Christiania Bikes

Picture this.....Boscombe filled with people all riding around on these bikes!! Slowing up the traffic, making car drivers angry and pedestrians happy!!
It's actually not a bike at all, but a load carrying tricycle that can be, and is, used for anything from transporting kids to getting the shopping home. Copenhagen’s postal service runs a 100-strong fleet of these pollution-free trikes.

Originally built in 1978 as a transport alternative for the car-free autonomous zone of Christiania, the bike soon became common on Copenhagen’s streets. The popularity of the trike is not limited to Denmark...there's a shop in London called 'Zero is Best' that sells them and Urban Evolution, a company based in Boscombe with social aims, plans to buy 5 of them and rent them out to locals and tourists alike.
Get ready for a revolution on the streets of Boscombe........

Funky Handbag!

Hey look at my Funky Handbag!! It's made out of 'factory second' crisp packets fairly traded from Mexico. Everywhere I go people ask where I got it from.... I bought mine from www.urban-evolution.co.uk which sells all sorts of cool and funky fairly traded products. You can get eco-friendly cleaning products, beautiful fairly traded household gifts, these funky handbags and purses made out of ringpulls and even wholefoods!!

Something to Sprout about!!!

Sprouts..not the type traditionally forced upon you for Christmas dinner but sprouted seeds, considered a 'wonderfood' they rank as the freshest and most nutritious of all vegetables available to the human diet!!
All edible grains, seeds and legumes can be sprouted. Generally the following are used for sprouting :

*Grains : Wheat, maize, and barley.
*Seeds : Alfalfa, radish, broccoli, hemp, sunflower.
*Legumes : Mung, chickpeas, aduki, lentils.
If you want you can buy a sprouter (designed especially for sprouting), biosnacky do a great 3 tier sprouter which you can get online for about £13.99. Try www.urban-evolution.co.uk They also offer a huge range of seeds and pulses for sprouting in all sorts of sized packets!! Or if you live in the Bournemouth vicinity you can order pre-sprouted sprouts from their organic vegetable box delivery service.

Brian gets a new mate!!

Brian grows wheatgrass in Roumelia Lane, Boscombe his company is called Dorset Wheatgrass Company.
He went to the Boscombe Wholefood Co-op and bought some Yerba Mate tea. Yerba Mate Tea is traditionally drunk in South America. This is what the website says about it.....
Mate is more than just good for the body; it's good for the soul. Drinking it can be a form of meditation or reflection - allowing the goodness to infuse into the body while stimulating and resting the mind. But this wholeness does not always happen alone.
In traditional Mate use, the cup is often shared among close friends and family - using the same straw, or bombilla. Reminiscent of the kind of closeness written about in Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land," where the characters become "water brothers" or "water sisters" when they drank from the same cup one after the other, those who share the Mate cup join in a kind of bond where the sharing of the health and meditation of the Yerba Mate is a sign of total acceptance and friendship.
So, Brian asked..'if I drink this will I get friends to drink it with?'
Brian took his Yerba Mate home and made himself a drink....while he was waiting for it to brew he joined Facebook....within 4 days Brian's got 400 friends. You can become one of Brian's friends too if you can find him on Facebook!!!
The Boscombe Wholefood Co-op has moved to 3 Ashley Road, Boscombe where it has evolved into funky wholefood and eco-store 'Urban-Evolution' Residents of Boscombe can still join the old co-op scheme, ask for details in the store!

Moving House

What an exciting time!! Moving house....I've done it so many times now and the one thing that never changes?? The fact that when you leave one house you have to clean and when you move into the new place...you have to clean!!! Well, this time its different...why? because I'm cleaning with environmentally friendly products!! Armed with my Ecover, recently purchased from fab website, www.urban-evolution.co.uk , I've wiped and cleaned everything!! I used Ecover multi-surface cleaner, Ecover Toilet cleaner and Ecover Cream cleaner. They do the job without polluting the planet...lovely!! and if you look on the Ecover website you can get a list of shops that refill your bottles too...even better!

Organic Fortnight

The Soil Association Organic Fortnight 2007 runs from 1-16 September
During the Soil Association Organic Fortnight, businesses, individuals and communities across Britain join together to celebrate all things organic, staging events and promoting organic products up and down the country. This year we are calling on the nation to 'Wake up to an Organic Breakfast'. Retailers, brands and restaurants across the UK are currently preparing to promote their organic breakfast items, encouraging everyone to try an organic breakfast during the Fortnight whether at home, at work or out and about.

For anyone in Bournemouth this fortnight it may be worth checking this out.......
Organic breakfast smoothie demonstration
Bournemouth
Thursday 6 September 2007
About this event:
See an organic breakfast smoothie demonstration, using 100% organic ingredients, at the Boscombe Wholefood Co-op, 10am-12am. For details, contact Lisa Northover, Boscombe Wholefood Co-op, 5 Roumelia Lane, Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset BH1 4DX. T: 01202 778516. www.boscombewholefoodco-op.org.uk