The ‘Get Green’ Category...

Growing an organic garden is improving a piece of the world. It will keep you in touch with the earth and in tune with nature. Kids love growing and harvesting there own fruit and vegies (you’ll be amazed at how their attitude towards veggies change) .

Our current range has flat leaf (Italian) parsley or the very beautifully smelly fennel. Both are very easy to grow and should be planted now.

Growing Instructions For Your Parsley and Fennel
- choose a pot, an old boot or a patch of dirt and pop some great soil in (lots of compost is good!).
- choose a sunny spot
- sow anytime (fennel will need more space than parsley)
- plant some other stuff just for fun!

No-Dig Garden Beds
A really effective way of ensuring that your soil is nutrient rich and chemical free is to make a no-dig garden. You can put them anywhere and are great for any size space. For raised beds you need a large amount of organic matter so collect as much leaf litter, twigs, and even newspaper etc for the lower levels. The next layers are manures, straws and composts. You will have to wait awhile before you can plant the bed. A couple of books that we recommend are ‘The Organic Garden’ by Jeffrey Hodges and ‘Gardening and Eating for Living’ by Caralyn Lagrange. Caralyn also runs workshops, which are fantastic. Check her website www.bedfordale.com and get planting!

We love to look at gardens! Send us pictures of your veggie garden, tell us how you went about it and we may pop it on our site. Those gardens that make it onto our site will win an eco peko prize. Email us at info@ecopeko.com

10 Top Tips To Green Up Your Life

1. Use re-useable mugs and bottles for your takeaway coffee and water. It will save on waste and will save you a heap of money. Almost everywhere you go now has free filtered water and a lot of coffee shops offer a discount if you supply your own mug.
2. Bring your own bags when shopping. Those plastic bags aren’t helping anyone, and sustainable bags look a lot better.
3. Save some trees and use recycled paper wherever possible. From the office to your bathroom, there are many choices of recycled products available.
4. Use eco-friendly cleaning products. Not only are you saving the environment you are protecting your health. Many ingredients in cleaning products are toxic chemicals, which we absorb on a daily basis.
5. Eat organic food. Makes sense. Pesticides and chemicals just aren’t good for you. Organic food production encourages sustainable farming by looking after our soil, so that future generations can have a healthy planet and nutrient rich food.
6. Use organic bathroom products. We absorb 60-70% of what we put onto our skin. Nurture you skin with pure nutrients, not just chemicals. There are loads of organic products out there.
7. Turn off! Lights and appliances (even when they are on standby), waste huge amounts of energy. Turn everything off at the power point, you’ll be amazed at how much you will save on your power bill.
8. Buy sustainable clothing. From organic cotton to bamboo ,their are loads of options and they help the environment.
9. Purchase offsets. It’s a good way to understand and account for your own personal footprint.
10. REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE,COMPOST and GROW YOUR OWN FOOD. Compost scraps, use compost on your garden, grow your own food.We believe that if people start growing there own organic food, that they will gain a love for great tasting, fresh fruit and vegies and in turn a deeper understanding and respect for our planet. It’s a brilliant way to introduce vegies into kid’s diets and help them understand about foods growth cycle and origin.

Cotton is a huge industry, providing half of the worlds fibers, making it an essential component of foreign earnings for more than 55 countries. It is also the most chemical dependent crop in the world accounting for 10% of chemical pesticides and 22% of all insecticides. That’s 8 times more than what’s used on an average food crop.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO);
- 20,000 people die every year from accidental pesticide poisoning via conventional cotton farming.
- 100,000 more suffer from pesticide poisoning.

Pesticides aside, the manufacture process from seed to shirt is riddled with a variety of hazardous chemicals, including formaldehyde dyes, chlorine bleaches, industrial detergents and sulphuric acid. These end up down the drain, in the air and in the cotton itself.

Organic cotton on the other hand is;
- Good for the environment, for now and the future.
- Good for cotton farmers, manufacturers and our health.
- Good for farmer’s income. They don’t have to pay for expensive agricultural chemicals. Also, farmers get up to a 50% increase in their income when growing organically, allowing them to better feed, clothe and educate their children and at the same time, keeping our children healthy.
- A production system that replenishes and maintains soil fertility. Encouraging a healthy ecosystem for future generations and us.
- The purest and most natural form of cotton available (we believe it’s softer and easier on your skin as well!)

eco peko believes that the good health of our planet is good business. We bring you products from a line that is committed to sustainability, recycling, non-chemical alternatives and practicing fair trade.

We leave our ecological footprints behind us in the way in which we live our lives. As producers or consumers, we have choices to make. We can make a difference.

Treat the earth well : it was not given to you by your parents,
it was loaned to you by your children.
We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors,
we borrow it from our children.

Ancient Proverb