slightly odd at first. We tend to think of insulation as something that keeps warmth in during winter. We imagine loft insulation, draught excluders, thick walls, woolly jumpers, hot drinks and trying not to look too closely at the heating bill. But insulation works both ways. In winter, it slows heat escaping from the house. In summer, it slows heat getting into the house. The same principle that keeps a flask of tea hot can also keep a bottle of water cold. The trick is not just having the insulation, but learning how to manage the house as temperatures rise. As UK summers become hotter, this is going to matter more. We are not quite a Mediterranean country, however much the garden furniture catalogues would like to pretend otherwise. Many British homes w...
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Can a Summer Garden Become a Wildlife Service Station?

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  Can a Summer Garden Become a Wildlife Service Station? Your Garden May Be Busier Than You Think Your garden may look like a patch of grass to you, but to a tired bee in July it could be a motorway service station. There it is, wings slightly frayed, fuel running low, having fought its way across a landscape of patios, fences, driveways, mown lawns, artificial grass, decking, gravel and the occasional terrifying conservatory roof. Then suddenly it finds your lavender, your flowering thyme, your slightly untidy border, or that clump of clover you forgot to remove. To us, it may look like mild gardening failure. To wildlife, it may be the difference between carrying on and giving up. Summer gardens are not just decorative spaces. They are refuelling points, watering holes, cooling stations, nurseries, hunting grounds, hiding places and, occasionally, badger restaurants. If we start looking at our gardens through the eyes of wildlife, the whole place changes. The messy corner stops b...
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