what's your method?

David, Tom, Louise and Sarah from method popped in yesterday to tell us a bit more about what they do and to see what we could learn from each other.

If you've not come across method before, they make lovely smelling, eco friendly cleaning products which don't contain any horrible chemicals or toxic substances, are kind to the planet and clean your house up a treat.

They very nicely brought along some of their new products for us to try out and a special recycled goodie bag to give away. It contains a copy of their brand new book Squeaky Green (which isn't out properly for another couple of weeks) as well as a sackful of green, cleaning stuff for your house.

To win the goodie bag, all you need to do is tell us what your 'dirty little cleaning secret' is by next Monday and then Tom from method will pick the best answer.

Don't forget to keep it cleaning related, though. There's mucky and then there's just plain rude.

this week's 'most special visitor' award goes to...

Preston and Malin, two of Brackenbury Primary School's finest who came to visit us this very afternoon.

They'd both had a really busy week preparing for 'Proms in the Playground' hence the rather natty head gear. Malin intends to spend the weekend 'just chilling' and Preston is excited about a prospective trip to see 'The Lord of the Rings'. Two fine ideas for those of you still lacking plans for the weekend.

get to glasto the green way

Our friends over at Greenpeace are running a competition to win some tickets to this year's Glastonbury Festival.

All you have to do is add their Greener Glastonbury Giveaway application to your Facebook page and invite your friends to do the same. The more friends you encourage to sign up, the more chances you'll have at spending the last weekend in June eating falafel porridge and watching Jay-Z in your wellies. And you'll have supported a very good cause at the same time.

Greenpeace have got some great tips on how to have a Greener Glastonbury including sharing a shower with your friend. Other considerate behaviour at festivals includes:

• Not wearing a big cowboy hat if you're over 5'10
• Leaving the ghetto blaster at home
• Keeping an empty water bottle handy in your tent as an emergency late night portaloo (better than peeing in a stream)

And avoiding the special fudge.

You've got until Sunday 15th June to add as many friends as you can, so go break your social networking bone, pronto.

save the children

We sent some drinks over to Save The Children last week, and as part of their Save The Children week, they sold them and raised £400.

Save The Children have just launched an emergency appeal in response to the Burma cyclone. They've already got 500 people on the ground and tonnes and tonnes of food and other aid being delivered. So if you feel like donating your lunch money to some people who really need it, click here.

gardens up for grabs

Box o' veg

A few weeks ago we met Mike from Rocket Gardens. Mike and friends grow little organic seedlings and send them off in bio-degradable pots to people that want to have a go a growing their own veg.  It's pretty simple; you buy a voucher from them, and they send you the box straight to your door when the baby plants are ready to be put in the ground.  And a few weeks later you'll have your very own mini allotment full of veg and salad leaves.  Lovely.

What's even lovelier is that Mike would like to give three gardens away, just in time for Mother's Day (yes, it's this Sunday). 

To win a garden for your Mum, just share with us the wisest thing she ever told you.  Answers on a postcard (or as a comment) by 2pm on Thursday.

Good luck

A Rocket Gardens voucher

Mike and Claudia watering the lettuces

'erbs

number one in the pop charts

Big congratulations have to go to our old friends Scouting For Girls today. With a lot of hard work, a healthy dose of talent and good old fashioned smiles we've seen them go from this, to this, to this. And now we hear they're number one in the album charts.

Well done boys, we're looking forward to the second album.

please say hello to carlos

This is Carlos. You might recognise him from his guest role in our new telly ad.

Carlos is our man on the ground in Latin America.  He works with the Rainforest Alliance, a charity that is pioneering a better way of growing fruit that helps protect workers, local communities, wildlife and the environment. It's a great organisation and one we're proud to help support.  Currently, all our bananas come from Rainforest Alliance accredited farms.  And we're working with Carlos to introduce this more enlightened way of growing to the places where our pineapples come from. Ultimately we want all fruit to be grown in this way. 

Carlos' official title is quite appropriately 'Fruit Supply Coordinator' and he knows the fruit industry inside out having run his own banana plantation for 20 years previously, which makes him a very good friend for us to have.

Some other interesting facts about Carlos include:

he's got a great moustache

he scrubs up nice when invited to awards ceremonies

other than fruit, his main passion in life is great Costa Rican coffee, of which he can be seen enjoying a cup with our Simon above.

He even gave us a bag of his absolute favourite coffee to bring back to fruit towers with us.

Thanks Carlos. Keep up the great work and good luck with those pineapples.

merry christmas

an innocent angel hand delivered to Fruit Towers by Danielle. Thanks Danielle.

Things have been getting a bit quieter round here. Christmas is on the way and people are disappearing, back to Kent and Derbyshire and Scotland and Australia.

But before this blog has a nap in front of a roaring log fire, or gets galloping indigestion (much more likely), we'd just like to wish you a happy Christmas, whatever you're up to. We'll be back in the New Year. Thank you for reading and commenting this year. If there's anything we can do to make the blog better in 2008, just let us know.

PS because we're not going to be around much at Christmas, we're turning the comments moderating thing on. Should stop the blog becoming a spamfest.

blog eat blog

Last week Adam, one of the founders and chief greenskeeper for method products, came over to Fruit Towers to meet our Sustainability Jess. After going home method blogged about their visit so we thought we'd blog them back. Hello method.

We think method are great - they make non-toxic cleaning products made with natural ingredients. Jess and Adam had lots to talk about - method use 100% recycled plastic for their products, just like our bottles, and do great work on carbon reduction, ethical sourcing of the ingredients for their products, and trying to have a positive impact on the world.

We swapped lots of great ideas, and promised to keep in touch in the future, after all four hands are better than two.

guess something, win one tree

We popped over to the opening of the new howies shop on Carnaby street last week to be warmly greeted by Ade with champagne and smoothies.

It's their first ever shop so they celebrated in style (note the matching t-shirt and champagne labels) albeit a couple of months after they first opened.

I left with 2 of the 500 trees they gave out to mark the occasion and to help bring a bit of the countryside to us city folk.

One of them is now happy in my back garden but the other is looking for a good home to 'grow slow and grow strong'. If you fancy winning a special edition Silver Birch, a nice little 'Cardigan Bay to Carnaby Street' booklet, any guys or girls T-Shirt you like from the current howies collection and few smoothies, just answer the below question as a comment to this post:

How many trees will our treeometer be showing at the close of Buy One Get One Tree at midnight on Monday 10th December?

Leave your guess by midnight on Friday 7th December - all comments left after this will be invalid as it will be too close to be a fair guess. One guess each. No cheating.

Good luck.