Evidence of the syndicate’s modus operandi emerged this week from a statement made to the police that led to the recent arrest of its leader, Chemlong Lemtongthai (43). The syndicate is alleged to have traded at least 40 rhino horns and placed an “order” for 50 more to be supplied in the next few months.

The evidence brings to light a growing trend among organised syndicates that are using hunting permits to export illegal rhino horns to the Far East. Almost a quarter of the 222 rhinos killed in South Africa this year have been “hunts” authorised by provincial conservation authorities.

A statement made to the police by Tim Smith* who worked with the syndicate, led to the arrest of Lemtongthai and five Thai “hunters” in Edenvale on July 9. He described how Lemtongthai and his sidekick, Punpitak Chunchom, paid millions of rands in cash for live rhinos.

Smith claims in his statement to the police that Marnus Steyl, a wildlife trader based in Brits, North West, bought the rhinos from auctions and private owners.

Steyl is then alleged to have moved the rhinos to a farm in North West and soon after that they would be “hunted”, in contravention of regulations that the animals must be given time to acclimatise.

“Once the rhinos were established on Steyl’s farm he would call Lemtongthai and tell him how many animals were in place for a ‘hunt’ … [If] Steyl had supplied three rhinos Lemtongthai would call Chunchom and tell him that he needed three ‘hunters’ and Chunchom would know that he needed to find three Thai nationals to hunt the rhinos,” Smith said in the statement.

Usually friends were called in, or Thai women working as strippers and prostitutes were paid R5 000 to do the job. They were provided by a Midrand, Gauteng, woman wanted in Thailand for human trafficking. Their passports and fingerprints were needed to complete the necessary hunting permits and Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species paperwork.

Smith claims in the statement that “once the fingerprinting is done, the ladies are taken out to Steyl’s farm, where they are made comfortable and then introduced to the professional hunter.

“[He] would show them the rifle and even take the girls to a quiet spot where they could let off one or two shots so that they can later say that they have at least fired the weapon.”

An official from North West Parks would be called out to witness the “hunt”, measure the horn, scan the microchip and put the details in the professional hunting register. “I believe he would also get a kickback for being so cooperative,” Smith’s statement said.

After the rhino was dehorned and the carcass chopped up for delivery to a butcher in Vryburg, where the meat was sold off in boerewors and burgers, the horn was taken to a taxidermist who mounted it on a shield to look like a hunting trophy.

“The trophy is just a cover for getting the horn out of South Africa and into Asia. Once in Asia, it obviously would enter the black market as rhino horn for ‘medicinal purposes’. The person allegedly ‘hunting’ the rhino would never see the animal or its horn again.”

Lemtongthai argued with some of the rhino traders about the prices they were charging upfront, saying he would prefer to pay after the horns had been weighed, Smith’s statement said.

He felt he had paid too much for two rhinos shot in September or October last year — about R575 000 for one and R450 000 for the second — and told Smith that in future it would be done in a different way. “I remember his actual words: ‘We shoot, we cut, we weigh, then pay.’”

Smith said in the statement that Lemtongthai paid R65 000 a kilogram for the horns and sold them for $55 000 (R380 000) a kilogram. With the average horn weighing 5kg, he had made more than R60-million in profit on the 40 rhinos shot to date.

Smith said he decided to expose the syndicate after discovering an order to Steyl for 50 more rhinos from Lemtongthai’s company, Xaysavang Trading Export-Import Company.

“The receipt of this order made me realise he is just hellbent on killing as many rhinos as possible, for no other reason than harvesting the horn,” Smith said.

Xaysavang Trading Export-Import Company is based in Laos, a tiny country bordered by China, Thailand, Burma, Vietnam and Cambodia. It openly sells monkeys to a Chinese laboratory for use in experiments and in July 2009 was linked to the illegal sale of ivory and 18kg of rhino horn in Kenya.

According to forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan, who assisted in Lemtongthai’s arrest, he is number two in the syndicate, which is headed by a Vietnamese resident, Vixay Keovang, also known as Vixay Xaysavang.

Before it moved into rhino poaching in South Africa the company traded in large quantities of lion carcasses and bones supplied by breeders in the North West and the Free State. Days before Lemtongthai’s arrest, Chunchom, his man on the ground in South Africa, was deported for the illegal possession of lion claws and teeth.

Steyl and the professional hunters have not been charged. Steyl did not respond to questions from the Mail & Guardian.

State okayed ‘hunts’
Recent figures indicate that at least 60 of the 222 rhinos killed in South Africa this year were “hunts” authorised by provincial conservation bodies.

The department of environmental affairs did not answer the M&G’s questions about the number of permits that had been issued for rhino hunts this year.

When the M&G first reported, in July 2008, that wildlife traffickers were laundering hunting permits to smuggle horns to the Far East, figures available showed that 205 rhino hunting permits had been issued in 2006.

Hawks spokesperson McIntosh Polela said this week that the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure, a collaborative task team set up in May to deal with rhino poaching, had so far focused on the Kruger National Park because of the high density of its rhino population and because it made up 80% of poaching incidents. The Kruger would remain the focus “until we get things under control”, but the task team was spreading out to provinces affected by rhino poaching activities.

Cases included those of Chemlong Lemtongthai, the alleged leader of a Thai syndicate, and an alleged Limpopo syndicate headed by hunter Dawie Groenewald, Polela said.

Groenewald and 10 others were arrested last September. They face charges that include fraud, corruption, assault, defeating the ends of justice and contravening the Organised Crime Act.

Despite the charges, Limpopo conservation officials have issued Groenewald with 12 rhino hunting permits in recent months and at least 17 transport permits.

The permits came to light after the Democratic Alliance’s Limpopo leader, Desiree van der Walt, posed questions to Pitsi Moloto, the province’s environment minister. Moloto said the magistrate had prohibited Groenewald from engaging in any activity related to rhinos on his farm, but that “the period set by the magistrate expired and he was allowed to conduct his business as usual”.

Last week Groenewald offered to buy nine white rhinos from a private sanctuary in Limpopo. He backed down in the face of an outcry from conservationists and the rhinos were sold to Mpumalanga game rancher John Hume. Paul O’Sullivan, an investigator who worked with the anti-poaching task team to expose Lemtongthai and the Xaysavang Trading Export-Import Company, admitted that a link existed between Groenewald and the Thai syndicate.

In response to questions about whether Groenewald was supplying rhinos for the Thai syndicate’s “canned hunts” O’Sullivan said: “Yes, he’s at it as well, just with another syndicate that also traces back to Lemtongthai’s boss.”

Groenewald’s lawyer, Thomas Grobler, said Groenewald denied any connection with Lemtongthai, the Xaysavang Trading Export-Import Company, or its owner, Vixay Xaysavang. Polela also said there was no indication of a link.

* Name has been changed

Stripping national assets.  The company of Thai resident Chemlong Lemtongthai (left) is accused of ordering 50 rhinos to be killed in ‘canned’ hunts.

Sourced via Mail & Guardian online for ecoAfrica Travel

Yip a fruit, that grows on a tree can be used to wash your dishes, clean your laundry and even use on your body as a soap or shampoo.

Soapnuts!  The fruit of the Soapnut tree (Sapindus Mukorossi -  a small shrub like tree), found mostly in warm temperate to tropical regions like India, Indonesia and Nepal is a great alternative to traditional detergents.

These trees grow wild in their natural habitat, they are free of chemicals, the fruit is harvested in a sustainable manner, then de-seeded, left to dry in the sun, and packaged for use as detergent.  The fruit is about 1 – 2 centimeters in diameter and turn from green to yellow and ripen to blackish.  The name soap nuts might be confusing as this is not a nut at all but a fruit, family of the leachy and perfectly safe to use by people who have a nut allergy.

Why does is work as a detergent?  The soap nut’s hard outer shell contains saponin, a natural surfacent (substance known for its cleaning ability).

As the fruit is totally natural it is incredibly gentle on your skin and clothes, a great alternative for people with sensitive skin or who suffers from skin ailments such as eczema.  It is even save enough to use on your baby.   Another benefit is that as a fruit it is fully biodegradable and safe for your greywater system.

Soapnuts might be new to us, but it has been used for hundreds of years in their indigenous countries.

How to use soapnuts
Laundry
You place 3 – 6 soap nuts in a muslin bag, stocking or sock, with your load of washing and voila you’ve just replaced traditional laundry detergent.   You will be able to do 4 – 5 loads of laundry with the same set of nuts.
You will know that your nuts are “all-used-up” as they become dark and sickly at this point you can retire them to your compost heap.

Smell? Yip it does have a distinct smell but amasingly your laundry will just smell clean and not like the fruit.

Soapnut liquid
Make your own liquid by boiling 12  soapnuts with 6 cups of water for 30 minutes.  Then let it cool down, remove the nuts, pour it in an airtight glass jar and use as needed.  You can use this liquid for doing dishes, hand soap or shampoo.

A great way to preserve your soapnut liquid is to freeze it in ice cube trays, so every time you do your laundry you just pop two ice cubes in your washing machine.

Dishes
You can either use the soap liquid to wash your dishes or if you use a dishwasher you just throw two nuts in your cutlery holder.  Do not get fooled that soapiness cleans better, these natural little cleaners will not foam but they work really really well.

Apart from your local health shop we could find only one online supplier of soapnuts in South Africa, Nature Soap, visit their website for more information and to order.  Their soap nuts are imported from India, shipped not airfreighted as to cut down on their carbon footprint.   Internationally try BuySoapNuts

This really is cleaning the way nature intended, what a wonderful way to prevent chemicals from flowing down our drains and polluting our water.   So go green with soapnuts.

Sourced via Home Makers Online for ecoAfrica Travel

Madzivanzira, who had years of experience, had escorted an international guest from the hotel to the nearby Siduli Hide on an armed walk at 16h00. The hide is close to a waterhole frequented by a variety of game and while the guest was inside the hide, a number of animals visited the waterhole, including a bull elephant in full musth.

The bull chased off another four elephants that had made their way to the water to drink and, after some time, the bull elephant started to move off. It was at this time (18h00) that, while Madzivanzira was escorting his guest back to the lodge, the bull spotted them and started to charge. According to the guest, Madzivanzira grabbed her arm and instructed her to run but by this stage the elephant was too close. Madzivanzira then instructed her to climb a nearby tree and stumbled as he turned to face the elephant as he discharged his weapon. The elephant hit the guide tossing him to the ground.

Efforts by observers and staff whistling and shouting from the lodge’s balcony to try to distract the charging bull elephant were to no avail. The elephant eventually ran off and staff members and a medical team were on site to rescue the guest from the tree and attend to Madzivanzira, who had been fatally wounded. Senior management from Victoria Falls Safari Lodge and experienced wildlife experts, in co-ordination with the National Parks and Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), were called to secure the area and to conduct further investigations into the matter.

Once news of the incident had reached Africa Albida Tourism’s head office by 18h30, Madzivanzira the various management staff were deployed to assist with contacting family and immediate grief counselling ensued with the guide’s family and the guests.

While in transit today to Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, Ross Kennedy, Africa Albida Tourism’s Chief Executive, said: “It is a very sad and shocking thing to have happened and we will do everything we can do to provide support for Tendekai’s family. I‘ve been told the staff at Victoria Falls Safari Lodge have been amazing in dealing with the situation and I have to say a big thank you to all of them. This is the first time in the 17 years of the lodge being open that something like this has ever happened and as much as we train our staff for a worst case scenario when living in the bush with wild animals, you still never think an incident like this is ever going to take place. Tendekai was a skilled professional who had the respect of his wildlife peers and conservation colleagues, along with all clients, staff, and the community as a whole”

Sourced via SA Tourism Update Online for ecoAfrica Travel

Switching my Blackberry off, gladly watching the phone’s screen darken as I wryly smiled at the perpetually amusing animated South African Airways in-flight safety briefing, I knew my reward was coming. After powering through an all-out exhausting deadline for a months-long research project, I needed time out of the urban cage to remind myself of the incredible energies of the continent on which I live. It’s amazing, really, how a brief flight from Johannesburg can land you so quickly in the north of Zimbabwe, where the misty haze of the Victoria Falls takes over, and the sunset along the Zambezi riverbanks recaptures your soul. Instead of smelling the suffocating smog of the city centre, I now inhaled the earthy scent of the African dust that rose in the air with the first footstep into my Desert and Delta Safari. The time to reconnect with Africa was mine.

A simple visit to the Falls wasn’t on my agenda: I wanted to get away on a safari set in the romantic landscape of the heart of the continent, away from the droves of tourists cloaked in bright yellow raincoats, making their best efforts at capturing the Falls through a mist-drenched photo lens. I left the charmingly-colonial town of Victoria Falls and crossed into Botswana, venturing out across the golden veld towards the Savuti Safari Lodge. As I watched the landscape change en route, I could hear in the distance the sounds of animals calling out to one another, as if alerting each other of my impending arrival. The camp itself was exactly what I needed: Their thatched chalets made me feel as if I was once again one with the earth itself, naturally lodged in a luxurious enclave made for an African King. After months of excessive coffees and disappointingly-bland take-away meals, the change to a multiple-course dinner around a roaring fire was more than enough to put a wide grin on my face. The evening continued well into the late hours, as I sat around the fire listening to stories of other guests’ safari experiences. Would my trek out into the bush tomorrow bring me any good animal sightings? With high hopes, I retired to my chalet and submerged myself in the crisp linen, ready to dream of the next day’s animal excursions.

The coffee bean is a wonderful little thing. As the aromas of a fresh brew of nature’s best pick-me-up circulated around the still-dark camp, I readied myself for an early morning sunrise safari in hopes that I’d be able to spot one of the continent’s most magnificent of creatures. We set out on the safari truck, still a bit groggy from the early morning wake-up, when we finally saw it: A lion, hiding in the bush, had fixed his gaze on us, as if questioning whether he should let us pass or not. The car stopped immediately, and the cameras came out. The other tourists made every best attempt at keeping their excited voices down to a frantic whisper, but I sat in sheer silence, admiring the heavy mane of the lion as its auburn tones began to reflect the sunrise’s first forays into the day. This would be only one of many sightings on the morning safari, reminding me that sometimes waking up early is worth far more than the mere participation in a morning commute along the N1.

After spending another night around the fire, telling the evening’s newcomers to the lodge about my own brilliant day of game sighting, I packed up my suitcases early in the morning and set out to take in the life on Africa’s waterways. And, when in Botswana, where better to do that than the Okavango Delta, one of nature’s most stunning examples of annual animal migrations. Having watched the Planet Earth episode about the Delta enough times to be able to narrate my own High-Definition excursion, I was riveted to finally see the sight myself. My destination for the next two nights, Camp Okavango, provided the perfect jumping-off point for exploring the delta. Remotely located, I felt a privileged visitor among the animals that now shared their annual delta home with me. Luckily, I had arrived early enough to catch the afternoon’s last motorized boat excursion, quickly jumping on and setting out to see what the water had to offer. Whereas the previous day had started with the gaze of a lion, today ended with the multiple sets of eyes popping out of the water’s surface, deceptively small, alerting me to the presence of the many hippos all around. Although vegetarian by nature, the stocky creatures managed to set in a bit of “healthy respect” among the boat’s passengers: The hippo is indeed the most dangerous of all Africa’s game. With my camera’s memory card filled up and the sky becoming redder by the minute, we set back for camp, where sunset drinks on the teak deck greeted us. Never has a Gin and Tonic tasted so good! The bright shades of yellow, orange, and red that the sunset offered up were accompanied by a percussion chorus of reed frogs, invisibly stuck to the sides of the Delta’s vast water plants. The sunset gave way to the most spectacular presentation of stars I’ve ever seen, with the Milky Way Galaxy coming alive above the views across the Okavango Delta. After such an incredible day, sleep has never been so welcome.

After a leisurely wake-up and a filling breakfast, it was time to abandon the boat motor and head out on the water in a more eco-friendly style: The Mokoro boat would provide my silent and graceful means of transportation among the Delta’s waterways today. The passages and canals around the Delta, only navigable with the expertise knowledge of the local guide, made me realise just how vast the expanse of water truly is. Hundreds of unmarked and uninhabited (by humans, anyways) islands dot the water vistas, allowing elephants and other animals to migrate between them at will. The day on the boat made me feel like a true global explorer, coming across pieces of land that led me to believe I was the first to come across them. While this was most assuredly not true, it’s the feeling that counts, right?

My final evening spent in the Delta was filled with an amazing dinner and yet another opportunity to gather around a warm fire, chilled beer in hand, to exchange my own unique stories of the brilliant safari I had just had. Smiling while others told their own stories, I knew that, no matter what they said, in my mind the adventure I had just had would never be trumped.

The following day I transited to the Maun Airport, a sleepy airstrip in the middle of Botswana’s main Okavango town. With a sense of bittersweet goodbye, I stepped onto the airplane that would take me away from this world rooted in everything natural, and fly me back to the urban world rooted in everything, well… urban. And while the pressures of work were not far off, and the Blackberry sitting in my pocket like a paperweight, the knowledge that the beauty of the African continent was such a short distance away made coming home all the easier: I could already feel the heat and smell the dust of my next African safari coming on.

Submitted by : Andrew Fleming

Homemade hair rinse
Beer is great to give your hair body and shine. Pour a beer into a glass and leave it awhile to get warm and flat. After shampooing and rinsing, pour the beer on your hair and work it through. Then rinse with cool water.

Stubborn stains
Beer is surprisingly useful at getting rid of coffee or tea stains. But first colour-test the carpet in a non-visible area. If it dries with no visible mark, then use the beer to blot out stains, repeating until the area has been thoroughly cleaned.

Polishing pots
Use beer as a green non-chemical way to polish your pots and boost shine without damaging the metal. Use a soft cloth dampened with beer and start to buff.

Getting rid of pests
For pesky fruit flies, pour a beer into a cup, cut the corner off a sandwich bag and wrap the bag around the cup with some rubber bands. Make sure that the cut corner is at the top of the cup so that the fruit flies can get in.

Beer can also be a non-chemical way to get rid of slugs and snails. Take a clean container (eg empty juice carton cut lengthwise in half) and bury it where you’ve spotted the pests so the top is about 1 cm above the ground. Then fill with beer. Apparently snails and slugs will be drawn to it and drown. However, I don’t like this method, it seems so cruel!

Attracts butterflies
Butterflies actually like rotting fruit, and apparently they love beer too! Take 450 grams of sugar, 1 or 2 cans of stale beer, 3 mashed bananas (overripe is better), 1 cup of syrup, 1 shot of rum and 1 cup of fruit juice. This sweet potent mixture will have butterflies swarming around your garden. Mix well and sprinkle on trees, rocks and fence posts. Or soak a sponge in the mixture and hang it from a tree.

- If you have a worm farm, dump the grounds in – The caffeine jolt seems to make the worms eat through more, but it does not seem to do them any harm; but would recommend mixing them through the pile so the worms don’t overdose on any residual caffeine.

- Use coffee grounds as a plant fertilizer. Sprinkle the grounds around the base of the plant then dig them in a little. They can also be sprinkled directly on your lawn.

- Add the grounds to compost piles to enrich nutrient content – the grounds contain Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, Calcium, Magnesium and Sulfur. Phosphorous is becoming scarce, so we need to conserve it as much as possible.

- Add water to the grounds and allow to stand for a day or two. Drain off and then use as a liquid plant fertilizer – cold coffee that you’d usually toss down the sink can also be used in this way.

- After drying the grounds thoroughly, add them to an old stocking. Tie off the ends and then use in cupboards and your refrigerator as an odor absorber. Alternatively, you can just place the dried grounds in a container of some sort.

- Rubbing your hands with used coffee grounds will remove strong smells such as onion or fish.

- Grounds can be used as a scourer for greasy pots and pans

- A ring of coffee grounds around sensitive plants can discourage ants and some other pests.

- Use as a wood stain. Allow them to soak in a small amount of water overnight (or hot water for a shorter period), then drain off. The amount of water you use will determine how dark the stain is. Also good for touch-ups to mahogany furniture.

- Dry out the coffee grounds in a warm (not hot) oven; then add equal weight of fresh coffee grounds and then use that mix to create another brew. After that brew, try one of the tips above – I wouldn’t recommend repeating the cycle.

By the way, a good tip for how *not* to use coffee grounds. Don’t try to get rid of them via your kitchen sink. They’ll stick to grease in the drain and form the basis for further build-up. Over a period of time this will totally clog the drain.

With all these wonderful re-use options for coffee grounds; perhaps hit your local coffee house and ask them if you can collect theirs on a regular basis. They’ll reduce waste and you’ll have a useful product – everyone wins! You might want to get in quick; since the time this article was originally published it seems many people have been doing just that, so used coffee grounds are becoming quite sought after

If you have other uses for coffee grounds, please add your ideas!

The reason for this is when used around the home inappropriately, these substances can actually help bacteria become resistant to the chemical, creating “superbugs”.

The heavy duty disinfectant artillery should be left to health professionals as a last line of defense. As has been noted in the case of staph, the excessive and inappropriate use of antibiotics has created super-strains which are now resistant to practically *all* antibiotics.

Some of the chemicals used in commercial preparations can also have a negative effect on aquatic life as water treatment facilities can’t filter them out.

A chemical of particular concern is triclosan. Used in everything from bar soaps to toothpaste, it can also be found in some commercial disinfectants. According to Beyond Pesticides, researchers who added triclosan to river water and shined ultra violet light on the water found that between one and twelve percent of the triclosan was converted to dioxins. Dioxins are incredibly toxic to aquatic organisms, animals and humans and as these substances are bioaccumulative, they work their way up the food chain.

In a U.S. Geological Survey study of 95 different organic wastewater contaminants in U.S. streams, triclosan was one of the most frequently detected compounds.

This is a serious environmental issue that we can all play a role in helping to address – for starters, taking more care in the types of disinfectant we choose and use.

Greener disinfecting alternatives

It’s important to bear in mind that disinfecting something means killing something else; that the nature of the process is destructive – however, the goal is to minimize “collateral damage”.

While there are quite a few environmentally friendly (or should I say, friendlier) products on the market, making your own environmentally friendly disinfectant is very cheap and extremely quick to do using just eucalyptus oil and water.

Simply mix 1.6 oz (around 50 ml) of eucalyptus oil with a quart (litre) of water. That’s all there is to it – not everything that is effective needs to be complex.

Be sure to shake well before use and use as you would a store bought disinfectant. Also keep the mixture out of direct sunlight in a opaque container.

Not only will you have a greener disinfectant, but by making your own, you’re more likely to use the same container, therefore cutting down your plastic consumption.

Eucalyptus oil is amazing stuff and you’ll see it mentioned regularly throughout this site. I’ve read that European doctors used to use eucalyptus oil to disinfect and sterilize their equipment. Do be careful when handling eucalyptus oil as it’s quite potent and can cause skin irritation in its undiluted form.

Here’s another disinfectant recipe if you’re not particularly fond of the smell of eucalyptus:

Grapefruit Seed Extract Disinfectant Spray

Ingredients:

1 gallon warm water
20 drops grapefruit seed extract
Mix and pour in a spray bottle

That’s it!

If you have some earth friendly disinfectant tips you’d like to share; please add them below!

We live in a world that is literally molded in plastic, from beverage and food containers to toys, cell phones, computers, bags and a range of household items. It is everywhere and unfortunately seems to be going nowhere. Not only is plastic non-biodegradable, it is also one of the most toxic pollutants in the world and causes damage to the environment, right from its production to its disposal. In addition, plastics are manufactured using chemicals like Bisphenol-A and Phthalates that can be dangerous to our health.

Every year, trillions of plastic bags, billions of plastic bottles, appliances and cell phones are discarded; a large majority of these end up in landfills or the oceans, where they can take a thousand years to break down. In addition, marine trash, which mainly consists of plastic, currently kills more than a million seabirds and 100,000 mammals and sea turtles each year. We can all play a role in reducing our dependence on plastic, if we started to take some small steps in our everyday lives to be mindful of our plastic use.

Here are 5 simple tips on how you can learn to live with less plastic:

1. Carry reusable shopping bags
This may seem like the most obvious tip, but one look at people in grocery stores and shopping malls will remind you why this practice is far from being widely adopted. Make this easier for you by keeping a few reusable bags in your car, your handbag or briefcase.

2. Don’t buy bottled water
According to Food & Water Watch, plastic bottles produce 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year and requires up to 47 million gallons of oil per year to produce. If you are concerned about water quality, invest in a home water filtration system. When you’re on the go, carry a reusable stainless steel bottle or travel mug that you can fill before leaving home and refill whenever you need to.

3. Cook at home more often
This is not only the healthier choice for you and your family, but can also significantly help to reduce the amount of plastic that enters your home. When you cook at home, you’re essentially avoiding the plastic packaging that comes with frozen meals as well as the plastic bags, plastic containers, plastic wrapped forks and knives and plastic sachets that takeout food and condiments come packaged in.

4. Compost Organic food waste
Home composting is a great way to reduce the amount of trash you produce on a daily basis, and thereby reduce the use of plastic trash bags. Composting your organic food scraps is the best way to return to mother earth the energy that went into preparing your food. Further, composting has several environmental benefits, ranging from drastically reducing the amount of solid waste that ends up in landfills each year to greenhouse gas reduction and soil enrichment.

5. Buy less stuff & Reuse what you have
Again, this should seem obvious, but the less we consume, the less demand for products that are made of plastic and consequently, the less chances that plastic will end up in landfills and our oceans. Further, try and buy products that are of a higher quality, so that they last longer and reduce the need to be replaced in a few months or years. Lastly, no matter how hard you try to live with less plastic, you may not be able to avoid it completely. When you can’t refuse plastic, learn to reuse! Shopping bags, food containers, zip-lock bags and bottles don’t need to end up in your trash or recycling bin, but can be put to several creative uses.

Sourced via One Green Planet

]]> http://www.ecoafrica-travel.com/2011/02/22/5-tips-on-how-to-live-with-less-plastic/feed/ 0 http://www.ecoafrica-travel.com/2011/02/21/green-baby-tips/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://www.ecoafrica-travel.com/2011/02/21/green-baby-tips/#comments Mon, 21 Feb 2011 09:36:10 +0000 gbell http://www.ecoafrica-travel.com/?p=744 If you’re currently expecting a bundle of joy or have a baby at home, take note of these green tips to ensure the wellbeing of your little one, and to minimise the impact you have on the environment.

1. During your pregnancy, try to minimise the amount of chemicals you use in beauty and cosmetic products. Some chemicals are absorbed through your skin and may be passed on to the foetus. Replace with natural makeup, deoderants etc.

2. Throw a green themed baby shower where you request eco-friendly and all natural gifts for you and baby, such as cleaning and skincare products.

3. Consider breast feeding: its not only best to nourish your little one, but it is the most environment friendly option. Remember that you can buy hand/machine pumps to store your breast milk if you work. For those who aren’t the breast feeding type, look for a lovely natural formula without genetically modified ingredients. Remember to look for bottles that don’t contain Bisphenol-A (this leaches toxins when heated). You could try a glass bottle.