It was World Fair Trade day a few days ago and to highlight our support of fair trade products we’ve featured a few of our favourite ranges on the front page of the website. Our fair trade products range from baby clothes to bracelets and chocolate to crochet toys! Take a look here.

Find out more about World Fair Trade day at www.wfto.com.

We’ve been selling EarthLust stainless steel water bottles on Green Tulip for a couple of years now, and have definitely seen the awareness and use of reusable water bottles increase in that time. We’re therefore really pleased to be adding another reusable bottle range to the website – this time the very beautiful range of Retap glass bottles.

The Retap bottle has been especially designed for drinking tap water – the most eco friendly and sustainable way of drinking water possible. The bottle has a lovely curved shape that means it is very comfortable to hold, and has also been designed without any edges where bacteria can grow or accumulate so cleaning is easy and safe. The bottles and lids are all dishwasher safe.

Glass is perfect for reuse as it cannot contaminate your water, unlike plastic which can release hormone-like chemicals that influence our hormone balance. Glass is, of course, also what we are used to drinking water from at home and once you drink out of a Retap bottle you will wonder why you haven’t tried a glass bottle before!

The bottles are produced from borosilicate glass which is stronger, more heat resistant, and more eco-friendly than regular glass. The lid is made from a very tactile BPA free plastic/rubber blend and comes in 11 colours. The same lid fits all three sizes of bottle so you can mix and match lids across your bottles and we also sell extra lids so you can make sure you have a good colour selection to choose from!

You can see the full range of Retap bottles here - we hope you like them! And if you need any more persuading that buying a reusable water bottles for yourself or as a gift is a great idea here is video that we think summaries the horrors of the bottled water industry really well.

No one in the UK could have escaped all the stories about horse meat being discovered in a range of processed foods, and there is no question that it has made us all think about what we, and our children, eat. One of the issues many parents have been most worried about is what their children are being fed at school. Unfortunately it seems that school meal providers have been under the same financial pressure as many other sectors and so it is difficult to be sure that all of the food our children are fed at school is of the standard we would ideally like it to be.

We decided to start giving our children packed lunches last January when we first started selling the Kids Konserve range of waste free lunch packing. For us the issue of packed lunches was always that they were made up of a lot of prepackaged, convenience foods – and generated a lot of waste. The Kids Konserve range allowed us to make food at home and send it into school conveniently packaged but generating no waste – and that is what we have done for over a year now.

The children have a mix of sandwiches (wrapped in a food kozy), soup or heated up pasta/risotto (both in an insulated food jar), or a pasta salad (in a large stainless steel container), followed by a fruit salad (in a medium stainless steel container) and a homemade cake or flapjack (in a container or food kozy). We also include a bamboo spork and a cotton napkin – and all of this fits very nicely in their insulated lunch sack and is kept cool with a sweat free ice pak (which doesn’t make everything wet!).

When they get home most of the kit goes straight in the dishwasher, the kozy is just rinsed under the tap (and the food jar needs a quick hand wash). So not only do we know exactly what our children are eating, there is also no packaging to go in the bin – and no waste (except the odd bit of fruit salad or a half eaten sandwich – they are children after all!).

We’ve had a lot of orders for Kids Konserve products this week so we imagine many parents are feeling like it is the right time to make the change – and we thought it would be useful to share our experience using these great products!

As always we’re more than happy to answer any questions you have about any of our products – just use the contact form on the website.

The children with their kit!

We always sell a lot of jewellery in the run up to Christmas (good news for the ladies!) and our new range of silver plated jewellery has been a great hit. The bracelets are £10 and the earrings £6-8 so it makes a lovely little gift for a friend or a stocking filler.

The jewellery is made in a lovely project in Kenya which started at a rehabilitation centre and now employs the disabled residents to make the jewellery – helping them towards social and financial independence.

You can see the full range here

Green Toys use recycled plastic milk cartons as the main ingredient in all their products. When plastic milk cartons are collected from around the USA by recycling companies, they are sorted from all the other types of plastic and reprocessed into a super clean, fresh plastic called high-density polyethylene (or HDPE). This material is considered one of the safest, cleanest plastics around and is fully recyclable.

On average, for every pound in weight of recycled milk cartons, Green Toys saves energy equal to 3,000 AAA batteries or enough to power a TV set for 3 whole weeks, or to keep a laptop computer running for a month! We believe this is a huge step forward in the manufacture of children’s toys – and one day hope to see toys like this that are made in the UK too.

See the full range here…

New in – the 2012 range of Earth Squared fair trade handbags in lovely autumnal tweeds.

Earth Squared has been working closely with a fair trade company based in Northern Vietnam for the past 8 years. All employees are over 18 years old; are paid 4 times the national minimum wage and working conditions all abide by fair trade criteria.  Working as a seamstress or in quality control, for example, a person can earn on average $100 per month which will allow the family to have a reasonable standard of living and also send their children to school and on to higher education. They go a step further and pay national insurance for each staff member that covers medical costs and provides a pension for retirement all of which is above the national legal requirements.

So you can treat yourself (or a friend) to a lovely new handbag with none of the usual guilt!

Included in the range is a smart and sustainable cork fabric iPad sleeve, key ring and wallet as well as some lovely new bamboo utensils and office items.

Our favourite is the fish letter opener – a pointy nosed fish that looks like it is just an ornament, but is cleverly also a useful desk accessory. Just pop the tip of it’s nose in the corner of an envelope and rip across the top – a very satisfying way of opening the morning post! Just £6 so a great stocking filler for those who spend rather a lot of time at their desks!

We’ve recently added some lovely new frames, albums and journals to the website. The products are produced by Nkuku – a growing fair trade brand who’s aim is to combine contemporary designs with age-old techniques, natural materials and sustainable methods of production. All of the products make great gifts and are perfect for a house-proud friend! You can see the whole range here.

We’ve also got some new additions to the range coming in the next couple of weeks including some stylish glass candlesticks and enamel bowls – watch this space!

One of our newest ranges is Carddies – little hand-drawn card people who live in a box!  We think these are great – hours of fun for children aged 3+ (and colouring mad adults too!) and the handy packaging means they are perfect to take out and about. You can see the whole range here…