Household Stuff

The pooch with the longest name in the world discovers the joys of insect protein food...

Clothing and textiles are responsible for 35% of microplastic pollution. Approximately 50% of our clothing is made from plastic: polyester, acrylic and nylon, primarily. On average, 700,000 fibers can be shed from our synthetic clothes in any typical wash. These fibers are less than 5 mm long and flow, with our waste water, into our rivers, lakes, and oceans. Water treatment facilities cannot capture the majority of these fibers, as they are too small.

Heat pumps are more expensive to install than gas boilers, even with help from the boiler upgrade scheme. But, with gas prices rising, they can offer cost savings on your annual energy bills of roughly 25%, or £350 based on average usage at today's prices.

In my search for more comfortable work shoes, I started to consider what was and wasn't the "more sustainable" choice of footwear. It turns out there are some pretty exciting innovations happening in the world of footwear.

How did we end up here? We had a traditional product: laundry washing powder. Somewhere along the way, it was  diluted with water, packaged in plastic, then sold back to us at a greater cost. Now, we can choose to pay more for the same product, but "concentrated", which just means adding less water in the first place. Now, though, we are entering a new era in sustainable clothes washing: laundry sheets.

We look at 10 easy substitutions you can make to lessen your impact on the environment without breaking the bank. I'm not here to tell you what to do, but I've compiled some research-based tips that offer easy swaps that might make your home or lifestyle a little more sustainable.

Whenever I walk into an “eco-friendly” shop, or pick up the free-range, organic, or “certified” product equivalent of what I need, I’m regularly surprised at how much more expensive it is from the presumably “less” sustainable alternative. But why? Is it because clever marketeers have realized that I, as a conscientious consumer, will pay more for something labeled “sustainable”? Is it because it costs more to produce the sustainable alternative? Is it because sustainable alt