All In Love Is Fair?

Over the weekend a friend asked me what the best ways to save water are. We had been talking about the current drought conditions across the UK and my previous blog about water imports and exports across the globe. It's an important question. As with almost all green issues a lot could be made better if every household did as much as possible themselves. Here are a few of my top tips for saving water at home.

• Take a shower rather than a bath, and make sure that shower is fast. Less than 4 minutes is supposed to use less than a bath. A shorter shower means more time in bed too!
• Make sure you only use the washing machine when you have a whole load of washing. Don't just wash one T-shirt at a time!
• Only fill the kettle as much as you need. Almost all kettles have a measure on the side so you can see how many cups full it is. The kettle will boil quicker and you'll use less electricity too.
• Never leave the tap running while you brush your teeth. All that clean fresh water running down the sink? Pointless and wasteful. 
• Use leftover washing up water to rise out recyclables. They don't need to be crystal clean, just not have any food waste left on them so don't bother using fresh water to clean them.

For lot and lots more tips of water conservation have a look at the BBC's A to Z of water saving tips  or   this other website 100 ways to conserve water.

Over the last few days I've been looking into Fairtrade products that aren't your typical food or drink products. Just like other producers, rubber farmers don't always get a fair deal when they sell their crops, and through the Fairtrade movement there's now a range of Fairtrade rubber products including rubber gloves, elastic bands, wellies and shoes. But there's one rubber product that was always guaranteed to catch student's attention when we ran Fairtrade events at university and it's not surprising as its a bit unusual. Fairtrade condoms have a surprisingly large range with Waitrose stocking Fairsquared and Amnesty International selling Sheer Caress. Not all's fair in love, but at least your protection can be!

My Fairtrade buy of the day? A tub of Ben and Jerry's icecream. One more great reason to indulge, I love that almost all Fairtrade products are yummy!