Please bear with me while this process is completed and hopefully the upgrade will make things all soooo much better, as it has over at Sarah Barnard which needed fixing after it got fatally broken.

Blogging will be slow if at all while I tinker with xml, html, uploads, imports and whatever.

Back soon!

Ethics Trading signed up to Twitter a while back and it sends updates to my facebook page. I’m keeping and eye on it as a business tool and as a social networking tool that’s way less complicated than facebook or myspace and without the intrusion into personal stuff that those two often encourage.

So, if you are on twitter already and want to become an Ethics Trading follower then you can find us here: http://twitter.com/EthicsTrading and it’s easy and free to sign up if you fancy giving it a go too.

Then once you’re on twitter there’s a new business tool to sign up for - also free and very easy, twibs uses your existing twitter account to set up a listing in the business directory.  The Ethics Trading listing is here: http://www.twibs.com/business?business=ethicstrading On the right you’ll see a big “Vote” button, please press it….

Not sure how useful either will be in the long run yet but for now they’re novel, fun and do seem to be bringing in some web traffic!

First Ethics Trading got Janey’d at the beginning of February and then just as the rush from that was starting to fade Soapnuts got a prime time TV mention! I’m not sure which programme it was on because I was watching Star Trek at the time and I know we weren’t mentioned by name but the hits and sales have been fantastic as a result. I’m sure the same is true for other soap nut sellers.

So now we’re entering March, Spring is on the way and there is noticeable growth in the garden. The grass is starting to recover, I have the deep green of daffodil leaves showing in places and there are buds coming up with them. The trees are in bud full and about to burst into green, it’s my birthday this week and the acounts are looking healthy too.

It’s all good and looking to stay that way!

Win a reSACKel bag!

If you want to find out more about the bags then go and take a look at reSACKel’s website, it’s fascinating and I’m considering finding out if I can get a few to see if they’ll do well as part of the  Ethics Trading range of products. What do you think?

Janey Lee Grace was on The Wright Stuff, with matthew Wright, yesterday morning and she gave Ethics Trading  big plug! Thanks Janey!

As with many other first time soap nut users, they have come across the few drawbacks of soap nuts straight away.

The very lightly soiled clothes seemed to be fine, such as children’s clothes that had only had light wear. The adult clothes were not as fresh and the soap nuts did not remove the various smells they had picked up.

On their own, soap nuts don’t remove tough stains or get whites as dazzling blue-white as we’ve been taught to expect from media and supermarket washing powders laden with optical brighteners and bleaching agents. These are also laced with chemicals to make the white fabrics almost glow and they do fluoresce under UV lights! I don’t know about you but while that’s quite a cool effect I do worry about what, exactly, is on my clothes and therefore on my skin to make it do that.

So, you can add a scoop of Ecover laundry bleach to your white wash. (or another stain boosting agent or bleach if you want.) Then dry outside on a sunny day, spritz any lingering marks with lemon juice and your white will sparkle.

I can’t say I’ve noticed adult clothes smelling after washing unless they’ve been the result of a long, hard, sweaty day. But then, I rarely have those sorts of days… To address the smell issue I use a few drops of your favourite essential oil to the wash - I drop it onto the bag that the soap nuts are in.

Dawn - an Ethics Trading customer: “Use 1tbsp of vinegar for your softener and add your fav essential oil to make the washing smell nice!”

Jill - Another customer: “geranium or patchouli yummy smelling washing!”

Personal taste is important in choosing your essential oil for fragrance. I prefer tea tree or a light, citrus oil like lemon or lemongrass. I also love lavender, but what you use is entirely up to you. You can have a fragrance to suit your mood, a different scent with every wash if you want to.

It might also be worth looking at whose clothes are the ones with the lingering odours and why that might me. A teenager with rampaging hormones, or someone who does heavy, physical work might sweat more and therefore have that smell on their clothes. It might be worth looking at underlying skin care there too. Many people don’t realise that modern soaps dry out your skin and then it has to work that much harder to rebalance and the bacteria on your skin are constantly out of balance and they are what produces body odours.

One in every three bee colonies were lost last winter alone and the decline is continuing.  Various factors have been blamed, including pollution, disease, insecticides and modern agricultural practices as well as climate change. Research into Bee decline continues but in the meantime there is something we can all do.

Do you have a windowsill? A garden? Balcony or windowbox? A step outside your door where a tub could be planted and left? Then go and register your support at the Save Our Bees site, and there are some free seeds to be had (while their socks last)

Plant some seeds, grow some flowers and save some bees - everybody wins!

Some serious financial trimming is going on here but it’s only what I do every January. As a sole trader and a small business I am aware of every penny spent and received by Ethics Trading. I am aware of the full impact of every stock choice I make.

With big business where there are many people tinkering with all aspects of the business there isn’t the capacity for one person or very few people to get the full picture of what is happening and to react really quickly to solve problems which can then get so big and out of control that they sink the business. In a small business the control is there and we can react, change and be much more dynamic. As a result I firmly believe that we are the future.  Small business, online business with fewer overheads and costs, that is the way forwards. We are the ones who will not only survive this recession, we will thrive and grow against all the odds, but only if we get it right, only if we can react fast enough.

So far, January is one of the best months, in terms of sales, that Ethics Trading has had in about a year. It’s a fantastic start to 2009.

Thank you.

They have that waterproof inner lining so they don’t rot down well. Because of that they also need specialist recycling to remove the laminate from the inside.

So, what to do with them? There are some specialists that will take them to recycle them, if anyone knows the links please do post it up in the comments and let us know.

You know me well enough by now, I’ll plant in anything! So my recycling involves chopping the top of the tetrapak off, poking some drainage holes in the bottom and using it as a larger plant pot for growing on things like courgette and pumpkin before they head out into my cold, wet, clay soil. (seriously, my kids have washed nice orange clay and made pots from what we’ve dug out of my garden) They last for a few plants if you’re careful but eventually they are so battered that there’s nothing for it but landfill.

Today I came across this gem of a blog! Juice Box Storage. It’s not an active blog - only 3 posts from October 2007, but well worth a look for making gift boxes/party boxes/storage systems etc - all from those pesky tetrapaks!

There are many ways to give your plants a head start indoors or in a greenhouse. You can pop them in seed trays or plastic pots on a windowsill or in the greenhouse (but i don’t have a greenhouse) and then you have to transplant them all ouside when they’re big enough and strong enough and when the weather is right too.

The fabulous Paper Potter is one of my favourite garden tools and recycles your newspapers into seedling pots for all but the largest seeds.  They’re also too small for bulbs, tubers and those sort of large plants, but they are simply marvelous for small seeds.

But what about things that hate being transplanted? What about things with a long tap root, like carrots and parsnips?

I’ve told The Green Family, of My Zero Waste, all about using up those toilet roll inners to start off your carrots.You can go and read the post here.

It may be cold, wet and dull today but Spring is coming and it won’t be long before you can be growing things that taste so much better when they’re fresh from the earth.