Coding Grasshoppers Green Store

I've just added a new feature to the site. On the sidebar you should now see a link to "Coding Grasshoppers Green Store". I've set this up through amazon.co.uk and it is basically a customised store for all things green.

At the moment it has a few books on certain subjects I've been blogging about as well as a section on the good old power saving light bulb.

I will be added new sections as time goes by as well as adding a "featured" section to showcase books etc, that I think are particularly good. So go take a look and see if there is anything you fancy. Remember to keep checking back as I'll be adding more sections over time.

Organic Fruit and Veg delivered to your door

As another move to trying to go that little bit more green, my girlfriend and I are now getting all of our fruit and veg delivered via an organic box scheme. The people we are using are part of a franchise of organic farms that supply box schemes in their local area. The main site for finding out if you can get veg delivered is here.

The main site gives all the information you would want to know about the boxes themselves as well as information about the farms used. Recipes are also available to take advantage of the produce being provided.

The web site offers an extremely well thought out ordering system allowing you to place a regular order to be delivered at set intervals as well as allowing you to add specials on specific orders. As most of the food provided is seasonal a list of what will be available for the next four weeks orders is provided so you can see what your likely to be getting.

As well as the organic veg they also provide fruit, eggs and juices as well as a few other bits and pieces, so it's quite easy to come up with a good weekly order. The best bit is quite often you'll get some veg that you may not have ever heard of before let alone eaten, so it can be fun trying out new recipes with that.

Even if you just make a single order I would recommend giving them a go as the food they provide has a much richer and exciting taste than what you often find in the super market, and the prices is still very reasonable so with that money you saved from changing to power saving light bulbs you won't be breaking the bank.

Printer Consumable Recycling

I've had a Samsung ML-1710 laser printer for a few years now. I originally bought it when I was at University to do all of my printing in my final year. Since then it's also handled all of the printing for my girlfriends final year and several other major print jobs since then.

Recently I bought a small HP ink jet printer to do colour stuff and to be honest I'm not really that impressed. The printer only cost about £40 so I wasn't really expecting much but the cartridges cost about £14-£20 each depending on if they are black or colour and they really don't last very long.

I began thinking that it would be quite nice to get rid of both of the printers and maybe get a colour laser, preferably with a network module built in so I could just connect it to my nice new shiny router and my girlfriend could print wirelessly from her laptop without my PC having to be on. I quite like the Samsung laser I've currently got so I thought I would take a quick look to see what they had to offer and that's when I came across this.

Samsung are now offering a free post service to allow you to send them you're used toner for them to recycle. I think this is great. There are currently several places around that will recycle your ink jet cartridges for you and donate money to charity at the same time, however all the places I found that did toner recycling required you to send at least 10 toner cartridges. This is fine for business's but not so great for individuals.

After looking around the net a bit more I've also found the following companies that also offer the same service for their printer consumables. HP, Epson (Epson's isn't a free post service instead it lists Epson service centres in your area that will take used cartridges), Canon, Brother, Xerox, Kyocera Mita, Konica Minolta (link at bottom of page), some of the other printer manufactures out there didn't seem to have any information listed on their web sites about recycling consumables, however that doesn't mean that they don't so if you have a printer that is by another manufacture then get in contact with them and see what they say.

Composting

Just before Christmas I mentioned in a previous post that I was looking into getting a composting bin. Well in my Christmas holiday I decided to go to my local council and get myself a discount composting bin, and here it is sat at the end of my garden. It has a 220 litre capacity, which is pretty big. I've already started putting vegetable peelings in there and it's hardly even covered the bottom, so it could take a while before I actually start to see it working. I'm sure in a few months though it'll start to get filled then we should have some nice home made compost to use when we start growing our own vegetables again in the spring.

The main hope though is that it'll reduce the amount of rubbish that gets thrown away in our non-recyclable bin.