• Line the bottom of your picnic basket with a towel or plastic to catch any spillage along the way.
• Bring your towel, swimsuit, sunscreen, insect repellent and extra clothing layers, along with your beach toys: flying disc, badminton set, snorkeling gear, surfboards, squirt guns, portable radio and so on.
• Picnic backpacks are good replacements for picnic baskets and, generally, great for lugging anything around.
• Remember wine: The Arnsiton Bay Chenin Blanc Chardonnay is the perfect picnic wine.
• Choose a scenic and wind-resistant venue for your outdoor meal. Try a place between two rock faces or farther from the water than you’d usually like to sit.
• Although beach parties are generally informal, you may send invitations a week or two in advance so guests can plan ahead.
• Plan a menu based on the amount of people and the load you can carry. Ask friends to bring certain items to lighten your responsibilities.
• Outfit yourself with the necessary equipment. A picnic basket filled with plates, utensils (don’t forget the bottle/can opener and corkscrew), cups, plastic containers and napkins is recommended. Pack trash bags to carry away any disposables.
• Pack your food. Place the heavier items on the bottom and lighter ones on the top.
• Remember to bring a hat and/or an umbrella to shade your perishables and your face from the hot sun. Also pack plenty of ice, which you’ll need to keep your food chilled in the sun.
• Toss in a blanket and/or folding chairs for your sitting and dining comfort.
• Bring torches or lanterns for nighttime picnics, or in case your daytime adventure carries on into the night.

Wind is your worst enemy on a beach picnic, so pay special attention to your choice of location and pick the least windy spot. You don’t want to fight with your blanket and keep sand out of your potato salad all day. If it’s too windy and cold and you’re already at the beach, make the most of a not-so-perfect situation: Look for a picnic table and reliable shelter.

Source: meals.com

At Arniston mother nature has ensured that you can ‘get away from it all’. Whether you enjoy sun tanning on unspoilt white beaches, watching whales breaching in the bay or more active pursuits such as hiking or exploring the countryside, Arniston has something to offer everyone.

Arniston Bay Wines are inspired by the sunny skies and pristine beaches of this quaint fishing village. This unpretentious wine is ideal for those carefree, alfresco dining or easy drinking wine occasions – anywhere, anytime.

The range has a multitude of offerings ranging from easy-drinking entry level wines to more sophisticated wines for discerning palates.

Accessible and unconventional, Arniston Bay wines have become the favourite among contemporary wine lovers. Arniston Bay provides a range of lifestyle wines for every occasion, whether socializing with friends or just enjoying a laid-back afternoon on your own.

The average employed adult works between 35-44 hours a week. That’s a huge amount of time to spend in the office, and yet the same people who change all their light bulbs to CFLs rarely give a second thought to getting their to-go coffee in a paper cup.

It only takes minutes to make your workspace a little more environmentally friendly. Here are a few tips to get you started.

1. Turn off the equipment when you leave for the day. Yes, even though Billy from accounting likes to stay late. An action as simple as turning off a 75-watt desktop monitor when you leave can save up to as much as 750 pounds (340kg) of carbon emissions a year. A power strip can make turning all the equipment off easier at the end of the day, including coffee makers and microwaves. Just make sure the printer is powered down properly, as printers need to seal their cartridges before shutting off.

2. Buy green materials. Switching to recycled printer paper could save thousands of innocent trees a year — and that’s not including paper towels, toilet paper, water cups and all the other products that make working in an office a comfortable enterprise. Many offices have already stopped buying the formerly ubiquitous bottled water. Talk to your office manager about stocking recycled printer paper or replacing the break room cookies with locally grown fruit. And nix printing out separate agendas for everyone at the morning meeting — slides or e-mailed agendas work just fine.

3. Green your duds. If you’re not lucky enough to work in an office where jeans and Chuck Taylors are de rigeur, you already know that great thing about office clothes is that they’re not supposed to be particularly trendy. Consider buying your crisply pressed trousers and blouses from thrift or consignment stores. Also, avoid dry-cleaning. Most dry cleaners use a chemical known as perchloroethylene, which is dangerous for both you and the environment. “Perc” is a known carcinogen that erodes the ozone layer and can easily contaminate groundwater. Most materials, like silk and wool, can be hand-washed. If you must go to a dry cleaner, look for one that uses green cleaning techniques, such as liquid carbon.

4. Telecommute. E-mailing, instant-messaging and videoconferencing have made working from home easier than ever before. Take advantage of it! Getting off the road even one day a week significantly reduces the amount of gasoline you burn, and you can even use the time you save on the trip to have an extra cup of coffee in your reusable ceramic mug. If telecommuting isn’t a possibility for you, consider asking your boss about instituting a commuter credit program for use on public transportation, or putting up a bulletin board for carpooling.

5. Reusable Cups. Avoid using styrofoam cups for anything. Use a mug for coffee and a water bottle for water. If you recycle at home, you can recycle, reduce and reuse at the office too.

6. Recycle Everything. You can recycle everything from your paper and plastics that might come from the vending machines at work, or paper that might otherwise get thrown away. Some companies will even take your old office furniture to recycle the desks and chairs. You could even donate the furniture to a school near by to not only help the community, but also increase the tax write off for the company. Here is a site to reference: Planet Green.

Arniston Bay Brand News

Arniston Bay believes in sustainable practices to protect our environment. This is reflected by initiatives like wine pouches (Astrapouch) and some Arniston Bay wine ranges which is being bottled in lighter weight glass.

South African wine companies dominated the results of the inaugural Drinks Business Green Awards in London.

Dr Paul Cluver, founder of Paul Cluver Wines, received arguably the highest accolade, winning the Lifetime Achievement Award, for his ongoing, visionary approach to conservation and exemplary environmental credentials. Dr. Cluver is also the Chairman of the company of wine people ^TM ‘s board of directors.

Inge Kotzé of the Biodiversity & Wine Initiative was awarded the Personality Award and Backsberg walked away with the Sustainability Award. Paul Cluver Wines and Stellar Organics were named runners-up in the Ethical Award category, giving South Africa a notable presence in four of the eight award results.

The Drinks Business Green Awards are designed to highlight and reward leadership on environment, sustainability and climate change, by drinks companies worldwide.

Commenting on the success, Su Birch, CEO of Wines of South Africa (WOSA) said: “This is a significant moment in the development of South Africa’s green credentials and we are delighted so many of our champions are being recognised for the substantial contributions they are making to the advancement of sustainable practice in the wine industry.  South Africa is a leader in production integrity and is committed to working in harmony with the environment to ensure long-term sustainable and profitable growth.”

Read more on wosa.co.za

Arniston Bay Brand News:

One of the leading South African brand in the UK, Arniston Bay,  has also introduced environmentally friendly initiatives. Arniston Bay introduced the environmentally friendly wine pouch and has also reduced the weight of wine bottles in some of our ranges.

We congratulate and salute our fellow South Africans , within the wine industry,  in their efforts to save our environment.

As South Africa continues to defy the global economic downturn by annually lifting the export of its packaged wines, it is making concerted moves to lower the weight of its wine bottles and so maintain its status as one of the world’s most eco-progressive winemaking nations and a leader in production integrity.

From this year, 750-ml wine bottles closed with screwcaps and weighing only 350 grams will be available to local wine producers. These compare with an average bottle weight of over 500 grams just four years ago.

“As we raise our export volumes of mostly bottled wines, we also increase our carbon emissions, so it becomes a delicate balancing act to enhance our sustainability profile while pushing up our output,” explained Su Birch, CEO of Wines of South Africa (WOSA), one of the leading champions of the country’s efforts to grow, make and market wines in a way that is least harmful to the environment.

She said the wine industry body, SA Wine Industry Information Systems (SAWIS), had calculated that for every 10 million litres of wine shipped in bulk, just over 107 jobs would be lost. “This figure does not even factor in the multiplier effect that such job losses bring. It has, for example, been reported that for every one of Unilever’s direct jobs in South Africa, another 22 workers depend on the company for at least a part of their livelihood. This is an indication of just how crucial each job is to a developing economy such as ours.”

While many players in the South African wine industry had actively supported bottle recycling programmes in recent years to reduce their impact on the environment, efforts were now being accelerated to focus on light-weight wine bottles as well.

According to Consol Glass, South Africa’s leading manufacturer of glass containers for the beverage industry, until 2006 the average weight of a 750ml non-returnable wine bottle was 516 grams, which by last year had dropped to 437 grams, a decrease of 15%. The new light-weight bottle will bring down the average still further.

She said the sturdy, light-weighted bottles, apart from strengthening South Africa’s reputation for environmentally responsible wine production, would also address the demands of leading retailers. Also keen to enhance their sustainability credentials, the multiple grocer chains were responding to high-profile media and consumer calls for more eco-friendly packaging.

Birch added that alternative wine packaging, such as the wine pouch offered by leading export brand, Arniston Bay, had also been welcomed in many export markets. South African bag-in-box wines were also very popular, particularly in Scandinavia.

Source: wine.co.za

There’s nothing better for your mind and soul than treading lightly on the planet. You’ll save money with some of these green tips, and your family’s physical and emotional health will also improve. When you apply these easy eco-friendly tips, you’ll see the psychologcial benefits of living green.

You can also harness positive energy by living green.

Tip #1: Eco-friendly Canvas Bags

When you’re deciding between paper and plastic at the grocery store, choose neither. Plastic takes 1,000 years to decompose and paper bags use 14 million trees a year. Instead, an easy eco-friendly tip is to use cloth grocery bags

Tip #2: Eco-Friendly Eating

Elizabeth Rogers wrote The Green Book, which contains dozens of easy eco-friendly tips. One of Rogers’ green tips is using one less napkin a day because paper napkins make a huge difference. Give up one paper napkin a day, and you’ll save a billion pounds of paper waste in landfills a year.

Tip #3: Natural Cleaning Products

“Clean doesn’t have a smell,” says one environmentally friendly family. When your bathroom is clean, it shouldn’t smell like pine or lemon. Switch from toxic to non-toxic, natural cleaning products.

Tip #4: Change Your Lightbubs

Most of the energy comes from coal-fired plants. A compact fluorescent light bulb is more energy-efficient and will save your money in the long run. CFL lightbulbs are energy smart; they’re more expensive, but they’ll last longer.

Tip #5: Daily Green Tips for Every Family

These easy eco-friendly tips are things you can do every day. The green tips come from the Squire family (a green family featured on the eco-friendly Oprah show).

• -Use the same cups over and over.
• -Don’t run the dishwasher unless it’s absolutely full.
• -Don’t throw clothing or shoes away, especially leather shoes.
• -Buy clothes at secondhand, consignment, or resale shops.
• -Put power strips on your tv to turn everything off when you go to bed or leave for the day. Vampire or standby power drains energy.

Arniston Bay Brand News

Arniston Bay believes in sustainable practices to protect our environment. This is reflected by initiatives like wine pouches (Astrapouch) and some Arniston Bay wine ranges which is being bottled in lighter weight glass.

Read more at Suite101

Want to make your holidays greener? Here is a list of ideas and suggestions of how you can do your bid for the environment over the festive season .

Make Your Own Wrapping Paper

Most mass-produced wrapping paper you find in stores is not recyclable and ends up in landfills. Instead, here’s a great chance to get creative. Wrap presents with old maps, the comics section of a newspaper, or children’s artwork. Or use a scarf, attractive dish towel, bandana, or some other useful cloth item. If every family wrapped just three gifts this way, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields.

Buy Energy-Saving Holiday Lights

Now you can decorate your house with LED lights that use 90 percent less energy than conventional holiday lights, and can save your family on electricity  bills during the holiday season.

Add Organic and Local Foods to Your Holiday Feast

Support local family farmers who grow sustainable meat and produce. Not only does it taste better, you’ll be doing your part for the planet too.

Get a Pesticide-Free Tree

Demand is on the rise for Christmas trees that are not covered in chemicals; some growers use 40 different pesticides, as well as chemical colorants. The good news is that there are now a number of tree-farms that sell pesticide-free trees.

Recycle Your Christmas Tree

Ninety-eight percent of Christmas trees were grown on farms, not in forests, so at least it’s not as if you’re cutting down an ancient tree. Each year, 10 million Christmas trees end up in the landfill. While your tree won’t fit in the recycling bin with your newspapers and bottles, you can recycle your tree: many cities offer programs to turn your tree to mulch or wood chips.

Donate Your Time or Money to an Environmental Group

Get into the holiday spirit by volunteering. There are countless ways to help improve your community – and the planet – from cleaning up a local river to helping inner city kids experience the outdoors for the first time.

Source: sierraclub.org

Christmas is about excess and extravagance – the glittering decorations, mountain of gifts at the bottom of the dusty, plastic tree and numerous dishes of traditional Christmas fare are all part of what makes Christmas so divine and decadent.

Christmas is also made special by the fact that we actually stop to spend time with one another, wrapping gifts, cooking up a storm and taking a moment to appreciate our relationships. You might think that becoming more aware of the environment means skimping on what makes Christmas special. But going green this Christmas can only make the festive season that much more memorable.

Get the kids involved while you’re at it and teach them to be less wasteful and more considerate of the environment. This is a perfect way to make a difference during what is considered a time of giving.

Real or fake tree?

To reduce your impact on the environment this year, consider what type of Christmas tree you’ll be putting up. Though a fake tree is convenient and easy, it’s also made of substances that are harmful to the environment and therefore has a heavy carbon footprint.

Rather, consider going to your local garden nursery to buy a tree or bush that you can plant in your garden after the festive season. Using an indigenous plant as your Christmas tree and planting it afterwards is a really great idea that will mean doing your bit for the continuation of our local flora.

If you must have the branch of a real pine tree, make sure you get hold of an ‘organically grown’ one and when you’re finished, dispose of it properly by taking it to your local waste management area.

Christmas tree décor

Popcorn tinsel, twig stars and marshmallow angels are a great way to decorate the tree and they’re a lot more eco-friendly than tinsel and mass-produced plastic baubles. Be creative and recycle bottle tops or press flowers from the garden and string them up for a beautiful effect.

Gifts

Gifts that are handcrafted are always that much more special and unique, and you’ll be surprised at the choice and ingenuity of handcrafted products. An electric guitar made out of jerry cans or a beautiful wooden biltong slicer are some examples of finely handcrafted products. Do your Christmas shopping at the flea market this year to reduce your consumption of mass-produced products.

Give the gift of time to your friends and family. Make up vouchers that your loved ones can use that will involve time spent with you. ‘A picnic at the park’ or ‘a day out shopping’ or even an offer to babysit so parents can have some time to do their own thing are all ways of showing your appreciation of those you love.

Edible gifts – a bag of beautifully decorated cookies or yummy brandy snaps festively wrapped are fantastic gifts that will please the sweet-toothed.

Coloured lights are a big part of what makes Christmas so festive and by using LED lights – which use significantly less electricity, yet last at least 100 times longer than a normal bulb – you can reduce your impact on the environment. In fact, if we were to change all of our home lighting to LED, we’d save a lot of electricity. LED festive lighting should be readily available at your nearest convenience store.

It’s a wrap

Recycle old Christmas cards by cutting up the fronts and adding these to recycled paper backs to give them a new lease on life.

Wrapping paper – try novel ideas like old newspaper and brown paper with a home-made decoration attached…

Lastly… recycle.

All the packaging that you’ll be opening this festive season will go to good use if it’s recycled. Set up your recycle bins now and encourage the whole family to get used to the idea ahead of the big feast. Remember: glass, plastic, cans and paper are all recyclable.

There is so much that you can do that will ensure that your home is environmentally-friendly for the holidays. Be part of the change that needs to happen to ensure that we preserve our earth for many, many festive seasons more.

Source: iafrica.com

Arniston Bay Brand News

Arniston Bay believes in sustainable practices to protect our environment. This is reflected by initiatives like wine pouches (Astrapouch) and the Arniston Bay Tides Range which is being bottled in lighter weight glass (nearly 100g less in weight than the previous bottle).

South Africa’s energy supply emergency may have made us worry that we were headed for the “Dark” Ages unless we got rid of every single appliance we own, but the truth is we can make an enormous difference just by making some easy changes to how we use our energy supply.

The kitchen, with all of its heating and cooling gadgets, is an excellent place to start.

Defrosting

It all starts with a bit of pre-planning. If you can think about what you want to cook for dinner the day before, you can take it out of the freezer and let it defrost in the fridge. An added advantage here is that you can spend the whole day dreaming up fabulous additions to the meal, and wow your family with your Nigella Lawson creativity.

Microwaves

Believe it or not, the most powerful energy-saving gadget in your kitchen is your humble microwave.

Microwaves use a lot of energy while in use, but cut down on your cooking time dramatically. Overall, microwaves use only about half as much energy as conventional stoves (as if you needed an excuse to buy those Woolies instant meals).

Ovens

When you are cooking in your oven, the big trick is to keep cooking time down. Try to avoid the urge to peek: every time you open the door about 20% of the heat inside is lost.

Also, don’t bother preheating the oven unless you are baking. When the food is nearly ready, turn the oven off and let the trapped heat do the rest. Make sure that air can circulate properly by keeping the oven racks clear and by resisting the compulsion to use foil. And finally, make sure that the seal on the oven door is intact and closes tightly, so that all of the heat stays in there.

Stoves

The most efficient (and quickest) way to boil water is in a kettle, but make sure that you only boil as much as you need. When using a stove, try to use pots and pans that completely cover the stove plate so that heat isn’t lost, where it serves no purpose other than to make your brow drip.

If you put lids on your pots, you will be able to turn the temperature a bit lower, and can turn it off completely a few minutes before your food is done. Another handy tip is that if your stovetop is dirty, it will absorb heat instead of reflecting it back to the cookware, so keep ‘em shiny.

Cookware

If you love stews and casseroles, it is worth investing in a pressure cooker; they can halve your cooking time and your energy use. When buying pots and pans, invest in sturdy metal with slightly concave bottoms (when they heat up, the metal expands and the bottom flattens out).

Buy copper-bottomed pans, but use ceramic in the oven. Throw out cookware when it becomes warped – you can save about 50% by ensuring that the base of your pan is in full contact with the element.

Fridges

It sits silently in the corner of your kitchen, looking innocent. Few would guess that your fridge is one of the biggest power guzzlers in your home.

Keep it from eating you out of house and home by adjusting its thermostat according to the season. To find out what your setting should be, place a thermostat in a jar of water and leave it in the fridge overnight. In the morning, it should read between 1 and 5 degrees Celsius. The fridge setting can usually be reduced in winter.

If your freezer is only half full, plug the gaps with empty milk bottles filled with water (when these freeze, they will help to keep the temperature down so your freezer doesn’t have to work so hard). Make sure that your freezer is defrosted at least twice a year.

Remember, energy efficiency is not about giving up the electricity you need; it’s about cutting down on what you are wasting. They may seem like insignificant savings, but if we all do our bit, little savings will soon accumulate into enormous savings. Your bank balance will see the effect, as will our economy, and more importantly, the environment our children will inherit.

Arniston Bay Brand News.

Arniston Bay only sources grapes from producers registered with the IPW, Integrated Production of Wine, who set strict criteria for producers to follow environmentally friendly farming methods.

Source: women24.com

Wine packaging and the environmental impact of the logistics surrounding the distribution are becoming a concern for British consumers.

A recent article by Tim Aiken (The Guardian)  indicates at a time when we’re supposed to be reducing our carbon footprints, an increasing number of producers are packaging their wines in disgracefully heavy bottles. It is mainly, but not exclusively, a Latin thing: the major culprits are Spain, Italy and Argentina, where anyone who makes an icon wine seems to come over all macho and purchase the thickest glass available.

The only wine that justifies a heavyweight bottle is Champagne / Sparkling wine where the wine style (and the potential for serious accident) dictates the choice of package.

The shipping of wine to the lucrative markets like the UK, USA and the East are putting pressure on the environment as heavier bottles creates a bigger carbon footprint.

Arniston Bay Brand News

Keeping with its policy of constantly innovating and reducing carbon footprint, the best-selling Arniston Bay brand – who also pioneered the eco-friendly wine pouch – is lightening up by introducing lightweight wine bottles.

Source: guardian.co.uk