Recycled paper is readily available in the market since there is a never ending source of used paper which is converted into new usable paper. Recycled paper is cost effective and cheap. It gives you the time to invest your money in other aspects of your business rather than paying expensive bills for leaflet printing on non recycled paper. People try to argue that virgin paper or paper made from freshly cut timber is higher in quality than recycled paper, but the truth is recycled paper is just the same or can be even better depending on what quality of paper you’re looking for. Industrialists using virgin paper for printing also try to argue that they plant new trees to replace those that are cut down, but that method does not suffice as trees take years to grow to their full grown form.

Recycled paper used for leaflet printing can give you the appealing natural touch you desire with raw fibres visible throughout the page. Recycled paper can vary from a completely natural look with fibres showing or can have them barely visible at all. You can decide what kind of paper your leaflet would look best to print on. Because recycled paper involves the breakdown of used papers, the fibres existing become smaller, more refined providing dimensional stability and a smoother, softer quality to the paper. This quality is attractive and ideal to those looking for quality leaflet printing paper. Some people complain of the grey colour that some types of recycled paper have. This colouring effect is due to the ink of used paper mixing with the fibres while being broken down and recycled to make new paper. If your business only uses white paper, there is recycled paper available which are bleached to produce white recycled printing paper. Some companies take even greater pains to make sure the ink is also eco friendly by utilising soy based inks for leaflet printing.

Recycled paper is a habit one must take to contribute towards the effort of a greener eco-friendly world. Using recycled paper for leaflet printing has a number of appealing qualities to provide the impact you need and to get noticed. So to answer the question I first asked you, “Can Leaflet Printing Be More Environmentally Friendly?” Yes it sure can!

Solo Press is a well established and recognised printing company based in the UK. Solo Press provides cost effective leaflet printing and a variety of other printing and design services for your business.

Cut

If you work hard, you may want to enjoy party time as well. When you wear Carhartt pants, you will find the cut of the pants will allow you to move easily from job site to party site. The pants are cut somewhat fuller through the seat and thighs. This allows you to easily climb onto heavy equipment, step in and out of a vehicle or even climb in rugged terrain if the job requires it. The so-called dungaree cut also allows you to dance your heart out then you head out for a night on the town. Carhartt pants provide ease of movement and the ability to bend and flex with pants that do the same.

Design

All of the design features found in Carhartt pants lend themselves just as effectively to party time as they do while on the job. These pants are wrinkle resistant fabric so that they look great while you are on the party circuit. You will be able to enjoy the contemporary look of quality Carhartt pants at the same time as you are comfortable with the design. Special design features include adding reinforcements to the stress points that are found on active duty pants.

Color

The colors of Carhartt pants are great earth tones. The include the color of moss, a gray green tone that fits the hard working person who spends a lot of time out of doors. Or, for a lighter look, you can choose Golden Khaki. This color reminds you of golden sand. The light colors allow you to go from job sight to an indoor party or even one located at poolside with ease and aplomb. Mushroom is another great choice of color in Carhartt pants. You can take on the party scene in a pair of these pants and know that you look great.

Style

Contemporary style is a tricky thing, but when you wear Carhartt pants to the next party you attend, you will know you are right in style. Yet, you will be at your best and most witty because you feel great. Carhartt pants provide the ultimate in comfort, ease and quality for workers and for party goers as well. Choose from the custom fit designs, colors and styles and you will be assured that you are a hit on the party scene. The self assurance that comes from knowing that you look your best will carry over into both your personal and work life.

WorkWear1.com offers a great selection of Carhartt Pants in addition to a wide variety of Carhartt Clothing and Carhartt Pants.

Double Stitching

Obviously, a key component of any work garment, including Carhartt pants is the stitching that holds the garment pieces together. The highest quality garments include strong thread used and double stitching. In addition to this attention to the fine points of durability, Carhartt pants feature rivets to make key stress points on the pants even more sturdy. The last thing a worker needs on the job is pants that don’t hold up when stress is placed on seams or pockets. The pants manufactured by Carhartt are less subject to seam failure.

Cell Phone

Although cell phone pockets are sometimes found in high fashion pants for casual wear, you don’t often find them in work clothing. Carhartt recognized the fact that most people even on the job carry cell phones today and Carhartt pants feature a pocket just for your cell phone. This feature found in Carhartt pants means that workers on the job can easily carry a cell phone to reach management, other workers, or family and friends without risk of damage to the cell phone itself.

The phone can be used, then tucked away safely.

Reinforcement

In addition to double stitching along key seams of Carhartt pants, there is additional reinforcement where appropriate. Some of these features have been adopted in other companies’ product lines since they have proved to be successful in preventing wear or product failure at key spots. An example is the practice of placing rivets at pocket corners. Carhartt pants have long been the leaders in providing rugged clothing for hard working people on the job site. The company continues to look for ways that clothing can be made even more durable and reliable for those who need attractive and stylish work clothing.

Size

Another feature that makes Carhartt pants even more attractive for those who need high quality and durable work clothing is the size of the pockets and seams. The pockets serve as a place to carry needed items for the worker. These pockets are both patch design and hidden design. Each pocket is designed to serve to hold the small personal items you need with you while on the job. The seams on Carhartt pants are generous so that you needn’t worry about seam failure in a work situation. Both seams and pockets reflect the kind of quality that you expect from the Carhartt company.

WorkWear1.com offers a great selection of Carhartt Pants in addition to a wide variety of Carhartt Clothing and Carhartt Pants.

The chemical, a herbicide popular with many farmers, is able to destroy weeds and nettles without destroying the crops or grass around them. However, the Aminopyralid, which is used to in the manufacture of many different Dow AgroSceinces products, has managed to outwit the brains that knew enough about its potential to warn against using it on food crops or on material that will be directly turned into compost.

However, despite these best intentions and precautions, Aminopyralid had slid into the food chain, and it is now being blamed for deformed vegetable crops and vacant plots and allotments up and down the country.

Scientists think that the contaminations originated in grass sprayed with the herbicide a year ago. Whilst materials themselves treated with the herbicide could not be sold as compost, nobody thought to concern themselves about the fact that Aminopyralid-treated silage, the cattle feed used over winter, might result in manure that was itself contaminated. That manure was then sold, to private gardens, to allotments and so on, and is now ruining harvests and – with those affected being told to not even think about planting in the same soil for at least twelve months – leaving allotments and vegetable patches forlorn and vacant.

And those twelve months, it is feared, could be just the beginning of a long road toward seeing our allotments and gardens fully Aminopyralid free.

The current suspension on Aminopyralid related products is not yet permanent, but even if it becomes so and farmers do not use the herbicides that they have already purchased then it is estimated that the problem of the contaminated manure will still be around for at least four more years.

The Royal Horticultural Society is conducting soil tests for people worried that they may have inadvertently contaminated their plot by using manure containing the echoes of Aminopyralid. However, a good test that any concerned person can do for free right now is to transplant a tomato plant into a 50% manure 50% compost mixture and then just wait and see for any signs, such as withered leaves and distorted shapes, that has been associated with the herbicide.

There has been a growing trend of people now turning toward growing their own food on allotments. The security of being able to check what, if any, pesticides or herbicides are on our food is often cited as a reason for this. So too s the growing concern over the effect that foods imported over long distances – often so that produce that is out of its growing season can still be stacked onto supermarket shelves – is having on the environment. The notion of food miles, and the acceptance of how they fit into expanding or reducing an individuals carbon footprint, means that more and more people find the prospect of growing their vegetables locally extremely appealing. Many councils have had to quarter the size of the allotments that they offer because demand is now so great. Let’s hope that the fear over Aminopyralid doesn’t affect this eco-friendly trend.

Matt Gammie is a writer for Ecoswitch

The search for oil has long defined man’s interaction with the Arctic, but a new report by the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research describes how, in somewhat of a closed system, the results of the climate change caused by fossils fuels such as oil will make future efforts to clean up after oil spills even more difficult.

The report also suggests that such spills may become more likely in the future, as climate change will stir up rougher seas, making the already difficult to navigate shipping routes even more dangerous.

Environmental groups, such as the WWF, are calling for a total ban on oil prospecting in regions where the oil companies’ strategies for spill cleanup are not credible. The Arctic fields pose two very specific problems; first that oil that has seeped beneath the ice is impossible to clear up, and second that deploying the technologies needed to clear up the oil is extremely difficult in the constant darkness that befalls the Arctic Circle for some of the year.

As oilfields dry up, and the yearning for oil continues, there is growing concern that oil companies will be more and more adventurous in their hunt for the bounty. To the dismay of environmental groups, global warming is actually making hitherto unreachable Arctic oil fields accessible, as ice breaks and recedes due to climate change.

The Northwest Passage is certainly more navigable now that at anytime in the past, as the warming climate turns solid ice into water. Research conducted by the Naval Postgraduate School, in California, recently estimated the Arctic sea could be completely free of ice by 2013.

It’s an off-colour irony that this sad fact will possibly benefit those companies that are most culpable for changing the face of our planet.

The influence, and outright corruption, that some of the major oil companies are able to exert on policy makers is nowhere more striking, nor tragic, that in the case of their interaction with the Arctic. In Alaska, the National Interests Lands Conservation Act of 1980 created the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an area where wildlife and landscape were meant to be protected against the gluttony of the oil men.

The Act contained a contentious section; section 1002, which deferred a ruling on whether the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain could be drilled into. In 1987 the Department of the Interior completed a report that outlined the probable and proven resources of the area, through use of seismic processing (itself a controversial technique, due to the fact that it disturbs bears and has been directly linked with instances of mother bears abandoning their cubs) and other geophysical data. Since that report was presented many wells have been pierced down close to ANWR and it was no surprise to environmental groups when, in 2001, the esteemed Bush administration suggested that drilling inside the reserve to be a logical solution to America’s energy shortages.

Matt Gammie is an environment writer for ecoswitch, the green comparison website

Whilst food prices are rising they still take a far smaller bite out of the average wage packet than they did in the 1970’s – around 10% now compared with 20% back then. However, there has been much speculation that increased food prices will drive people away from the organic products that have been rising in popularity in the last few years.

Most supermarkets now carry a wide selection of organic products, from milk to shampoos, but, due to less intensive methods of production, these products are normally more expensive that their non-organic counterparts. Although there has been much speculation about a possible fall in sales of organic products in the face of economic slowdown, sales have continued to rise and the sector, which accounts for about 1.5% of all food purchased in UK supermarkets, is now valued at £980 million a year.

It is uncertain whether consumers will still be willing to pay that extra amount on each weekly shopping basket in a couple of month’s time. Should it be the case that the public’s acceptance of organic products drops off then this would be a great shame to the environmental movement, as organic products, for example organic milk, result in far lower carbon emissions than their non-organic counterparts.

Whilst an increase in food prices might lead people away from environmentally friendly, organic food purchases, rising costs are leading people toward more ecologically friendly practices in areas outside the supermarket isles. Allotments, where people can grow their own organic food, are in as high a demand as ever, and newspapers and television programmes are now reflecting the growing trend of people getting their hands and knees dirty in order to prepare the food they eat for dinner. In terms of reducing a household’s carbon footprint the shift toward economical, home-grown vegetables is great news, as it cuts away the emissions caused by the manufacture of fertilisers and transport of the product.

In addition to food there has been a growing use in services that allow people to advertise their unwanted goods rather than sending them to the landfill or incinerator. In the United States www.throwplace.com allows people to announce their desire to part company with everything from tables to computers. The website gives people the choice to donate to either individuals, businesses, American charities and international charities, and as well as being financially rewarding for the people who gain from the free goods it is also massively beneficial to the environment, as it reduces the amount of perfectly good items being sent to the landfill.

In the UK there is a similar system running through the freecycle network (www.freecycle.org). Here people can advertise both the things they want and the things that they have to give away. Many of the items being offered are the result of people moving house, and the system provides a good way of finding new homes for items that are far too good for the landfill, but not really worth the effort of selling; a perfect synergy between economics and environmentalism.

Matt Gammie is a writer for the green comparison website Ecoswitch, the green comparison website

The study identified 180 “blocks” that have been ear-marked for oil and gas exploration, an area that stretches 170 million acres, an area just smaller than that of oil rich Texas. Understandably, these findings have caused a huge amount of concern that the businesses are instigating a plan to begin operating in this delicate, bio-diverse portion of the world. The threat to wildlife and indigenous people is obvious, and the report found that many of the oil and gas blocks overlie areas of the greatest ecological wealth, meaning that any activity in the area would come at the cost of species that are already under threat, amphibians for example.

Environmentalists should be under no illusions as to the amount of pressure that businesses can exert on areas that have been in theory protected from their activities. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska is an example of an area that was recognised as being environmentally vulnerable, was defended through legislation and has still found itself under the avaricious eyes of the Bush administration and their oil drilling friends. When president calls for congress to authorize oil prospecting in a wildlife refuge, you realise that the measured, protective legislation put in place to guard environmentally valuable areas is all to easily brushed aside for the immediate plans of big business.

This study fond that the highest concentration of these ‘blocks’ were concentrated in the most pristine areas of the Amazon, and that even the world famous national parks contained within, such as Bolivia’s Madidi National Park, were earmarked for exploration. Overall, the study found that there are a total of 64 ‘blocks’ in the Peruvian Amazon, covering around 121 million acres or 72% of the total land. Peru, like many other developing, Amazonian countries, has been driving toward increasing its hydrocarbon exploration in its own borders, although it is not currently allowing such activities in its national parks.

The report focused on the impact that road building would have on these remote, potted havens of biodiversity. As well as destroying the rainforest beneath their path, roads make previously inaccessible areas easily accessible to human influence, including illegal loggers and poachers. Illegal logging is already a major problem in the vulnerable Amazon, where the sheer scale of the area makes effective policing very difficult. It is estimated that illegal logging accounts for around half of all logging globally, and would be devastating to a developing Amazonian country as it would cause a loss of biodiversity without bringing any of the economic benefits to the country as a whole due to the loss in tax revenue.

The report went on to highlight the huge impact that opening up these secluded areas of jungle would have to the indigenous people who currently inhabit the area. Many of these communities would be extremely vulnerable to disease brought in from the outside world, and there is a concern that traditional cultures and ways of life would be placed under threat through coming into contact with people from outside the forest.

Matt Gammie is a writer for the green camparison website ecoswitch

All this is, of course, well and good, but there are far fewer products actually devised and launched by celebrity folk, and even fewer still that are not intended to further boost the bank balances of these notable persons, but that are, instead, launched with purely altruistic intentions.

There is the precedent of Paul Newman, whose personal recipe salad dressing is universally known, but now the Brit, one time doctor and BAFTA award winning comedian Harry Hill is following suit with his own brand of Fair Trade peanuts.

Each pack is sure to cause a chuckle or two from the lucky purchaser – not only does the design feature Hill’s burnished bald head next to four peanuts, a comparison sure to draw a chortle from even the most veteran snack enthusiast, but in addition the products title, Harry’s Nuts, is playfully grammatically inexact; is the apostrophe designed to denote possession, informing the pub goer that this brand of nuts is owned by Hill, or, think on it if we dare, is the apostrophe present to denote the missing letter i, inferring that, in fact, Hill himself is Nuts (i.e. mad)?

The comedian is working in partnership with the brand Liberation! Nuts, a company founded through a partnership between Twin Trading and Equal Exchange, the people behind the Cafedirect coffee products. Liberation! Nuts are 42% owned by the farmers who produce the nuts, whilst the rest is made up of Fair Trade organisations. The company made £1.6 million in its first year of business, and Hill’s partnership will no doubt ensure that the company meets the expectation placed in it to double in size next year, thereby guaranteeing a fair wage to those farmers who produce the nuts, a fact that is not to be scoffed at.

Fair Trade focuses on a balance between good quality products and fair pay for workers. Their wages are normally far higher than those offered by other multi-national companies, who normally pay the legally required minimum wage in whatever country they are operating in, but who do not investigate actual living costs. In addition, Fair Trade schemes tend to not just utilize labour, but to also engage that labour within future decision making processes, so that the premium raised is spent on relevant, community driven projects.

In addition to endorsing sustainable community development, relevant Fair Trade products carry the logo of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which lets the potential customer know that the product in question has been produced in accordance with the council’s criteria on sustainable forest and plantation management techniques.

Harry Hill has cut a rather nice niche for himself as a purveyor of ethical pub snacks; I for one will be glad that the delicate task of picking out a well-meaning food stuff after five pints has been made significantly easier. However, duel props should, I think, be given to the world kick-up champion Graeme Lightbody, who recently helped to publicise the good work of the Fair Trade organisation by juggling an ethically produced football all the way across Glasgow.

Matt Gammie is a writer for the green comparison website ecoswitch

The State of the UK’S Birds, a report produced by the RSPB, Natural England and the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust, collected evidence from over 30,000 nests with the help of 500 volunteers. The study found that as well as laying their eggs earlier in the year, many birds are raising fewer chicks. The song thrush, which dines on earthworms, is struggling to find their squirmy snacks in the more parched ground caused by drier summers.

The song thrush, a bird instantly recognisable to West Bromwich Albion fans from their club badge (as well as the subject of poetry from Browning to Hardy to Hughes) has actually been flourishing in the recent wet summers. However, in the long term there are fears for its survival, as climate change is expected to bring warmer, drier summers to its habitats.

The environmental groups fear that by laying earlier the birds will lose the precise relationship that they have with the wider environment; namely that chicks will appear before the food sources on which they rely, caterpillars and other bugs, are in plentiful supply.

The experts who conducted the report explicitly link the worrying changes in these birds’s behaviour with global climate change. Their work provides another pillar of evidence against those sceptics who doubt the scale or immediacy of the problem of climate change, as well as a foreboding example of the extent to which those animals that we most take for granted; the small birds that dart from fence to fence in our gardens, the birds that perch high up, singing out unseen as we stroll through the countryside, will be threatened by global climate change.

Specifically, the evidence in the report suggests that the behaviour of the birds has been altered due to warmer winter temperatures and springs that start earlier. The birds assume a regularity to the seasons, a regularity that is no longer a given thanks to climate change, and are thus easily duped into nesting earlier than they should.

The report also found that the range of some key species of bird was dropping, and that the established migratory routes of many were altering as conditions change. Wading birds, such as dunlins, which have traditionally wintered in the UK from northern and eastern breeding grounds, are appearing in far lower numbers. The report suggests that, as winter conditions on the continent are becoming more sympathetic to the birds, they are choosing to preserve energy by remaining there over the cold months, and birds that were once forced to migrate due to lakes freezing over no longer have to.

Matt Gammie is a writer for ecoswitch

The agency, who currently spend around £1million pounds a year on alleviating the problems caused by this group of unscrupulous flora and fauna, hope that their finger-pointing will make people more aware of the negative effects that allowing pets and ornamental garden plants into the natural ecosystem can have. So far the listing of the twelve miscreants has not prompted the formation of militant, Wild West style vigilante environmentalist groups, but the fear that this may happen is very real.

Whilst the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976 caused wide-scale, many would say credible, speculation about big cats being released in National Parks by owners too timorous to give the creatures up to either the zoo or to the infinite pen in the sky, so too did the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie of the early 1990’s lead to a spate of impulsively purchased red-eared terrapins being released into canals and rivers. Each terrapin can live for 25 years or so, and feasts upon insect larvae and bird egg. Their legacy has long outlasted the appeal of the anthropomorphised, smart-Alex film characters, a fact that any caring environmentalist must rue each day.

Another animal up to no good on Britain’s once pure 2,200 mile inland water network is the American mink. The mink was brought to Britain the early 1930’s with the noble intention of industrial scale slaughter for the fur trade. However, some of the animals either escaped – their planned final destination as a scarf, hat or coat being sinfully abandoned – or have been set free via an underground network of turncoats. Now free to roam the banks and planks of our waterway system, this American import will willingly make dinner out of creatures that would otherwise have had a nice documentary made about them.

Threats are also posed by plants that have escaped from their role as ornamental affixtures upon reputable homes to become grin-faced menaces of our now sullied British Rivers. The giant hogweed, which was originally from Asia and is a member of the parsley family, grows to ridiculous heights – between 10 to 15 feet and thrives on moist river and stream banks. In the 19th century the plant was popular in gardens, however it should be considered unpopular by those who regularly pass it, as the sap contained within its leaves causes burns if the skin comes into contact with strong sunlight.

In a similar story of good plant turned bad, the water fern, a popular plant for pond owners, has invaded large swathes of the British water system, and poses a massive threat to native ecosystems because it floats on the water’s surface, blocking sunlight from reaching below. It can out compete with native plants and can also trick bank dwelling animals by looking as though it is a solid surface.

Matt Gammie is a writer for ecoswitch