howies®

Green Oil UK Limited is a family run company based in Bromley in Kent. From product ingredients, to the bottle deposit scheme, to the recycled boxes used for wholesale orders, being green is central to all we do.

Green Oil has won awards for performance from the cycling world. Green Oil UK Limited, the company behind Green Oil won a Bromley Environment Award and was recently short listed for innovation in the BikeBiz Awards 2008.

Our cheesy slogan used to be ‘destroy limits, not nature!’. The slogan referred to destroying your limits of skill, stamina and speed, yet without damaging the environment with nasty toxic chain lube. However, this wasn’t inclusive of people who just wanted to ride to the shops.

Our new slogan isn’t calling for a military coup, so don’t worry. The revolution we all need to join, is one of making the world environmentally sustainable. Within this, we need to use bicycles more, and embrace the ‘revolution’ of all those cogs.

If people continue to use toxic chain lube indefinitely, future generations will have more pollution to clear up, aquatic life will suffer and cancer will spread. PFOA, a byproduct of Teflon, the ingredient used in many chain lubricants was classified by the US Environmental Protection Agency as a ‘likely human carcinogen’ in 2005.

If companies continue to use deforestation paper, and generally operate for short-term profit at the expense of the environment, the future will not be good for us, or for future generations.

We at Green Oil UK buy back our bottles, use sustainably sourced ingredients, and use recycled paper in the office. Our packaging is easily recyclable. For example, the plastic labels now used are the same type of plastic as the bottle, making recycling more efficient and reducing label contamination in the recycling stream.

End dependence on pollution join the revolution!

Simon Nash the founder of Green Oil, will be joining us on Tuesday 23rd March from 7:15pm onwards to give a talk on the company, how it all began and where it is going. He will also be giving demonstrations and a workshop on how to get the best from all the Green Oil products.

If you would like to come down and have a listen, a free beer or innocent smoothie and maybe get your hands a bit dirty, then email us at carnabyst@howies.co.uk or ring us on 0207 287 2345 and reserve your ticket!

It was such a lovely weekend ‘weatherwise’

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky over Cardigan yesterday, and although it was still pretty cold it finally feels as if we’re starting to shake off the last bits of winter and can look forward to Spring.

What better way to sum up springtime than snowdrops – I took this yesterday afternoon while on a walk through Cwm Degwel. lovely stuff! Viva la primavera!

Amy from Big Top Design just emailed in asking us to persuade her husband to wash his jeans!

James has had them six months and has worn them every day apart from when he was at wedding according to Amy.

We think they look amazing plus think of all that saved water too.

Here’s a tip to stop the ’smell:’ Freeze them over night, kills all the dirty bacteria.

The Do Lectures have announced their 2010 speakers over on their blog.

Looks like a pretty impressive bunch.

I’m especially looking forward to Maggie Doyne and Daniel Seddiqui. Read about them both over here.

At the end of March James is doing a talk at the Southbank Centre.  He’s fresh from a winter spent doing new research in America, and here he delivers his verdict on what any new government must do to save the environment. All that for £12.00.

Just found this exhibition by Haroshi in Tokyo, using old skate decks to make some amazing stuff.

It’s a pity it’s so far away, would have loved to see Mario rocking a Thrasher hat in person.

More from the exhibition here >> http://www.harvest-re.com/artwork/index.html

Jeff.

Local beer is being kindly provided by our mates at Bristol Beer Factory.

There are still some tickets left. You can reserve tickets through the Bristol shop via email or giving us a ring.

The shop will be open all evening for the event so you will get a chance to try out the new spring season range which has just come in.

Some of you may know that it’s Fairtrade Fortnight until the 7th March! To celebrate this, the people at Fairtrade are running the ‘Big Swap’ and are asking us to swap our usual stuff for Fairtrade stuff. The usual bananas for Fairtrade bananas and your usual cuppa for a Fairtrade cuppa. Get involved and register your swap…http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/thebigswap/about_the_big_swap/

We’ve got some Fairtrade tea from our friends at Clipper so if you’re popping by the shop and fancy a cuppa then just come in and we’ll stick the kettle on!

The majority of our Spring catalogues have been posted out now. If you enjoyed our reading about the tales of our Ancestors Patagonian-Pioneering- Adventures, then head over to our flickr to see more of the images from our adventures.

The gallery contains James Bowden’s photos. All shot on film with either a Rollei 35 or a Hasselblaad 501CM.

If you find flickr slow and ugly I Hardly Know Her provides a much better visual experience.

Also James has a photo set of all his Hasselblaad portraits here.

Finally if you like to receive one of catalogues or download the PDF, fill in this form.

Way back in the Winter of 2008. Tim set a challenge: “The howies 36 hour door-to-door Bivvy bag challenge.”

The basic premise was this:

Armed with no more than a bivvy bag and sleeping bag to sleep in you leave the comfort of your homes for a night and do not come back for at least 36 hours. From the front door to front door, no motorized transport allowed at all and you must travel on foot for a minimun of 30 miles, sleeping out under the night sky in your bivvy for the evening. You can go where you want but it must be door to door and on foot. To keep it fair each entry will be classed as one even if you are not alone on your bivvy expedition.

Tim apologises for his lack of haste in blogging this as it has been a fair while! But here it is, Dan & David’s written account of their trip:

The phone call went much like this: “howies have got this challenge on their website, walk 30 miles and sleep in a bivvy bag” I said with much enthusiasm to my brother David on a Sunday a week before Christmas. “I’m up for that!” he said with eagerness, sealing our fate.
It was decided, we we’re doing it. Saturday 27th was our start date and we were aiming to walk the Camel Trail (http://www.ncdc.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=13629) from Wadebridge to Wenford Bridge and then walk up to Bodmin moor to sleep in King Arthur’s Hall. Easy! (Route link: http://explore.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/os_routes/show/6725 )
Sadly, training was aborted when a bus knocked me flying off my Vespa damaging both my knees. Thanks bus! Thankfully David managed to fit in 30 minutes of rowing…once.
Saturday morning, we’re up, packed and ready to go. It’s freezing, it’s dark and we are in shock partly due to the 23 kilos on our backs. Silently we get our first mile out of the way and start to enjoy it. The sun is coming up and we walk past places we played when we were younger. This isn’t going to be so bad after all.
We trudge on enjoying our surroundings and manage to scare a dog so much it runs backwards with its owner in tow. Later on David is told that his sleeping matt which is wrapped in a black plastic bag looks like a vulture. We put it down to that.
With effort we make it to Wenford Bridge and spend 2 hours cooking, relaxing and drinking tea. Feeling energised we head up to the moor before dark where we meet our Dad who walks the last mile with us. Having made it to King Arthur’s Hall we just have to survive the night!
By 9pm are all tucked up in our sleeping bags watching the stars. We can’t believe our luck when for a split second a shooting star appears, only the second one we have ever seen making our trip worth it.
A few times during the night we thought each other might have frozen to death when we couldn’t hear any breathing over the wind but we both wake up in the morning, cold, exhilarated and alive!
As we head back home we are surrounded by a flock of starlings flying somewhere after roosting for the night on the moor. Amazing.
It got a bit tough in the afternoon but a bout of hysterical laughing got us through the 25 mile mark. We stop at a picnic bench where we make tea and eat a lot of food, hoping it’s enough to get us home!
The next 5 miles are a lot easier and we stop to eat the last of our mint cake back at the start of the trail with big smiles on our faces. We head off home to a celebration and cup of tea.
People thought we were mad. Now they know we are mad.

Thanks howies!

For the full image gallery click here (or the image at the top)