I am often asked whether Tri Nature products are organic or not. If the definition of Organic is applied in the same way as it is for other businesses, then the answer is Yes. However, Tri Nature doesn’t play by the same rules as most other companies. Tri Nature Chemist Brian McLean’s requirement for absolute and brutal honesty can, in very rare instances, make things more complicated for customers. Use of the word organic is one of those instances.
Below is an article written by Brian (in roughly 2012 I believe) in which he explains his reluctance to get the products Certified as organic.
The term “Organic”: a conflict of integrity and profitability
Author:
Brian McLean, Research Chemist, Tri Nature Pty Ltd
Brian McLean is one of the Managing Directors of Tri Nature Pty Ltd. Brian’s knowledge and expertise
have won Tri Nature many manufacturing awards, most recently the Australian Business Award for Best
Eco-Friendly Product in 2011. His dedication to environmental technologies has identified him as an
‘in-demand’ author of many published articles on this industry.
Article:
There are two broad classes of chemical ingredients in nature – organic and inorganic.
As a general rule, organic (carbon based) compounds are animal or plant based, and inorganic compounds are mineral based, although many plants contain inorganic minerals in their structure. Both types are essential to our existence and survival, and neither can be considered either “good” or “bad” simply because of their chemical category.
Unfortunately, in seeking to create an awareness of good ecological practice, the environmental movement chose the term “organic” to indicate a safe and sustainable method of agriculture. This created a confusion of terms.
How is it for example, that a vegetable, which is a blend of organic and inorganic compounds, if treated with an insecticide (an organic compound) cannot then be deemed “certified organic”?
To further exacerbate the situation, numerous organisations around the world set themselves up as self appointed guardians of what was and what was not “certified organic” and created benchmarks by which products could be labelled accordingly with their support and authority. The rules, individually and collectively, changed and evolved as various pressure groups asserted their influence until now the original concept has been lost and the certification process has become ludicrous.
To consider that a cosmetic or specialty product that has gone through numerous chemical processes can be “certified organic” is ridiculous, and to consider that a product marketed this way is considered any safer or more effective is equally absurd.
Australian government authorities are currently assessing the situation, with a view of legislating guidelines that will bring some reason to this dilemma that has led to a great deal of misinterpretation and misleading marketing.
It should be clarified at this point that Tri Nature supports the growing of vegetable and other plant crops without the use of pesticides or artificial fertilisers. It is the terminology and the corruption of the original purpose that we find unpalatable.
Tri Nature is very careful in its choice of raw ingredients. We do not use products sourced from genetically modified crops. In the majority of cases, and where it is possible to do so, we ensure that crops from which our ingredients are made are grown without the use of pesticides or weedicides. In all cases we guarantee all our ingredients are free from any chemical residues by a certificate of analysis or individual testing.
The other day, as I was hopping in my 4 wheel-drive soccer-mum car that I purchased brand-new and runs on diesel, I pondered just how green I really am. I like to think I am pretty environmentally friendly but, without question, there are many areas in which I could improve.
While my car isn’t the greenest choice, there are other reasons why I drive it. I have to be able to tow a horse float, which limits my options. Within that small group of cars, I absolutely look at fuel economy as one of the most important factors. I do a lot of driving. Picking a car with good fuel economy is one of the ways I can improve my “greeness” and it also improves my budget.
I tell you this story because I believe that it’s not how green we are that matters most. It’s about how we factor our concern for our environment (whether just in our homes, or the earth in general) into our lives each day. It’s about constantly making changes and adjustments to improve the way we impact the planet, each other and our future generations. Every little bit helps. It doesn’t matter what you change or how big a change you make, it just matters that you make start. Do what you can in the space you are in and with the resources you have.
Each day I find a different way to approach things in my life that will improve my impact on the planet. For me, any changes have to tick 3 boxes.
Must be better for the planet than what I’m doing now,
Must not negatively impact my family, and
Must not be more expensive than what I’m doing now.
Here are some examples of big and little changes I have made:
I use Tri Nature products everywhere I can (obviously)
We changed over our 2 electric hot water services to heat pump services which slashed our energy consumption and bills (you can read more about this change here)
I use green/reusable shopping bags for any shopping. I have the smaller ones that fold up into tiny bundles in my handbag at all times so I am never caught without. These are also great for using in the supermarket instead of plastic bags for items like apples and tomatoes.
I buy in bulk where possible to save on packaging
I buy “nude” wherever possible. I can’t stand the trend towards packaging on fresh produce. Drives me crazy and I would rather buy a whole pumpkin and find ways to use it than just a half wrapped in glad-wrap on a styro-foam tray.
I always ensure packaging is recyclable on everything I buy
I grow my own food as much as possible with the time and space I have available
I buy locally made wherever I can (if I can’t get Australian fruit and veg I won’t buy it at all, which really hurts with avocados and asparagus and I am now growing my own garlic)
I reuse as much as I can, especially packaging, for example:
I donate all cardboard to kinders – it’s amazing what they can make out of a cornflakes box
packing material from Tri Nature is shredded paper which I use to line my chook house and then compost once they’re done with it
glass jars and solid plastic containers are washed and used for
gifts (filled with home made goodies or decorated and filled with other gifts)
leftovers or home made food
temporarily housing “pet” bugs from the garden
home made slime storage
recycle everything I possibly can that can’t be reused
I carry a small bag with a metal travel fork and spoon so I never need plastic or take-away cutlery
I recently invested in some metal straws which live in my handbag so the kids never need to get the plastic ones (because it’s never just one of the plastic ones either)
I take my 1L refillable water bottle everywhere so I don’t need to buy bottled water
I take my 2 travel mugs with me everywhere so I don’t need to use disposable cups for tea or hot chocolates
I recycle as much water as I can from our house
the washing machine hose goes out the window of the laundry and all water from washing goes straight onto the grass and the garden. This isn’t an issue for the grass or plants because I use Tri Nature products.
any water that hits our roof goes into rain water tanks and is used on the garden. We have evaporative cooling which dumps water onto our roof every 3 hours when it’s on, so even though it hardly ever rains here, we still get water in the tanks.
bathrooms and kitchen I have yet to figure out.
Hopefully I have given you some ideas about what you can do differently that will help you and our planet. I would love to hear your ideas! Please comment below, email me or drop me a line on facebook and let me know what you have done in your space.
It’s the time of year where all our car insurances are due. I have an annual process I follow and it occurred to me that it would be nice if I shared it and several other ways I save money at home. Here are my top 5 tips.
1. Insurances
I thought I would start with the inspiration for my post. Insurance is a very competitive market and prices change and get reduced all the time. Your needs can change from year to year as well, so I find it best to do a review of most insurances every 12 months. This can be a little time consuming but well worth the effort.
Every year I get a renewal notice from my insurer with my new insurance rate for the upcoming year. Every year I get online and get quotes from a range of other insurers and my current insurer. Every year my current insurer comes in as the cheapest quote (for me) and they generally beat their own price by at least $150. So I cancel my existing policy and take up the new, cheaper one.
No one at my insurer has been able to explain it to me as the product is exactly the same in terms of excess and what the policy covers. It would seem that my insurer prefers to reward new customers over existing loyal ones. I have checked with several other people and this seems to be the standard across the industry. Well worth the 30 minutes spent online getting quotes (and the 10 minutes spent unsubscribing from all their email databases later).
Another thing worth noting is that if your circumstances change during your insured period, you can call your insurer and tell them of the changes and you may get a reduced rate. For example, if you pay off your car loan, let your insurer know and your premium should reduce effective from the date the loan was finalised. Don’t wait til next year.
The life insurance market is similarly structured and it’s worth a review of your policy at least every 2 years. The same goes for your health insurance, with some potentially big gains. I have used iSelect to find a new health insurer and been really happy with them, even though their ads annoy the daylights out of me. Changing over health insurance is pretty easy, as long as all your waiting periods are waived. This change saved me about $50 a month!
2. Electricity
I managed to halve our electricity bill in the space of a few months using a couple of different strategies. The first thing I did was a review of our provider and their rates. This isn’t always an option but if it is, you should be doing it once every 2 years as a minimum. It’s really important to ignore claims about percentages and do the maths on what the bottom line prices are.
What I mean by this is, company A may be offering a 50% discount and company B may only be offering a 5% discount. What they don’t make very clear in most cases is that company A charges you $100 per unit and company B only charges you $50 per unit. Company A will be pushing the point that their discount is bigger BUT 50% off $100 is $50. 5% off $50 is $47.50. So even though company B has a lower discount, they actually cost you less.
The best thing to do is get your hands on the rates for the new company, get an old bill and go through and work out how much that bill would have cost you with the new company. Then you have a solid comparison.
I called EnergyWatch to find out who the cheapest providers were in my area and then got the rates for those people and did my comparison. Switching providers saved me about $150 per quarter right off the bat.
The other big thing I did was switch our electric hot water services over to heat pumps. This saved another couple of hundred per quarter. You can read more about that here.
There are, of course, lots of little things you can do as well. These include:
replacing all globes in the house with energy saving globes
getting the TV attachments that turn the TV off properly instead of leaving it in standby mode
getting the special adapters for plugging other appliances (such as the DVD player, DVR and XBox) into so they are also turned off properly instead of sitting in standby more
turning off lights when you leave the room (it is worth noting here that we have flouro tubes in our kitchen light. I know it uses roughly 1 hour’s worth of energy to power that globe up, so I actually leave the kitchen light on when I know I will be back there in less than an hour).
daylight harvesting, which is a fancy term for leaving your curtains open and letting in as much natural light ass possible
On their own, these things don’t save much but they all add up. The fact that saving electricity helps to save the planet as well as some cash is the icing on the cake!
3. Mortgage Review
I have literally just completed one of these and it has saved me around $400 a month. That’s $400 a month that can now go towards paying off my house faster! I was well overdue, not having done a review since before my first child was born over 7 years ago. Ideally you should do this every 2 to 3 years. The best part about this is, it’s free! Any good mortgage broker can conduct this review for you and make sure your mortgage product meets your needs and you are getting the best possible deal for you.
Personally, I can highly recommend Lisa from The Loan Room. She made the whole thing so easy, and obviously got me the results, that I am totally going to give her a shameless plug! You can get in touch with Lisa on 0418 174 003 or lisa@theloanroom.com.au.
I honestly can’t believe I waited so long to do this. Don’t make my mistake and get onto it today. You have nothing to lose.
4. Cleaning
Okay so this one’s not a surprise to anyone. I save an absolute BUNDLE on cleaning products using Tri Nature. It’s one of the many reasons I switched to these products 7 or so years ago. Of course, once I realised I was going to keep using these products, I joined so I could get the bigger discount and save even more money. Many people do this with Tri Nature and just buy for themselves. Now, obviously, I have ended up selling the products so my products pay for themselves and then some which is just a bonus.
Product wise, the big ticket savings for our house come from these products:
Tri Nature directions on the Dishwasher Powder say to use a full scoop but my dishwasher always leaves about half behind so I only use half a scoop and that’s plenty. So at full retail price, this costs about $0.23 per load. Compared with supermarket brands it’s a saving for me of roughly $10 per month. $120 is a night away (or two if we’re camping) for us. Happy days!
Again, I find half of what Tri Nature recommend is all I need to get great results so this also costs me around $0.23 per load. This is at least half the cost of using the supermarket “sensitive” brand I was using before. With 8-10 loads a week, I save roughly $100 per year on laundry powder/liquid too. Both the Tri Nature liquid and the powder are equally effective and thy both work out to roughly the same cost per wash. I am fundamentally a lazy person so I mainly use the liquid. It’s easier to pump the liquid into the machine than to fiddle around opening the bucket to scoop out the laundry powder.
I buy the concentrate and mix it up myself. At full retail price, a 500ml made-up bottle of Supre works out to $1.25. Supermarket equivalents are roughly $5 to $8 for the same amount. We use this spray a lot. I use it on the bench, stove, walls, bathroom bench, shower, oven, the outdoor table, getting bug guts off the bumper bar and even for cleaning the patio tiles. It still takes about 2 months to use a whole bottle. A modest saving of around $22 per year but that’s still 4 or 5 take away hot chocolates.
Again, I buy the concentrate and mix it up myself. At full retail price, the Sphagnum Moss works out to $0.65 per 500ml made-up bottle. Again, supermarket equivalents are roughly $5 to $8 for the same amount. In our house, Sphag Moss is used for cleaning toilets and bins and as an odour killer in shoes, teenage boys’ rooms and in the bathroom. I also add the concentrate to the mop bucket for the indoor floors for yummy smell, germ killing power and odour neutraliser. This saves me around $50 a year.
I keep a 5L of the Tri Nature handwash in the shower and my partner and kids use it as a body wash. I have Cuisipro Foam Pumps on the sinks in both bathrooms and the kitchen and laundry. These things are the BEST! You put in a small amount of handwash and then fill up the rest of the bottle with water and it turns your handwash into a foam. It saves 75% of handwash, according to their label. if you have a high traffic area, or you have young kids, these foam pumps will save you a mint.
Moisturising Hand Wash and Foam Pump
5. Food
We take our own food absolutely everywhere we can. With up to 6 kids on any given day, buying food for everyone gets pretty expensive pretty quickly. Any time we go out and I know we are going to be out past meal time, I pack a ton of sandwiches. Everyone must take a water bottle with them (we have lots of reusable ones from various sports groups and associations). Obviously I am happy about not putting more plastic into the environment wherever I can too. If we find ourselves out without the necessary preparation, I will always try and find a supermarket to grab a roast chicken and a loaf of bread. $15 at the supermarket beats $50 on sandwiches or $150 on dinner for everyone.
Examples of places I take our own food include sporting events, day trips, adventure parks, long drives, the local park and even if we are just going to the shops for the day. I also take our own snacks to the movies. I make popcorn at home. Not microwave popcorn but proper “old fashioned” popcorn that I make in the saucepan. A big bag of corn kernels costs around $1.50 from the supermarket and makes the rough equivalent of about 6 large serves of popcorn from the movies. If you don’t have time to make it (although it literally take about 6 minutes), again, the supermarket has pre popped bags for a lot less than the movies. Chocolates, lollies and even ice creams are all much cheaper from the supermarket than at the cinemas so I stock up and take them in with me.
“Old fashioned” popcorn is a cheaper and healthier alternative for a movie night snack than a bag of chips and is also a great playlunch snack in the kids’lunchbox.
The rule is that lunches get taken from home for work or school. Lunch orders or take away are the rare exception. This also helps me improve food choices. A lunch made at home in advance is always much healthier than any choices I make on an empty stomach in the take away shop. The kids will always choose “sometimes” foods for their lunch orders, instead of healthier options. Ultimately I am sure there’s a benefit in less money spent on doctors and medication flowing on from this. I find I save roughly $40 a week by taking my own food to work, compared with what I used to spend before. That’s over $2000 a year!
Home cooked Popcorn
6. Water
Obviously a great way to save money spent on water is to use a little water as possible from the water company. Cathcing rainwater is a great way to supplement and reduce any dependence on town water. If you can’t afford a rainwater tank, it doesn’t hurt to use whatever containers you have to capture as much as possible from the sky. Buckets and containers under downpipes or even left in the open when it’s raining can help.
Recycling water you do use is another great way to reduce your need for town water. Some ways I do this are by re-using as much “used” water as I can on the garden or in the compost heap. This includes:
any part finished drink bottles of water that have been sitting around for a few days
water from steamed or boiled veggies
cold water from my hot water bottle (yes, I totally have one and use it ALL the time in winter)
bailing the bath water out
having buckets on the floor in the shower to capture whatever I can before it goes down the drain
This house was built long before we got here and is on a concrete slab, so there’s little I can do about the shower and bath water that runs down the drains without spending a fortune. My neighbour’s house has all the grey water running onto the garden which I think is terrific. If you have the luxury of designing your house from scratch, it’s definitely worth considering.
What I have done with the washing machine is have the outlet hose running straight out the window into a wheelie bin. The wheelie bin has a hose attachment on it down the bottom. This allows me to wheel it around the garden and use the water where I need to. In reality, it’s always full and too heavy to move so I find a long hose to attach and drag the other end to wherever I feel is best. I just leave it to dribble out. This has been especially great for encouraging grass to grow back where we had nothing but dirt in the backyard. I plan to follow suit with the dishwasher soon.
Here’s a quick video showing you what I did:
So there you have it. Hopefully I have given you some simple ideas about how to save some money around your house. If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them in the comments below.
When I say Everyday Essential Oils, I want to be clear upfront. I’m not going to be telling you how a splash of clove oil will magically re-attach a severed limb or drinking 5 drops a day of Frankincense will cure cancer. I have actually been a bit reluctant to write this post because there is just so much “mythinformation” out there about Essential Oils.
I was slow to embrace EO’s because there seemed to be a fine line between Camp A preaching how dangerous they are if used incorrectly, and Camp B renouncing all western medicine and claiming all ailments can be cured with them.
To be honest, I am not even sure what it was that got me over the line in trying them initially. It’s just that I was packing the other day to go bush for the weekend and I realised that I now pack a couple of EO’s as part of my travel kit. While I would never use EO’s instead of a first aid kit, there are 3 oils that I tend to bring along as a complement to it. I thought it was time to share these oils and what I use them for.
First up is Lavender EO. This is THE BOMB for dabbing on mozzie/midgee/insect bites, itchy rashes and general skin irritations. It takes the itch away and soothes inflammation. It might sting if there’s broken skin but the upside to that is that Lavender EO also has antibacterial properties so it helps to prevent infections.
Lavender EO is one of the few essential oils that properly qualified aromatherapists will tell you can be applied neat, directly to skin and I absolutely use it this way, as well as in the diffuser and in a spray.
My daughter is allergic to mozzie bites and if I leave them untreated, they turn into big, angry, infected welts. If I rub a bit of lavender EO onto them whenever they start to irritate her, they are usually gone within 2-3 days and without any major scratching.
Also super handy when bushwalking to dab a bit of lavender EO onto any ankles that are itchy from brushing past irritating plants and grass!
Another thing I have used Lavender EO for is burns, including sunburn. I know! It sounds counter-intuitive to put oil on a burn. Let me tell you, I have had first hand experience on more than one occasion that it works. You put it on ASAP after the burn has occurred. Lavender EO takes the sting out of the burn faster than anything else I have ever tried. That was a blessed relief the time I spilled the boilingest boiling water ever down my back (cup of tea in a travel mug with a loose lid chucked into my handbag and slung over my shoulder….I have special talents….).
I think most people are aware of Lavender EO’s calming, comforting, relaxing properties. It is excellent to spray or diffuse in the general vicinity of restless insomniacs of any age to help them get to sleep.
Tea Tree EO is another essential oil that properly qualified aromatherapists will tell you can be applied neat, directly to skin and I make full use of this.
Tea Tree EO also has antibacterial properties so it is great for dabbing onto cuts and wounds if they need a clean out and you don’t have he facilities to clean them properly.
One of the things I like to do with Tea Tree EO is dab it onto random skin conditions. For example, several years ago my daughter got a little lump on her back. Sort of like a pimple crossed with a wart. A couple of months later it hadn’t gone away and off we went to the doctor. It turned out to be a molluscum contagiosum. A highly contagious skin condition that you have to leave alone or it will scar and that can take 2 years to go away.
I would like to congratulate myself here for not squeezing it even though it so desperately looked like it should be squeezed. I thought I would have a go with tea tree EO. I started dabbing some on each night after the bath. Within a month, the lump had dried up and fallen off. I was pretty happy with that result!
Tea Tree EO can also be used to help combat colds and flu and inflammation, particularly in the lower back. It is an excellent oil to add to blends for diffusing or massaging into the skin to ease congestion and pain caused by swelling.
One of the most common uses for Tea Tree EO in our house is as a deterrent for nits and lice! Whenever we are coming into lice season or a case has been reported in someone’s class, I spray some of this into the kids’ hair each day for a week or so as a repellent. I put about 10 drops into a 50ml bottle with some dispersant (to mix the oil and water) and then fill with water and spray away.
Last but not least is Peppermint EO. This is such a handy one to carry around all the time (unless you’re pregnant, breastfeeding or less than 3 years old).
Peppermint EO is brilliant for combating fatigue, headaches, shock, respiratory colds and nausea. A couple of drops on a cotton ball is very handy for sniffing:
when you need a driver reviver
when studying, to aid concentration
for relief from a headache
when you feel like you are going to vomit
to help with travel sickness
if you have a chesty cold and need to ease the congestion
Sunday morning when you have a hang over and you need to get on with your day!
Although not recommended during pregnancy, peppermint EO is fabulous and safe to use during labour to help with the nausea. Peppermint EO is the quiet achiever and I am amazed at how often I use this one.
Mixing it Up
The suggestions I have made above are mostly ways you can use these 3 oils in their own. You can also blend these oils with other oils to increase the impact on whichever condition you are trying to combat. There are recipes for each of these oils in the photo gallery for that oil. You can follow the link from the oil headings above or head to the Aroma section of my website.
If you have any questions at all about these oils or any others, please get in touch. I don’t bite and I love to help.
I’m climbing up onto my own personal bandwagon today. I would be a liar if I said there wasn’t a HUGE part of me that is writing this particular post purely in the hope of improving my daily driving frustrations. But when I put some thought into it, making the changes I am going to suggest below really can make a big difference to Mother Earth. So please, join me on a drive through the road-ragey part of my brain that secretly wishes sometimes we were all in dodgem cars so I could ram people.
Left Wing
I am going to start with one of the most basic principles of driving in Australia. KEEP LEFT. 2 little words. Pretty clear instructions. And yet, on a daily basis, I am totally astounded by how many people seem to fail to put these words into action in their driving.
I do a lot of freeway and highway driving because I live in a semi rural area. During my many hours of commuting, I have come to the conclusion that traffic congestion could almost be completely eliminated if we just spent a little bit more time educating future drivers about keeping left. Ok, maybe not completely eliminated, but I reckon we could make a good dent in it (ha ha… dent…get it?….car humour…sorry).
Did you know that, in Victoria, where the speed limit is 80 or higher, it is against the law to drive in the right hand lane unless you are overtaking someone? That’s right! It’s the law!
There are similar laws in other states and territories. It’s the reason you pass a sign every couple of kilometres on freeways that says “Keep left unless overtaking”. It’s not just there for decoration. Not only that, if you drive in the right hand lane without overtaking, you can be fined and lose 3 points off your license.
Now I can hear many of you piping up at this point with arguments such as “if you weren’t speeding, you wouldn’t need to overtake” and “I’m doing the speed limit so it shouldn’t be an issue”. I have a couple of things for you to consider.
Most speedos are inaccurate. Almost everyone has been through one of those overhead speed checker thingies at some stage and you would have noticed that your speedo generally shows somewhere in the vicinity of about 5kms higher than your actual speed. This varies from car to car. So even though your needle shows you firmly on the speed limit, in reality you’re probably going 3 to 5 kms slower. Everyone else is also driving with an inaccurate speedo. So while you think you’re doing 100, the person behind you may think you’re sitting on 95.
It’s such a shame this is one of those laws that never really gets enforced here in Victoria. Setting aside the emotional trauma suffered by frustrated commuters stuck behind tandem drivers blocking the road, and ignoring all the safety aspects, there’s a big environmental cost to consider.
Slowing down and speeding up again uses more fuel than just maintaining the same speed. It may only make a dollar or so difference to you personally each week, but multiply that across all the cars on the road and now we’re looking at a big chunk of our precious, limited resources that could be saved!
If we all make an effort to keep left and just let people past, traffic would flow a lot better, there would be less braking and accelerating which means more efficient use of fuel and less wear and tear on cars. Lets not forget that wear and tear costs money and also uses up resources in replacement parts.
And really, why not let people past? You’re still moving forwards. Moving over and letting someone past isn’t going to cost you anything. If they want to go faster than others, good for them. If they are choosing to speed, blocking them is not going to make for safer roads. It’s much more likely to end with the speeder doing something even more risky and unsafe to get past. Better to let them go in my book.
If you have a Diesel car.
My car runs on Diesel. I have had a Diesel car for at least 10 years. I learned pretty quickly that it’s splashy and smelly and there was always some residue on the pump handle. No biggie. I use paper towel to hold the pump or wash my hands afterwards. Easy done.
Not sure if anyone else has noticed that some servos now seem to offer trucks cheaper diesel than cars. This really annoyed me so I set about finding out why. The bloke working at the counter in the BP store couldn’t tell me. Super helpful…
It turns out that since so many cars are now on diesel, and there are so many women driving these diesel cars, they have put an additive in the diesel to make it smell nicer and stop it splashing as much (anti-foaming agent) so us poor ladies don’t have to worry our pretty little heads about getting it on our dainty hands or the smell offending our delicate sensibilities. Can you tell that this reasoning offended my not-so-delicate sensibilities?
The translation here is that we are paying extra for a diluted fuel that will give us fewer kilometres per tank and possibly isn’t ideal for the engine life either. So I make sure to fill up at the truck pumps. I save a couple of cents per liter upfront and I get more kms per tank, which is much better for Mother Earth. If they try and stop me, you’ll all hear me yelling about discrimination against car drivers.
Having said that, truck pumps are hi-flow. This means the nozzle is bigger on the pump to allow more fuel through faster. Yay for spending less time at the petrol station but this means your car must be able to take a hi-flow nozzle. Check this out before you try and fill up at the truck pump or you’ll just end up giving yourself and your car a diesel shower.
Wheeling and dealing
Keeping your tyres pumped up to the right pressure makes a difference to your fuel consumption. Having your tyres at the right pressure can save you a decent amount of cash over the course of a year on fuel as well as extending the life of your tyres! This is most definitely a win/win for you and Mother Earth.
Your car’s owner’s manual should have a table that tells you what pressure your front and back tyres should be. If you can’t find your manual, there’s really no excuse because Google has the instructions for everything ever.
Getting your car serviced regularly by a reputable mechanic will help keep things in peak condition and extend the life of your car and its parts. FYI You don’t have to take your car to the manufacturer for servicing to maintain your warranty. Most mechanics can perform a log book service for you and many of the independents are significantly cheaper than dealerships. Find someone you can trust (recommendations are always good) and take your car in on the recommended schedule.
Stay Nude
Every accessory you add to your car increases wind resistance. Every extra bit of wind resistance increases the amount of fuel your car uses to move you around. Take off unused or unnecessary accessories and save yourself some cash by saving fuel (and therefore preserving earth’s resources).
I am guilty of owning a very environmentally unfriendly car that is big and wind resistant already. Then I added roof racks. To make matters worse, once summer was over and I didn’t need to cart kayaks around for a while, I didn’t take them off because…well….life. I just kept forgetting. I reckon this has cost me about 50kms per tank of fuel and a very guilty conscience for being a bit of a hypocrite. I have taken them off now!
The same can be said for unneeded things in the car that add weight. Increased weight also means increased fuel consumption. Empty your boot or back seat and don’t cart around things you don’t need to.
The bottom line
Like I said earlier, these things may only make a dollar or two difference to you a week, but collectively, we can make a big difference for the planet! Plus think about what you could do with $52. That’s about the right amount of money to buy 15 trees. It just so happens that planting 15 trees a year is about the right amount to offset your car’s carbon footprint for that year. Winning!
It’s what we all want right? Less time spent on boring domestic chores and more time for fun. Since hiring a housekeeper is out of the budget, and sadly this stuff doesn’t do itself, laundry is the never-ending story of my life. I was recently listening to a couple of good friends moan about having piles of washing that needed folding and it dawned on me that I don’t really have that particular problem.
Courtesy of the way my brain works, I am constantly finding ways to refine processes and cut out unnecessary steps. Always looking for the short cut. Some call it lazy. In a work place, it’s called Continuous Improvement. I’m going with efficient. I forget that everyone’s brains work differently and what’s obvious to me may not be to everyone else. So I was surprised at my friends’ moaning and realised that if I shared my laundry process, it would help them. Then I realised I could probably help a few other people too.
So here it is. My laundry process. Prepare yourself for a trip through the part of my brain that clearly has too much spare time…
Get everyone to turn their clothes in the right way and put them in the washing basket.
The amount of time wasted turning kids and partners clothes in the right way to check for stains does my head in. If it’s not in the basket, it doesn’t get washed. If it’s not turned in the right way and it’s stained and doesn’t wash properly, bad luck to the owner. The hardest part about this one is standing your ground until everyone gets it through their heads. I struggle to walk past dirty clothes on the floor and I also struggle not turning them in the right way to see if they are stained. I can’t stand it when things don’t wash properly. I just keep reminding myself that it’s my job to teach the kids life skills and one day they will thank me for it (HA!).
Get people to spray their own stains.
I keep a bottle of my pre-wash stain remover spray in the bathroom. I get the kids to spray their clothes, if needed, as soon as they take them off each night (and turn them in the right way).They love it! They think it’s great fun. If only they knew! This also saves hours of sitting on the floor in the laundry sorting through clothes and spraying. Plus, I find, the sooner I get the spray on, the more effective the stain remover is. I generally don’t need to soak much at all!
Since I use a natural pre wash spray that doesn’t contain any petrochemicals, I can leave it on the clothes for as long as I want before I wash (usually around a week) and there’s no damage to the fabric. It also means I don’t have to worry about the kids breathing in anything they shouldn’t. Click here to see what I use.
Pair Up!
Don’t put single socks in the wash or on the line. I always make sure I am putting in pairs only. When I am pegging out the washing, I peg the pair together too. I do this for two reasons. One is so that I don’t go mad looking for missing socks. If I can’t find two to go into the wash, the one sock goes back to the owner to locate the missing one and resubmit to my laundry. The other reason is so that I can roll them up straight away once they’re dry and I don’t have to sort through the washing and pair them up later on.
Paired up socks on the washing line
Fold as you take down.
A little bit of extra time while you are at the line saves hours of ironing and a pile of folding later. You are already touching the washing, you may as well fold it while you have it in your hands. Otherwise, you have to double handle it (touch it again later when you didn’t need to). If you fold neatly, you will find you have way less wrinkles (especially compared with scrunching into the basket) so ironing won’t take anywhere near as long!
Sort as you fold.
This is where we get into the truly dark and twisty part of my brain. I sort all my washing as I fold. Actually, I take down my washing in a very specific order, fold it and then put it into the relevant basket. I take it down in the reverse order of how it gets put away. Get it?
No one else does either. Ha ha. For argument’s sake, lets say I only have the kids’ stuff on the line. I have a pile for each child. First I take down the pyjamas, then the pants, then skirts and shorts, long sleeved tops, t-shirts, and finally jocks and socks. When I get into their bedrooms, jocks and socks go in the top drawer, t-shirts in the next, shorts, skirts and long sleeved tops in the next, pants and then pyjamas. Anything that needs to be hung up goes on top of the basket but my kids rarely wear dresses so they don’t often go through the wash.
Since my kids are small, their washing fits into 2 piles in the one basket. When there’s gown ups’ washing as well, I start taking that down and folding it first, then kids’ clothes on top. Once the kids’ clothes are put away, the grown ups’ clothes are in the bottom of the basket and ready to be taken to be put away at the other end of the house.
Folded Laundry ready to be put away.
So there you have it, a wander into the corners of my mind dedicated to making my life just a little bit easier. I hope it helps you too! It does take a bit of a commitment to do this for 2 weeks and change your current habits. Getting “helpers” (kids and partners) to follow this process is a whole other set of training. But if you can do it yourself, you will find that it saves you time and your sanity.
First and most importantly, the Improved Sphagnum Moss & Sanazone Disinfectants do the same job and smell the same way. You won’t notice any changes.
The original Sanazone and Sphagnum Moss we all know and love had an active ingredient in them called….Sphagnum Moss! Tri Nature have a very strict policy around where they source their ingredients. There are a number of boxes that must be ticked including that the ingredients must come from sustainable plantations and ethical suppliers (people who treat their workers fairly, are not causing destruction to the environment, etc.).
There has only been one supplier of Sphagnum Moss who met this criteria. Unfortunately, in recent times, it seems this has changed. Tri Nature decided that they would rethink the product rather than compromise on their ingredients.
It turns out that Sphagnum Moss was so awesome at its job of disinfecting that it had to be replaced with not one, but THREE ingredients. The combination of Oregano, Rosemary and Thyme have replaced Sphag Moss as the active ingredient.
Oregano, Rosemary and Thyme extracts are well known for their potent antimicrobial benefits and have been combined synergistically to boost antimicrobial performance.
Oregano, although a widely recognized herb used in Mediterranean cuisine, and was traditionally used as an antiseptic.
Thyme has been used in traditional medicine to treat both infection and inflammation.
Rosemary herbal extracts are known for providing antioxidant protection.
So Sanazone and Sphagnum Moss, no longer actually contain Sphagnum Moss, but other than that, they are the same fantastic products!
The NEW part of New and Improved is that there is now Sanazone in Lemon Myrtle as well as odourless. So you can have Spearmint and Musk, Lemon Myrtle, Odourless, or add your own essential oils to the odourless for you personalised Disinfectant!
We have 2 enourmous hot water tanks at home. We have a long house with 2 bathrooms so there’s a separate hot water service for each bathroom. Both hot water tanks are 305L and they are both electric, set to heat up during off-peak hours (overnight) every night.
Solar
I looked into replacing them with solar hot water services. We have more than ample roof space that is perfectly positioned to capture the maximum amount of sun. Unfortunately, the cost was prohibitive. On top of everything else needing our cash, we just couldn’t afford the investment into solar right now.
Gas
We only really use the second bathroom on weekends (when we have 2 to 4 extra kids) so our next option was an instant hot water service. This only heats the hot water as you are using it, rather than every night regardless of consumption. By all accounts, not really any cheaper if you are using the hot water all the time, but if it’s occasional use, it can make a big difference.
The only other appliance in this house on gas is the heating. It turns out that the gas is only plumbed from the street to one side of the house. To run the gas line around, over or through the house so that it could supply gas to the instant hot water unit was going to cost an additional $5k. This ruled out option 2.
Turn it off
For the last few years, we have gone with option 3, which was to turn off the hot water service to the second bathroom. This has meant no hot water in the laundry either but that’s not really a deal breaker. The washing machine heats its own water and if I needed any for soaking, I ran up the hallway to the other bathroom with a bucket. Annoying but a first world problem.
This saved us between $200 and $300 PER QUARTER on our electricity bill! I was gobsmacked.
Heat Pump
One night Mark heard an ad on TV for a business called Chromagen and told me about it. I looked into it and they supply a hot water service called a heat pump. This unit takes the air from around it and somehow uses it to reduce the amount of electricity it needs to heat the water inside it by up to 75%. On top of that, the government was offering a rebate for switching, so the switch would cost nothing.
Naturally I was skeptical. However, having the second service meant we had the luxury of being able to experiment. I had concerns that the heat pump tank wouldn’t be big enough to cope with the demand but it heats up several times during the day so the smaller tank can still cope with the higher demand.
In the end, we just decided to give it a go. We had the second service replaced just before winter. I have been waiting and waiting to get my first electricity bill that covered a full quarter with the heat pump installed as I was still highly skeptical about the advertised savings.
Last week we got the bill. It was roughly $50 more than usual. So I had hot water in my laundry and the second bathroom for an additional $50 per quarter, instead of the usual $200 to $300! This was through a cold winter quarter, when you would expect it to be at its most expensive.
Needless to say that I have now arranged for the main hot water service to also be replaced. The government rebate has reduced, so this time there’s a $100 charge, but that’s all.
Google tells me that a common issue with the heat pump services (and this is not specific to the brand that Chromagen supplied but it seems to be general feedback across a range of brands) is that the heat pump needs replacing after roughly 8 years. In that time, with 2 services switched over, I will have saved, conservatively, just shy of $10k on electricity, plus interest.
Happy dance!!
I can’t see the replacement pumps costing $10k. Hopefully by then, I will be in a position to install solar hot water anyway!
The heat pump is great to replace external electric hot water services and is suitable for domestic or small business use. I highly recommend giving it a look if you are looking to improve your eco footprint and reduce your energy bill.
