Green Britain Day

Green Britain Day is an opportunity to get together, have fun, and begin the journey towards a lower carbon future. It's the brainchild of Team Green Britain, whose aim is to encourage us to lead a greener and more sustainable life and to leave a lasting green legacy after The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

And it all kicks off this Friday.

10 July 2009 is the first ever Green Britain Day, an opportunity to get together and do one simple green thing for the team.

Five teams currently make up Team Green Britain (with more on the way) and, once you've signed up, there will be lots of team activities to get involved with. Such as persuading your mates to turn off their TVs and come round to watch yours instead, to grabbing some neighbours and throwing together a great big lunch with local-grown food.

One team that has particuarly taken our fancy at Make it and Mend it is Team Swap.

Team Swap is about swapping your old stuff for someone else’s old stuff. Both of you end up with something you want, you both save money and you cut out the energy it takes to produce something new. At the same time, there’s less pressure on those landfill sites.

Just remember, if it’s usable, it’s swappable. That old coat you haven’t worn for two years may be just the hot ticket item your friend has been looking for. Spare pieces of furniture, unused toys – the stuff you don’t need any more can have a new lease of life.

What can you do to get involved?

Easy really – you could go to a local swap party, or if you can’t find one throw your own. These don’t have to be big affairs, they can be as simple as a coffee morning with your friends or colleagues at work, or a full blown affair at a local village hall. Simply choose a venue and decide what you want to swap and let your friends know.

Or if you don’t feel like going out, you can swap online too, on sites like Swapstyle and Switch in Style.

For more details on swapping and swishing parties go to

>>More tips on swishing and swapping parties

For more details on Green Britain Day visit

>>>>More details on Team Green Britain

How to be an Urban Homesteader

Someone sent us the link to the website Selfsufficientish.com today and we just love it. For a start there's the name. That delightful 'ish' on the end grants absolution to those of us would-be tree-huggers who somehow can't manage to go all the way in embracing The Good Life. Then there's the Welcome photo of Andy and Dave Hamilton, the brothers who established this wonderful guide to urban self-sufficiency. It's the way they are smiling so sweetly while brandishing a fork as if to ward off a Tesco buyer or an advancing flytipper - "One step closer and it's through your throat baby!"

The website is a wonderfully eclectic mix of recipes, tips for living on a budget, a very informative guide to buying your first sheep, and help with growing vegetables and foraging for wild food. They even run courses in foraging - very fortnight in the Bristol area, showing you how to forage, how to identify if a plant is poisonous or edible and lots of facts about wilde foods.

The pair have written a book The Sufficientish Bible. One of our Twitter followers says this is a cracking book - so we are going to get ourselves a copy.

So even if you're a townie, with the Selfsufficientish brothers to guide you, you too can become a foraging, veg-growing, Urban Homesteader. Let us know how you get on - but we advise you not to try the sheep in a one-bedroomed flat...