Everything is at a snail's pace

I managed to get my sewing machine fixed! Woo hoo! The repair man said that I should oil it regularly (I hadn't done that in 5 years!!) and gave me tips on where to oil it.... ooh, may be I should do a tutorial on that :-)
Anyways, with that settled then I can continue with my project that I had started .... and hopefully can finish!

Well, things have not been going well on the home front. Hubby was involved in some incident at his work in China (think, Rio Tinto-like stuff).  It was really unpleasant for the family, and I hope we will never experience it again. But we will take this as a lesson in life, My take is that people (or rather big corporations) shouldn't just rush into opening shop in China with the expectation of sky rocketing profits at the expense of the environment and people. China will always be China. Just look at the recent news on the chemical spill in Jilin (see pic) and the increasing air pollution.  Anyways, cos of this event, I'm going to take things S-L-O-W.

Photo : AP

Chewing Gum

Chewing gum is banned in Singapore for a reason. It's sticky and unsightly when gum chewers decide to spit the gum out and into public places. It also costs a lot of money to get rid of once it's stuck on a pavement, for example.  Couldn't that money be better spent elsewhere?  I think at one point of time vandals were sticking them in the train doors and when they would open, you would get strings of gum everywhere! Ugh!

Anyway, looks like London's Mayor, Boris Johnson, had a gum summit last week to help tackle the problem ahead of the Olympics in 2012. It brought together chewing gum manufacturers, disposal and clean-up experts, borough councils and other key organisations.  They looked at things such as how to remove chewing gum from streets and changing people's behaviour and stopping them dropping gum in the first place. They also looked at a scheme by Gumdrop to recycle old chewing gum into plastic bins for discarded gum.   It doesn't look like there will be a ban, but it will be interesting how they will change people's behaviour. It's very difficult.  Perhaps they should look at how Victoria, Australia have been successful in getting the public to bin cigarette butts.  The recycling bit is a bit unclear though.


Chewing gum facts:
(source)

 

1. The cost of cleaning up London’s streets from chewing gum is estimated as being as much as £10 million every year.
2. Chewing gum takes up to five years to degrade.
3. The cost of removing each bit of chewing gum is between 50p-£2.
4. Deep cleaning the entire length of Oxford Street to remove chewing gum takes three months and during this process over 300,000 individual pieces of chewing gum are removed from the pavement ( New West End Company).
5. In the annual London survey, when asked to list two to three priorities for improving the quality of the environment, 20 per cent of Londoners surveyed gave litter as a priority.

Soap nuts

My friend gave me a teabag-like thingy containing crushed soap nuts.  I used it for my dirtiest batch of laundry  - my hubby and son's smelly & grotty football gear - on Sunday afternoon. The results were great.  Not only did the clothes not smell like the laundry detergent from the supermarket, they smelled like they were supposed to - like clothes :-)

Now, I'll have to find myself some soap nuts!!  Apparently, you can use them to wash your dishes too :-)  That's an alternative to those under the Green Labelling Scheme.

More organic stuff

OK, it was the Great Singapore Sale last month, and I splurged a bit on my faves: Dr. Bronners and the Sante sunblock.  Ooh, I also bought a Body Shop deodorant stick. I think it's from their latest organic range.


I love Dr. Bronner's.  I started using it ever since J introduced me to it! I like the citrus orange because it gives me a perk every morning when I use it to wash my face (note: I use it diluted though).


Then there's the Sante sunblock.  I was using the SPF 30+ before but according to Eric from Bud's Cosmetics, the EU has just banned the use of nanoparticles in cosmetics so Sante stopped making the SPF 30+.  Actually, the rules I think Eric is referring to will only come into effect in 2012 "manufacturers of wrinkle creams, sun lotions and lipsticks that contain specialized nanoparticles would be required to undergo special safety testing before products are released".  There's been a lot of controversy about whether the benefits of nanoparticles in sunscreens outweigh the possible side effects. 


Update in 2012: I've stopped using the Sante sunblock now and changed to Badgers. The reason is because the Sante sunblock separates in our hot weather and when it gets squeezed out I get a yellow oil and white liquid which is difficult to spread on. Not sure how this affects the efficacy of the sunblock, but I decided to change to Badgers instead.....