Sustainable ideas from our past eco-friendly Xmas Advent Calendar 2009...new ideas are coming soon!

 With only one day to go till the big C-day, millions of us are frantically cleaning and tidying our homes to make sure they are fit for family and friends. After all, you wouldn´t want your mum to think that you only cleaned your bathroom once a year! Before you get stuck into your hard clean routine, show some love to mother nature by choosing biodegradable cleaning products instead of harsh chemicals. Baking soda and lemon juice are much better alternatives to using products that have a negative impact on our soil and water systems as well as our skin, lungs and eyes. If you´re about to do some mega washing loads (bedding, towels etc) then maybe you should consider checking out some greener, leaner energy appliances!

Good grief, it´s only 3 days until Christmas! How did it come around so quickly? Why didn´t I allow enough time for Christmas shopping? So, like so many of us, you are stuck in a present buying vacuum, unsure, desperate and confused as to what to buy for the most important people in your life. STOP! Don´t buy that cellophane wrapped dodgy Christmas CD sitting at the bottom of the supermarket bargain bucket. It will only be good for one day, anyway.

Wow, the crew at mynatour had quite a heavy "Christmessy" weekend. Maybe you did too? Don´t fear, because there are lots of simple, natural things you can do to ease your way through this season of indulgence. If you´re feeling a bit jaded and bloated, try embracing a nice steaming cup of peppermint tea. Get yourself going in the morning with a little work out to your all time favourite tunes, giving your blood circulation a boost and keeping you protected against the cold. T´is the season to be snotty at the moment with people coughing and sneezing all around us. Treat your immune system to plenty of fresh fruit, juices and veg and try to cut down on endless fast food junking out, as you won´t be getting the nutrition your body needs. Christmas crystalises a lot of emotion for people.

Here at mynatour, we don´t normally condone using needles, but when it comes to yarn, KNITTING ROCKS! A whole new generation of fabric lovers are discovering the green beauty of this age old craft. Knitting clubs, forums and stitch n´drink happenings are breaking out all over the place. After all - it´s flippin´ cold right now and you know that the most energy efficient way of keeping warm is to put on those chunky socks, slick ski hat and a comfortable winter sweater. No really, don´t laugh. If you´re new to knitting it might seem like a strange mysterious granny cult, but once you´ve caught the bug you can be proud because you´ve reduced your global impact by consuming less energy than relying on store bought clothing. OK - there are some criminal Christmas sweaters out there, but you can be different.

It´s the last Saturday before Christmas, so we bet you´ll be having quite a social weekend ahead. Get  he party started up nicely with some warming mulled wine. There´s no better way to use up those half empty bottles of wine on the sideboard and raid your cupboards for forgotten ingredients. You can customise your mulled wine by adding  ouches like apple cider, honey, cinnamon sticks, lemon zest, cloves or ginger. The resulting aromas will fill your house with festive happiness and you are keeping things green by using items that might just have been thrown out. If you´re driving and don´t want to drink, why not take a look the recipe for Negus (the non-alcoholic version invented by the Victorians) All of us at mynatour raise our glasses to you - cheers!

"Put another log on the fire for me, I´ll make some breakfast and coffee", said David Bowie many moons ago. Who doesn´t like a cosy, romantic fire at Christmas - Mr. Scrooge? If you didn't know already, burning wood is one of the most environmentally friendly ways of heating an individual room or a whole house. Timber is a carbon neutral fuel which means it absorbs as much carbon during growth as it releases when being burnt (as long as you make sure you get your logs from a local sustainable source). Good news for Scrooges too – using wood as fuel is typically 30% cheaper than gas or oil. But listen up!

We all know that a bit of Christmas fun is good for your inner Elf! Picture the scene - your very best friends have come around and you´re all together again. Don´t be complacent and just stare into pace. Get your game on! It´s not cheesy. It´s bold, social and a great laugh. Form an impromptu drum club. Raid the kitchen for pots n´ pans, graters, spoons and whisks and create your own original rhythms and basslines. Burn calories and generate natural warmth as well as some

Wrapping the prezzies....it´s one of the last things we get around to before the big 25th. Damn it, we challenge you to use your imaginations and stop buying those endless rolls of BAD, BAD printed paper. Go mad in your house. Run around naked and see what you can find (use a pine branch or two if you´re shy about getting back to nature!) Open those kitchen drawers and dusty closets to uncover a feast of alternatives. Wrap it up by re-using colourful fabrics or remixing old calendars with wallpaper samples and well thumbed road trip maps! Go crazy and customise brown paper with your own cartoon art. It´s more fun, its free and your friends can say you really did something unique for them this Christmas. Get wild!

Feeling that office party hang-over?..Wishing you were slumped at home in bed watching children´s TV and forgetting about last night´s abandon? But, argh no, you have to work and on your way you decide to buy a gigantic plastic bottle of water to comfort you through the desolate hours ahead. Well, as convenient as it may seem buying bottled water, there can be bad side effects. Some of that bottled water you drank was probably just municipal tap water in a bottle. To get factual, in 2007, Americans drank 8.8 billion gallons of bottled water! To manufacture this mammoth total of plastic bottles produced over 2.7 million tons of CO2 - that's equal to six months of emissions from a coal power plant.

Wow. It's that time already. Christmas day is just around the corner. People are getting into the party mood of indulgence. That means eating, eating and more eating. So, if you are planning a communal meal, think about the most energy efficient way to do it. Obviously, cooking for a crowd is a better use of oven energy than cooking for one person only, so you already have a head start. Next, think about your "cookprint" (the environmental impact of using energy and other resources in order to prepare meals). The size of your cookprint increases depending on where your ingredients were sourced (garden, farm or supermarket), how much fuel you use and how much waste you discard in terms of plastic packaging etc.

All those presents, new toys and new gadgets! Where are the batteries? Ow! Your sister just stood on them after too much mulled wine. Joking aside, we all know how many batteries we can get through at Christmas. Even though they are small, these things pack a powerful punch and can really hurt our  planet. Some batteries contain toxic chemicals like mercury, lead, cadmium and nickel which can  contaminate the environment when improperly disposed of (when batteries are incinerated, the by product is ash which can go into our air and atmosphere). Also, if the metal rusts, it can release harmful metals into our drinking water. So,instead of gobbling up packet after packet of these bunny-huggers, make the change to rechargable ones instead.

All over the world, families and friends are getting together right now to decorate their homes in time for the holidays. So are you going to do what you do every year and pick up your cheap plastic decorations from large Scandinavian out of town stores or are you going to try something new and different? Yes, take your inspiration from naked nature itself and decorate your home with items like holly, seasonal berries, ivy and evergreen branches. Put on your creative hat and conjure up fantastic decorations that everyone will love with things that will biodegrade like popcorn, dough, cinnamon sticks and gingerbread. Once the festive season is over, you can simply put everything in the composter.

Are you getting Christmas cards at the office yet or did your granny just send you one, nice and early to make sure it got to you? (bless her). The UK can´t get enough of Christmas cards. A staggering 1.7 billion such cards are sent in Britain each year! That´s the equivalent of a giant forest of 200,000 trees. And the tragedy of it all is that millions of these cards end up in the trash once the January sales arrive - admit it - you´ve thrown them out too! Well, once the big feasting and indulgent drinking is over, make sure that your Christmas cards go to a better resting place than a bin. Reincarnate them by taking them to a Woodland Trust recycling point.

Cold frosty windows, lit up by flickering candles really capture the heart of the Christmas experience. However, you might want to consider your choice of festive candle very carefully before you settle down to roast those chestnuts. Paraffin candles are from petroleum residues which pollute both the environment and the lungs - yuk, cough, splutter! Impress your friends this year with your green credentials by getting creative and choosing a soy, beeswax or vegetable based candle. These types of yuletide lights are far better for the planet because they are biodegradable AND smoke free. And do remember, just because it's Christmas, try not to burn the candle at both ends!

We all know that our childhood friend Santa is super green because as he uses reindeer to power his sleigh around the world, with no emissions other than Rudolph´s occasional droppings. Although we don´t expect you to hook up with a magic flying vehicle and nine woodland creatures, you can make a difference by embracing the carpool concept! Driving alone is very inefficient, especially when others are going your way. Back in the car lovin´ USA, the  verage American emits a massive 3.7 tons(3700 kilograms!) of CO2 each year on the commute to work. By sharing the

We all know that our childhood friend Santa is super green because as he uses reindeer to power his sleigh around the world, with no emissions other than Rudolph´s occasional droppings. Although we don´t expect you to hook up with a magic flying vehicle and nine woodland creatures, you can make a difference by embracing the carpool concept! Driving alone is very inefficient, especially when others are going your way. Back in the car lovin´ USA, the  verage American emits a massive 3.7 tons(3700 kilograms!) of CO2 each year on the commute to work. By sharing the

As we approach Christmas, we know that a new year is just around the corner. Why not make some truly green resolutions for 2010? Have you considered where you consume all your day to day news? There’s something undeniably special about unfolding the newspaper over your morning coffee and taking in the headlines. However, the environmental impact of printing that newspaper and delivering it to your door is immense. Newspapers contain more recycled fiber than ever before, but making the paper for them still consumes a frightening 12 million tons of wood and emits 20 million tons of CO2 each year. You can get the exact same news online at a tiny fraction of the impact. Printed newspaper circulation has been declining for five years, and now most major newspapers offer online subscriptions.

T´is the season to give and receive, so why not double the fun by sharing a shower with someone and help save energy. If we all made a splash by working that shower hose with our favourite people, just once a week, we would make CO2 savings equivalent to the annual emissions of a coal power plant! So clean up your act and make a shower date in your diary today. Scrubbing backs has never been sexier or better for the planet.

DOWNLOAD THE WEEKLY DESKTOP WALL PAPER it s nice, fancy and free!! ;-)

So, you´re putting those Christmas lights up again. How exciting! But did you behave like a bad elf by leaving them switched on all night? If so, give yourself a little slap on the wrist. All it takes is the flick of a switch to save a huge amount of energy in your household. You can massively reduce your yearly personal power consumption by doing some very simple things. Cut out those red lights! Don´t leave TV´s and other appliances on stand-by as they are still gobbling up energy. Give your computer a break by switching off printers and scanners when you don´t need to use them. We all love our mobile phones but do we really have to keep those chargers going all night? Of course not. If a charger feels warm when it is plugged in without being attached to a device it is still converting energy.

You´ve got a beautiful smile. One that will look great when you flash it at your office party this Christmas. But why be so "tap happy" when you´re brushing your teeth? Be a water buddy and only use what you need when you´re getting your gnashers pearly white. We waste so much water in the bathroom by casually leaving the taps running merrily whilst we go to work on our snags. Try using a smaller or medium flow of water too, it won´t hurt! There´s no need to have the taps going full blast all the time. Remind yourself of your good deeds at first by putting a little post-it note on your mirror. It´s simple. You´re a true water saver now. That deserves big grins all round.

Its holiday time soon, so we´ll all be getting ready to feast. Before you start cooking all those veggies for the Christmas table, think about exactly where you source your food from. Did you buy your sprouts from a local farmers market or could you have grown your own potatoes? Or did you take the easy option and cruise down to the nearest giant supermarket where you filled up your trolley without a moment´s thought as to where all the products came from? Shockingly, the average meal in the United States travels an unbelievable 1200 miles from the farm to the plate. Fear not, you can make this the season to be truly jolly by really supporting your community through buying locally grown produce. Doing this saves fuel and pours money back in the community.

So you´ve got a nice Christmassy snow scene as your screen saver right now. Very pretty, but did you know that you can help the planet out by eliminating screen savers from your life. All you have to do is set your display to sleep. Yes, it´s surprising but these days most screen savers don´t actually save energy. Back in the dinosaur days of computers, screen savers were originally designed to prevent "burn-in" on the old fashioned CRT monitors. The science behind it goes like this: CRTs create an image by shooting electrons at the screen to excite phosphors which then emit light. The phosphors eventually “burn out,” becoming dimmer over time.

We all love trimming our Christmas trees at this time of year, but is it better to buy a real tree or opt for one of those cheap artificial ones? Well the no nonsense news is that the greenest and most eco friendly option is to buy the real thing. So what if you get the odd pine needle on your carpet? You really can´t beat the joy of picking up your fresh tree, smelling that lovely pine in your room and really getting into the spirit of Christmas. You might think that buying an artificial tree and then using it for a few years is a better recycling option, but think again. Although artificial trees last for an average of 6 years, they´re made of bad things like metal and derivatives of PVC that require loads of energy to make and are not naturally biodegradable.