We are delighted to announce that following the fantastic success of the recent introduction of the new Charlie Bears Little Organics "Baby Safe" Collection, we have added some new characters and sizes to our range of these toys.

In addition to Larlie Bear, Poppa Dog, Fifi Bunny and Marley Mouse, we now also have sleepy Barley Lamb (shown above) and cheeky MeMe Monkey!  We also have an additional smaller size option (approximately 20cm) for these popular toys.  This baby version of each character is ideally sized as a little companion, in pushchairs or car seats.  With larger 30cm and the really cuddly, generously sized 40cm versions, there are ideal sizes for babies and children of all ages.  

All the toys, in every size, in this range are suitable from birth onwards, but the medium and large versions are great for toddlers or older children for whom it's sometimes a bit more challening to find larger organic toys.

If you're a fan of the Charlie Bears Little Organics range, do keep revisiting our site as Charlie Bears are planning to add more new characters to this collection for release later in the year.

		Tweet

Many of us have been enjoying beautiful sunny days lately and with the school summer holidays now well underway, it really is the season for days out and picnics!  If, like me though, you hate all the waste that comes with wrapping a whole family's sandwiches, snacks and goodies for a day out, there are some fantastic solutions available.  They're safer, more environmentally-responsible and, in the long term, cheaper too than the throwaway materials we might typically use.

Public awareness is certainly growing regarding highly undesirable substances such as BPA, PVC and phthalates, to name a few, being commonly used in food coverings and food storage containers.  These are capable of leaching toxic and harmful chemicals into our food and parents in particular are increasingly looking for non-toxic alternatives for their children's lunchboxes and picnics. 

It's really quite a minefield though, trying to establish what does and what doesn't contain any of the wide range of nasties, but the founders of My Friendly Lunchbox and Ecoboodles, have eliminated all the guesswork for you.  We love both of these companies, which only sell non-toxic products which are free of BPA, PVC, phthalates and lead.  We found My Friendly Lunchbox first and have found many other uses for their non-toxic, easily washable and recycled sandwich wrappers which are also very handy for covering bowls of food or for wrapping leftovers before putting them in the fridge (we find that elastic bands work a treat in keeping the circular wraps in place over bowls of food).  They have a good range of plastic and cloth sandwich wrappers and even some matching non-toxic ice packs, in addition to many other eco-friendly goodies, such as BPA-free food storage containers and shaped sandwich or biscuit cutters.

More recently, we were absolutely delighted to stumble upon the wonderful Ecoboodle organic cotton sandwich wrappers.  These really are fabulous for wrapping your sandwiches and your children will probably feel as though they're opening a little present when they open your picnic sandwiches!  These wraps are soft and pliable and are capable of holding several small rolls each, with a food-grade non-toxic lining to keep messy sandwich fillings from leaking or staining the outer certified organic cotton fabric.  They're extremely easy to wash by hand but they can also go in the washing machine, up to 30°C - although they're not suitable for the tumble dryer because of the lining.  We never seem to have enough of these in our house, so do think about buying several at a time to get the multi-buy discounts which represent amazing value for money.  As far as we know, these are the only organic cotton sandwich wraps available in the UK and they're perfectly shaped to make the neatest, non-bulky, picnic parcels!  

Our youngest children are usually really hungry when they come out of school/nursery and on the days that our eldest needs picking up from school too, there's at least a half hour wait for her school day to end.  The little ones can't wait that long for something to eat if they're hungry, so the sandwich wrappers are great for quickly and conveniently transporting some healthy snacks in the car and they act as a mat too, saving the car's upholstery from at least some of the crumbs!

I've focused here mainly on these websites' sandwich wrappers because I'm such a huge fan of these, but My Friendly Lunchbox and Ecoboodles non-leaching ranges include stainless steel water bottles, attractive lunchbags, lunchbag sets and more!  The earlier you switch to these non-toxic and waste-free lunchbox products, the sooner they'll pay for themselves and, more importantly, your family won't be paying the price of toxic chemicals silently contaminating their food.  

IT'S RECYCLE WEEK!  Most of us are getting much better now at reducing the number of plastic bags we use when we're out shopping (if we've not left our re-useable shopping bags in the car or at home, that is)!  We know plastic bags and other plastic debris is bad for the environment but sometimes we have to see visual evidence to make us really understand the scale of the problem and to care enough to do something positive.

Vast areas of polluted oceans are commonly referred to as "plastic soup" and although you might think that it's largely distant oceans which are affected, that's not the case according to National Geographic magazine.  In one of their reports on this subject, they explain that this is a universal problem, just to varying degrees, although heavy littering and consequential pollution tends to be at its worst where ocean currents meet.  The fact that you can't see floating plastic islands doesn't mean that contamination from plastic and other litter isn't there, or that it's diluted enough to be harmless. 

Some plastics actually break down relatively quickly in seawater but that's not good news either!  That's because in doing so, plastic-derived toxic chemicals such as styrene trimer, a suspected carcinogen and Bisphenol A (BPA) are leached into the sea waters, indiscriminately contaminating every level of the oceanic food chain – and eventually coming full circle back us via the seafood we eat.  

Plastic bags are hazardous to birds and sea creatures which are known to swallow plastic bags, mistaking them for jelly fish and large numbers of plastic bottle caps are also ingested by birds and sealife.  Even the smallest fish are swallowing smaller or broken down plastic components.  This plastic pollution video gives a hard-hitting insight of the havoc that plastic pollution is wreaking with the environment and wildlife.

It's by no means solely plastic which is polluting the world's oceans, but given the enormous scale of plastic packaging, it's important to look for ways to tackle the problem.  There are, of course, the well-known strategies of trying to buy food which is not packaged in plastic but that is far easier said than done and most of us do also try to do our bit to recycle as much as we can! 

However, some councils don't recycle plastic at all, despite it making up the bulk of our packaging waste.  If this is the case with your council, help may be at hand – you might have a local private waste management company which takes a wide range of waste materials for recycling.  (Don't rely on asking councils if companies like this exist near you as some local authorities won't direct you to them!)

Our local waste management company accepts the following materials from both domestic consumers and local businesses:

•        Soft plastic (such as carrier bags and plastic wrappers);
•        Firmer plastic, used for most food packaging and plastic bottles;
•        Hard plastic*, the type used on many plastic toys
•        Old CDs or DVDs
•        Glass
•        Metal
•        Card and paper
•        Clothes hangers
•        Electrical appliances
•        Fabric

* This type of hard plastic takes 50,000 years to biodegrade so recycling is by far the best option for broken or unwanted toys, if you can find somewhere locally to you offering this facility.  (Just remember to remove any batteries!)

We just have to rinse dirty packaging and separate it into a few different types, but that's very easy to do and is really no great inconvenience when you get into the habit of it.  As waste management companies such as this are paid by weight for the waste they sell on for recycling, you know that what you're taking there really will be recycled and none will be secretly dumped in landfill sites.  

Don't forget that you can also recycle most of your soft plastic (there's so much of it in food packaging as well as plastic carriers) very conveniently at most supermarkets now too.  Also, try to give back hangers when you buy new clothes unless you really need them – that way, they'll be reused or recycled.  Remember that new and broken hangers can also be disposed of in to supermarkets' hanger recycling bins, rather than throwing them out with your normal rubbish. 

It is possible to drastically reduce your waste and help to resolve the problems of pollution caused by litter – it may just mean tweaking your routine a little here and there to make a significant difference.

Look out for a coming feature about safe and eco-friendly BPA-free re-usable sandwich wrappers, lunchboxes and sports water bottles to help you save on waste without using toxic plastics! 

This adorable My First Toy giraffe by Nature's Purest has now come back into stock.  

This lovely character from the Sleepy Safari range (other My First Toy safari animals in this range are the elephant or lion) is one of our customers' most popular choices of baby toys as a gift for newborns.  So if you've been waiting for these to become available, we're now able to meet orders for these again.

Images courtesy of H&M

For anyone who's visiting this website, it's not going to be any surprise that we're passionate about the benefits of organic cotton, whether it's as the best choice of fabric for baby toys or whether it's for other organic cotton products which are outside of our particular speciality.

So many more people are now recognising organic cotton's attributes and in recent years there has been an explosion in the number of stockists of organic baby clothes, especially online. Increasingly too, there are stockist of organic clothing for adults, with influential fashion designers like Katherine Hamnett and Stella McCartney being well-known for their support and inclusion of organic fabrics in their collections.  There is, however, an age group which has been generally and sadly overlooked in terms of organic cotton clothing and that's over 5s to teenagers.  In the very few places online which offer organic clothing for older children and teens, the prices may well be prohibitively high or the limited choices might be emblazoned with an environmental message which, although a commendable cause, may exclude them from teenage appeal.

I was delighted a couple of years ago though to discover that high-street fashion retailer H&M had started to introduce organic cotton clothing (sometimes in a 50% mix with non-organic cotton) to their children's range.  I managed to buy a couple of lovely summery dresses for my eldest (then aged 10) and as her eczema is always especially bad in the summer, this really was a very welcome discovery.  H&M has gradually widened their range of organic cotton clothing within their adult and children's ranges, in many cases now with 100% organic cotton, rather than the 50/50 mix.  Although our local branch is quite small with rather limited choice, there now always seem to be organic cotton options for our 4 year old son and our 5 and 12 year old daughters.

In their children's range, H&M have wisely allocated organic cotton to staple wardrobe basics, such as boys' and girls' T-shirts and polo-necks in a range of colours, boys' shirts and now also girls' leggings.  If it wasn't enough good news that H&M have taken the environmental bull by the horns by introducing organic cotton within their adults' and children's ranges, the prices are fantastic too!  I recently bought some leggings and long-length T-shirts for my eldest daughter for just £2.99 each, which is just amazing value!  With prices this good on widely appealing items, I'm sure many of these have been snapped up by H&M's customers who wouldn't have actively chosen organic cotton.  (Incidentally, H&M explains on its Environment pages of its website that its suppliers' factories are regularly audited to ensure ethical and fair working conditions and pay are in place for the workers who make their clothing.) 

With the convenience of H&M stores being so accessible, their prices being so affordable and the right type of clothing being targeted for their organic cotton ranges, it's my view that H&M are doing a superlative job in making it really easy for us, as consumers, to choose organic.  Just look for their clothing with the green label attached which identifies their organic cotton items. 

I, for one, now make a point of shopping in H&M before looking in any other clothing retailer.  Even if an item I need isn't available in an organic option (yet), I'll still put H&M at the very top of my preferred retailer list, simply to support them as a company for their forward-thinking and to encourage their continually growing choices of organic cotton clothing!

After my post earlier this week about Minieco's fantastic website for creative ideas, my four and five year olds were very excited about trying out the recipes for making their own homemade and naturally coloured (mainly organic) playdough!  

Here's what's my youngest two made for today's menu after having lots of fun making several differently coloured batches of Minieco's playdough.  We didn't have all the suggested ingredients for the dyes so we improvised on one or two...

Chocolate sausages
Tumeric fishfingers and chips (vanilla scented)
(Beetroot coloured) tomato ketchup
Parsely coloured peas

Please note, we don't usually have sausages and fishfingers together for dinner, despite what what my kids have suggested here!  

If you do use the recipes on Minieco's website for this homemade playdough (links to a whole range of these and lots of other fantastic ideas by Minieco on my earlier blog post), please do be aware that although made with kitchen cupboard ingredients, this is not edible playdough, mainly due to the high salt content!)

I have very little time to read newspapers and often miss the news, so the free Evening Standard app for my phone is a very valued tool for me.  When I'm able to snatch random pockets of time, it allows me to catch the headlines and find out what's going on in the world. 

This morning though I was rather rattled when I saw a headline proclaiming that organic food is "of little benefit".  Apparently, a two-year study by "Which?" has suggested that there appears to be little or no nutritional or taste benefits to growing food organically.

The bulk of the Evening Standard's article elaborated on this "revelation", with just a brief paragraph at the very end, where the "Which? Gardening" editor mentioned that the trial didn't look at other benefits of opting for organics, such as the impact on the environment.  A few years ago, Delia Smith also very publicly snubbed organic food.  As someone who'd previously been an avid Delia fan, I immediately lost much respect for her at her staggering short-sightedness. 

Whether the topic is organic food, organic textiles, organic cosmetics or toiletries or any other organic product, the main benefits are that with these: a) we're not exposing ourselves to harmful (often toxic or even carcinogenic) chemicals, antibiotic-pumped meat or GM food; and b) we're making a better environmental and social choice.  Consumers should, however, be aware that only certified organic products should be trusted with these claims and to also be wary of products stating that they merely contain certified organic ingredients.  This tactic is often used, particularly with toiletries and cosmetic products, to misleadingly gloss over the fact that actually there might be only a tiny percentage of certified organic ingredients in the product as a whole.

Cancer

Very few of us are lucky enough to have not been affected by somebody close to us being given the devastating news that they have cancer.  We are being invisibly bombarded with carcinogens or "suspected" carcinogens in virtually every area of our lives.  The most potent triggers of this awful disease must be those which we ingest, inhale or absorb through our skin.  (If you're in any doubt about the potency of absorbing chemicals through our skin, just think about the effectiveness of nicotine or hormonal patches transporting chemicals into the bloodstream through small areas of the skin.)  I wholeheartedly believe that there is a direct link between the epidemic influx of chemicals saturating our lifestyles and the ever-rising new cancer diagnoses (as well as record highs of eczema, asthma and allergy cases too). Whilst foodstuffs and toiletries are of course not the only sources of toxic chemicals in our lives, they do collectively form a huge chunk of the chemicals our bodies have to process.  Genuinely organic alternatives to these products are providing increasingly accessible escapes from so many harmful toxins.

Carcinogenic chemicals used in overseas farming may be either banned for use here or not yet clinically "proven" to be as harmful as they are, but how many people took up smoking (or passively smoked) in the time between the first inklings that it could cause lung cancer to when it was actually clinically proven to do so. 

The environment

The environmental benefits of "going organic" can't be understated and are intertwined with complex and widespread social and health problems for people who work in and live around the vast farming areas throughout the world.  Not only do the toxic chemicals used in most conventional farming methods cause large scale environmental damage and contamination to humans but it also poses critical threats to wildlife and fragile eco systems.  Perhaps the most worrying of these threats (a view shared by many experts including Sir David Attenborough), is the dramatic decline of bees.    Towards the end of last year, America reported that for the third year running, their bee population had declined by more than a third.  It is widely believed that pesticides are playing a significant role in this, by interfering with bees' natural communication techniques. 

As if increasing concerns about fuel and food crises weren't enough to worry about for future generations, the man-made contribution to the decline of bees is all the more perplexing, given that Einstein is said to have predicted that humanity would be unable to exist more than four years without bees.  

There are, of course, many other attributes of organic food, including improved farmed animals' welfare, the absence of routinely pumping animals with antibiotics or other growth-inducing/profit-swelling substances and no GM food.  So it's a real shame that the very small scale study by "Which?" didn't spend that two years so much more productively, by focusing on the far, far, more important benefits of organic food than taste-testing or minor nutritional discrepancies.  At times when more families are struggling to afford the inevitably more expensive organic food, the infinitely more valuable use of the researchers' time would have been to educate people about what's at stake by not opting for organic, instead of falsely implying that people are wasting their money buying organic food.

With half term nearly here the hunt is on for ideas on how to keep our kids happy and occupied during the time off school.  These days, there's the added challenge of finding activities which won't break the bank or mean resorting to games or entertainment which involve your children spending large amounts of time in a zombie state in front of some form of computerised game or television screen!

Prepare to be amazed and captivated though at http://www.minieco.co.uk!  I challenge anyone to find a more beautiful website, bursting with inexpensive and innovatively creative things for your children to make and then play with, all explained and displayed with truly stunning pictures.  There is an abundance of choice of easy things to make and do for boys and girls, appealing to little ones and older children alike.  I honestly doubt you'll ever need to look elsewhere for creative and eco-friendly ideas.  I would happily be at the front of the voting queue, to label this as the UK's very best website of its type!

Just a few of the inspirational projects you'll find include: magic potions, homemade playdough, invisible ink, a kitchen roll kaleidoscope, a twig boat, a fishing game, homemade coloured pavement chalk, various musical instruments and ice cube painting.  There are so many fantastic things to make, so it's been very hard choosing just a few to mention and depict here!  

I regularly recommend Minieco's website to many of our customers and friends and I'm sure that as soon as you have a look, you'll be hooked!  You can subscribe to Minieco’s blog so that you don't miss any of the great ideas regularly shared by the hugely talented creator of the Minieco blog.  

Envisage Minieco as a metaphorical vaccination against the "I'm bored" complaint from your kids over this half term! Help to make it a happy, creative holiday for friends and family too, by spreading the word though the Facebook and Twitter buttons below!