The Big Pamper
This weekend Spots of Time are taking volunteers on a journey to some of East London’s care homes for a day of pampering – anything from playing cards, to having a cup to tea to painting nails.
It might just be the biggest mass volunteering event in the UK care homes .. ever! Exciting stuff. If you’d like to get involved, sign up here.
See you there!
Laces New Look
After much anticipation, I’m so excited to share Hackney Laces Community Club’s new logo.
This is how it will look on various colours of kit.
BIG love and thanks to Lucy Groom and Naresh Ramchandani at Pentagram for creating this.
Stay tuned, there’s loads more to come!
The Search for Second-hand Clothes
Inspired by the lovely Liv (@theendofthenew) I decided 2012 would be the start of me buying as few new clothes as possible. Women in the UK waste £1.6 billion on clothes they’ll never wear and 1.2 million tonnes of this goes to landfill. Not so good for wallets or the environment.
In my bid to not buy new, I’ve spent a lot of time pounding the pavement trying to find good places to shop.
Decent charity shops are sometimes hard to come by. You either find ones with prices too high (yes even though it’s for charity, it’s hard to reconcile paying more for something used than you would for it new) or ones that tend to have not so stellar stock or ones that are brilliant but far away (case in point: Whitstable – amazing but too far to travel for clothes on a regular basis) So I’ve compiled a list of a few of my favs.
Oxfam, Dalston Junction.
- This shop is big. And it works on a coloured label tag (ie: yellow labels, all £1). Plenty of bargains and a sizable homewares section. Best purchase here? A bright yellow leather clutch.
Save the Children Shop, Clapham.
- Located on a road with plenty other charity shops and good for an afternoon adventure, loves this massive shop. It’s the kind of place to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in. Although chaotic there are loads of bargains and plenty from my personal favourite decade, the 80s.
RSPCA, Stoke Newington. (aka The new kid on the block)
- For moments when you’re considering popping in to the high road to buy a staple wardrobe item (black cardigan, white vest top, you know, those things) this is the place to go. They’ve got lots of stock and a good amount of ‘work clothes’. There’s also a Mind shop close by that’s also quite good. I bagged myself some Kurt Geiger pumps for a fiver last week. Score.
Salvation Army, Mare Street, Hackney.
- If you’re after vintage but don’t want to pay the premium for something from past decades, this is your shop. The store is relatively new and has some usual but lovely clothes. Especially dresses. And shoes.
Lama’s Pyjama’s, Roman Road.
- Lama’s is particularly good for accessories like belts, shoes and costume jewellery.
YMCA, Goodge Street.
- This used to be my favourite place to go on lunch breaks with @jocorrall when I was at Do The Green Thing. It’s full of good (random) t-shirts and has lots of nice coats.
If you can think of any others I should add, please do share. I’m a bit biased to North-East London but that can change!
My Favourite Illustrators
Some more love from Huntley Muir. When I sent over a list of things they needed to do (part of the digital strategy I’m helping them with) they sent me this in response:
(As in they are knuckling down). Best clients ever.
Oh and ps- this is the Olympic stamp they were commissioned to draw. Cool, eh?
Food Waste: It’s Kind of a Big Deal
Every year over 1.6 million tonnes of food goes to landfill in the UK. That’s huge. And the majority of the waste is completely unnecessary.
Where does all the leftover food go in supermarkets? Food that may be perfectly fit for consumption but has packaging that is slightly damaged. Or produce that’s about to go off but still good, like bananas that can be made into banana bread. Where do all the freshly made sandwiches go from cafes when they close?
Slowly public opinion and pressure is moving towards wasting less and better policies and practices are slowly tackling some of the issues. This much welcomed shift could be because the cost is immense and we’re in tough times economically. But also it’s because people are becoming more and more aware of global inequalities and how bad it is that us in developed countries to take what we have for granted.
Things like legislation being introduced that scraps sell-by dates on food, and retailers like Sainsbury’s getting rid ‘freeze on day of purchase’ labels are helping to pave the way to reduce food waste.
And There are some brilliant organisations out there now tackling food waste issues, like Fareshare and Foodcycle.
Fareshare redistributes product from the food and drink industry to organisations working with vulnerable people in the community.
Foodcycle collects excess food from local farmers markets, supermarkets and other retailers and turn this surplus into delicious meals that get served to people in the community in need. Kind of brilliant, right?
There’s also my new favourite thing at the moment: Zero Gachis. It’s an app for finding reduced food near you. It matches businesses to consumers by sharing the details of food that’s about to expire. Conceived at a Start-up weekend in Brittany (and they won first place!) the app is still in it’s early days.
I’d love to know that I can buy carrots for 0.20p a bag because they’re close to their best before date, rather than a buy a bag for £1 when I’d be eating them as soon as I’m home. It’s both saving money and alleviating the guilt of wasting food.
Of course like most rampant social problems, technology at this scale likely won’t solve world hunger but it will definitely help reduce the amount of food that goes to waste on a retail level and of course increase awareness and ultimately that’s what it’s all about. Make people aware of the issue and then provide the necessary tools, knowledge and organisations to manage – and reduce- food waste.
Football Club Rules
This week at Laces we decided it was time to come up with some club rules. These are rules to go by when at training and just generally as part of the team. I asked every player to write down a rule or two that they thought was important. And here’s what they came up with:
(Note: training starts at 530pm)
Wordweb, you’ve done good.
Despite years spent as an editor, I’m still pretty rubbish when it comes to spelling. There are a few words that get me every time, like: non-environmental (hyphenated or not?) and commitment (one t or two?). So I installed a brilliant tool called Wordweb, an app that lives on my desktop and lets me spot check spelling and access a thesaurus. Perfect, right?
Sadly, today Wordweb and I had a falling out. A little box came up asking me how many times a year I fly. Being the honest person I am, I self reported the third option: 2 return flights. I went home for my mum’s wedding in the summer and home for the Christmas holidays. Bad, I know. (In my defense I hadn’t been home in years!)
Then this box appeared:
Oh the shame. And of course the irony and given I work in sustainability for an environmental charity.
Shut out of my favourite super useful tool because of my carbon footprint. I deserve it, really.
It’s quite a genius setup and I really admire wordweb for this. Create a fabulously addictive and helpful service and then take it away from excess carbon emitters. And use a portion of the profit to contribute to environmental causes. More and more businesses are walking the talk and holding their values close to their business model.
So from this ordeal (yes, it has been an ordeal for me) I now know to lie when self-reporting behaviour. Just kidding.
I’ve learned to read the fine print more often – this was outlined in their T&C’s and I bow my head in shame for not fully reading through them. I’ve also learned that it is this sort of awareness raising, frustration building experience makes people think. Some will pay the 20 -some odd pound subscription and just get on with it. And others may think twice about their environmental impact. And then of course there’s the third type of person – those that will find a way around it. Regardless, kudos Wordweb, rather oddly, you’ve made my day.
Love from Huntley Muir
I’ve recently taken on a project working with Sue and Donna, two fabulous illustrators who run Huntley Muir E-cards. After a long chat (and far too much coffee!) they sent through this:
So nice, right?
Social Innovation Camp: Young People and Health
A Lie in, a fry up and the newspaper in tow are pretty good way to spend a Saturday. But how about this: a Saturday spent working with a group of brilliant, creative. complete strangers solving some pressing health issues facing young people.
On Saturday February 25th I’ll be helping the Social Innovation Camp crew will be bringing together designers, developers, thinkers, health care practitioners and young people to look at ways technology can help improve how young people experience the NHS.
SI Camp days are fun, don’t even feel like work and you meet some incredible people. Working together with NECLES HIEC (the NHS Health Innovation and Education Cluster for North East, North Central London and Essex) we’ll look at how technology can help covering the following themes:
- How can we help make the transition to adulthood work more smoothly? (Young people changing psychiatrists and other practitioners when they turn 18)
- How can we help those with health and well being issues avoid/reduce the impact of social isolation?
- How can users better use their own medical history to have a smoother health care experience
- How can young people make a game out of eating well and getting fit?
- How do I know if I need to see the doctor, and can we make it a better experience?
Oh and I almost forgot to mention that the NECLES HEIC is offering up to £10,000 to one of the ideas to come out off the day. Exciting stuff!
If this sounds like something up your street then sign up here.
My Not-So Sustainable Secret
Two words: cat blogs. Just kidding. It’s one word and it’s Paperchase. Yes. I love Paperchase. Aisle upon aisle of brightly coloured, super organised, shiny, lovely stationary.
Sometimes I justify my love for stationary products, the same way any addict would do. I think about the 150,000 some odd trees I’ve planted in my uni summers. (It doesn’t matter that the contract that we planted for was Kimberly Clark and all those trees will become toilet paper, not nice notebooks ..) I also think about all the good stuff that graces the pages of the virgin-paper notepads I like writing in. All of the ideas and actions and planet saving work I do in my job must offset those 50 little pages of chopped down trees, right? Sadly I know it’s not the case.
As a present from my friends at Do The Green Thing, I was given this note pad.
You see they know all about my addiction and saw this as a corrective measure. And I’m pleased to say that it has tipped me over the edge.
I don’t expect paperchase and other stationary suppliers to go all eco overnight, so until then I can:
A) invest in recycled paper stationary which can be very beautiful and highly practical (and not have a shouty, worthy message on the front cover)
Exhibit A:
(A very nice notebook from Enlighted Crafts. 100% recycled paper and cotton. The Green Desk also has some nice stuff and I’ve recently come across Greenvelopes, an american startup that makes nice reusable and durable envelopes.)
B) still shop at paperchase but only buy stationary that doesn’t pillage forests (of which they do have!)
C) make my own.
Exhibit C:
(To do lists formed by old scrap paper and the ring from a binder)
Exhibit D:
(Envelopes made from old calendars/magazines/any thick material)
I really do love Paperchase but this is one of those habits that a small does of creativity can fix.