Eco-Friendly kitchens

More and more people are trying to do their best to become environmentally friendly in their on homes. By making simple changes to your everyday life, can make a big impact on the environment.

Green cleaning Use biodegrable soap for washing your hands or cleaning dishes. Ethical cleaning company Bio-D are the UK’s leading manufacturer of environmentally responsible, ethically sound, hypoallergenic, vegan cleaning products. Containing only naturally derived ingredients, they produce a number of kitchen cleaning products. Alternatively, create your own simple surface cleaner from distilled vinegar, lemon juice, essential oils and water.

Save Water: Structure plumbing so that the water can be used for multiple uses. When you’ve boiled water for veg or pasta, use that for continued cleaning or to water the plants. Only use the dishwasher or washing machine when you have a full load. This way, you will be making the most out of your appliances every time. Qettle is a 4 in 1 kitchen tap that dispenses 100°C boiling water, cold filtered drinking water, plus normal hot and cold flows from a single spout. It costs just £0.02 pence a day to run; by comparison, a kettle will cost £0.03 pence every time it’s boiled. The availability of cold filtered drinking water is another bonus – the Qettle tap’s filter system

removes unpleasant tastes and odours e.g. chlorine – so there’s no need to purchase bulky, expensive bottled water – or to contribute to the plastic waste mountain!

You’ve got it covered Energy saving ways don’t just have to be about what you consume, but also in the structure of your kitchen. Apollo Blinds have introduced a range of blinds made from recovered shoreline plastic They utilise recycled plastic, retrieved from beaches, remote coastlines and inland waterways, transforming it into a long-lasting high-performance roller blind fabric. Greenscreen Sea-Tex fabric is energy-efficient, filters sunlight and is fully recyclable. It’s also PVC free. Fifty per cent of the fabric’s weight is recovered ocean plastic.

Check your appliances When using your washing machine using a 40°C wash cycle rather than 60°C means you use a third less electricity. Make sure your fridge freezer has a A+++ energy label We found the difference between the A+ rated fridge-freezer and the A+++ one is about 5% of an average household’s total electricity use. The difference between the C rated one and the A+++ rated one is a full 20%.

Try not to put your appliance next to a heat source such as a cooker or radiator, as this will make it work harder to stay cool. Air also needs

In 1979 the inventor and engineer, Ossie Goring, was bothered by how much energy his old cooker was using and, living at a water mill in the village of Coaley, he decided to set about creating a much more environmentallyfriendly range cooker which could run off a small water turbine he had installed. A few months later, Ossie had perfected his ‘trickle-feed’ design, which allowed his invention to be powered by a small but steady flow of electricity – enabling it to run off the water turbine (or a standard 13amp plug) – and the first Everhot was born. Everhot range cookers use less than half the energy of comparable range cookers. Ossie’s ‘trickle-feed’ design requires only a small but steady flow of electricity, so they can run off a standard 13amp plug and remain the best heat storage range to work with renewables.

Recycle, recycle, recycle The UK recycling rate for Waste from Households (WfH; including IBA metal) was 45.7%, increasing from 45.2% in 2016. There is an EU target for the UK to recycle at least 50% of household waste by 2020. Check with your local council for ways that you can recycle your rubbish. There are a multitude of ways that you can recycle and it can be overwhelming and time consuming having several different coloured bins to put each separate item of waste in. Here is a run down of what Warwickshire District Counil advise on how to sort out your recycling.

• Red Box: Paper, Glass, Metal Packaging, Foil. • White Refuse Sack: Plastic Bottles, Plastic Packaging, Cardboard. • Clear Non-reuseable Sack: Electrical. • Householder Provided Sack: Textiles • Green Wheelie Bin: Bread, cakes and pastries, Dairy products - cheese and eggs, Raw and cooked fish and meat (including bones), Raw and cooked fruit and vegetables (including peelings), Rice, pasta and beans, Teabags and coffee grounds, Uneaten food and plate scrapings. Garden waste: Flowers, Grass cuttings, leaves, Plants, Prunings and twigs, Weeds.

For more information about recycling in your area visit recyclenow.com/ local-recycling. n

By Daisy Bennett

De-grey your winter days

Dull, grey and miserable… an apt description of February? Or maybe not, it can in fact be a great time to get out and about in our own gardens and visiting others to get inspired for the coming gardening year.

Long gone are the days where late winter was just the time to tidy up the borders and wait for Spring, or to sit perusing seed and bulb catalogues spending far more than you ought. Instead as the days start to lengthen gardens launch into life and the gardener is inevitably drawn outside to play.

First the snowdrops push their delicate looking but oh so hardy heads up. Whether you love the effect of thousands of naturalised bulbs or prefer to take a closer look at the flowers there is no doubt that these bulbs are charmers. Galanthus nivalis has been thriving in this country for centuries and both the single and double form G. nivalis f. pleniflorus ‘Flore Pleno’ are excellent for naturalising in grassy areas or under deciduous trees.

While many of these colonies in the UK are often very uniform variation can be found in places like Northumberland where patches of golden snowdrops appear among the masses. For our gardens we can choose from over 1500 different cultivars ranging from the simple to the bizarre, from the tiny to the huge, with pure white outer petals to striped or green marked, golden ovaries, green ovaries, extra petals and even extra flowers per stem.

The snowdrops are soon joined by a multitude of other bulbs including the earliest of the Crocus. The stunning white flowers of Crocus sieberi ‘Bowles White’ with their rich egg yolk yellow

bases or the striking purple, yellow and white layered flowers of Crocus sieberi ‘Tricolor’ start things off soon followed by the more delicate looking but easier to naturalise Crocus tommasinianus. The latter are great mixed in with snowdrops in grassy areas adding shades of purple and blue to the white and green. On freer draining soils the miniature iris, Iris reticulata can put on a brilliant display with colours to match their namesake the goddess of the rainbow.

A garden though is not complete without scent and on a warmish February day there are a wealth of plants to provide it. Witchhazels, Hamamelis, are probably the earliest. Individually the flowers are spidery but on mass can add a wonderful splash of colour from bright yellow to dark bronze. Most important though is the scent which can be variable.

A good combination of attractive flowers and strong sweet scent would be H. x intermedia ‘Harry’ with large light orange flowers. Not much to look at but wonderful to smell are the Sweet Box, Sarcococca, a single plant more than able to fill a small garden with scent.

This has barely scratched the surface of what we can find in the garden now. So, no more excuses, if your garden is looking bare go and visit one of the many gardens open to the public, the National Gardens Scheme is an excellent way to find somewhere to visit, and get some inspiration to de-grey your winter days.

Old Court Nurseries LLP & The Picton Garden. Specialist breeders and growers of Michaelmas Daisies since 1906. n

TEL : 0800 132689/ 02476345554 EMAIL : info@rockwarm.co.uk

Are you fed up with clutter and need more storage space?

The answer could literally be under your own roof!

For many home owners, the loft is an underutilised area because it can be difficult and dangerous to reach.

Warwick based loft ladder installer Access4Lofts (whose slogan is ‘creating space the easy way’) can change all that, often in less than a day!

Access4Lofts provides a free survey and quote service so you can find out what is achievable with your loft area.

The majority of properties have an access hatch to the space in the loft. Access4Lofts create space the easy and affordable way. They can supply and install a new loft hatch and a safe, sturdy aluminium loft ladder in your home in just one day!

That means that your dark and dismal roof space suddenly becomes a useful storage area for all that family clutter. “My experience enables fitting the ladder and converting the access hatch, in double-quick time the space is accessible and I leave no mess behind” explains Wayne Reid, Access4Lofts Warwick.

For extra peace of mind, Access4Lofts is an approved Which? Trusted Trader which means they have been accessed by Which? and passed their stringent checks. For added confidence, they also have full public liability insurance , are DBS checked and offer a lifetime guarantee.

To find out how Access4Lofts can create more space for you and your family or to book a free survey and quote visit www.access4lofts. co.uk/warwick or call 01926 679591.

You can also find them on Facebook @access4loftswarwick

Enjoy the kitchen of your dreams

Enjoy the kitchen of your dreams at a fraction of normal cost with a modern makeover by Kitchen Doors & Worktops. Replacing the doors and worktops instead of entire units typically saves 60%, plus time and inconvenience, even more with the special offers this month. You also cut down needless waste, helping save the planet too!

Kitchen Doors & Worktops has more than 40 different styles and 70 different colours to choose from, plus an expert design team to make them look great and fit perfectly.

A friendly advisor will visit you at home to discuss your needs and preferences, not only for the doors and worktops but also any new appliances such as ovens, hobs and washing machines, new sinks and taps and add any other features you’d like.

They can replace as much or as little as you wish, from a single cupboard door to the entire kitchen, always with top quality materials and high specifications.

The ordered items can be fitted by the in-house team of experienced professionals or delivered for a customer to install themselves. When you choose to have the installation carried out as well, the whole job should be done in a day, without you even needing to empty your cupboards!

Go online to www.doorsandworktops.com to download a brochure or request a free quote.

Contact details: Kitchen Doors & Worktops Doors Group, PO Box 5322, Stourbridge, West Midlands DY8 9AH;Tel 0330 321 0461, email info@doorsandworktops.com, website: www.doorsandworktops.com