Essential oils for Christmas

Tea light candle holders made from Australian Banksia seed pods

Diffusing essentials oils in your home at Christmas will not only help with creating a lovely festive aroma, but they can encourage a calm and relaxed state of being - a special gift at this busy time of year!

Although we have a hot Christmas in Australia, we still love the warming and woody oils traditionally associated with Winter in the northern hemisphere like Pine, Cinnamon, Cedarwoord, Clove oil and Nutmeg.  

For a lovely festive blend mix a spicy oil like Cinnamon with a gentle citrus oil like Sweet Orange, Mandarin, Lemon or Tangerine. Only a small amount of spicy oils should be used as they can be over-powering and irritating.  Avoid contact with the skin also.

The mix of spice and citrus is familar to those who have smelt a traditional Clove Pomander, used for generations to mask smells and add to festive decorations.  These are typically a citrus fruit such as orange, spiked all over with black clove heads and then hung with a red ribbon.

You can play with any combination of mints, such as Peppermint or Eucalytpus with woody oils, citrus and spice.

Banksia scent pots $13.95

Place the oils in one of Biome's hand turned Banksia scent pots, an oil burner or vaporiser.  Banksia is a particularly porous material that will soak up the essential oils and fragrance your room for weeks before needing to add more oil.

See Biome's essential oils here, plus we have a greater selection in our stores.

The Thurlby Scents of Christmas sachet ($7.95) is another lovely idea for your home or a gift.  This Australian-made natural fragrance sachet can hang on the tree or anywhere. 

Queen B Christmas beeswax candles

For creating a beautiful festive atmosphere, candles are the centrepiece.  Choose Australian beeswax candles for their purity and eco-friendliness.  Queen B offers gorgeous beeswax candle designs for Christmas with Christmas Trees, Jolly Santa and Mary, Joseph & Baby Jesus.

Don't forget the essential oils for relaxtion to help you through the busy festive schedule.  Try the Mt Retour certified organic relaxing blend or Mandarin, which is meant to relax, sooth and calm restlessness, especially for hyperactivity in children.  What parent doesn't need that at this time?

Teenage skin care

We're thrilled to introduce Harmoni's Kiss Certified Organic*, Australian-made skin care for teenagers.

Melissa Lowe developed Harmoni’s Kiss teenage skin care out of concern for the chemicals her three daughters were exposed to.  She wanted personal care choices that were gentle yet effective, without compromising on fashion or fun.

Harmoni’s Kiss has carefully selected ingredients to provide a safe and sustainable alternative to chemical cosmetics for teenage skin care. Their mission is about openness in the beauty industry and inspiring girls to make smarter choices for their bodies and the environment. 

It's not easy to create a skin range that is Certified Organic, which makes Harmoni's Kiss extra special.  Yet, the prices are very reasonable at only $14.95 for the face moisturiser, $7.95 for aluminium free natural deodorant and $15.95 for body lotion.  And right now, take advantage of this special gift with purchase:

** SPECIAL OFFERS **

Receive a free Face Scrub valued at $14.95

when you purchase one of a Cleanser, Toner, Moisturier or Body Lotion.
And, luscious lip balm, now just $6.

Harmoni's Kiss has the look to appeal to teenagers - it's emotionally 'teen', functionally 'green'.   Why not introduce your young women to chemical-free body care this Christmas.

Teenagers and chemicals
Melissa explains research by Dr Rebecca Sutton who has studied the effects of four chemical families on girls aged 14-19 as part of her research for the American Environmental Working Group (EWG).  The results, produced in September 2008, showed the girls’ bodies contained residual traces of 16 chemicals commonly found in everyday personal care products.

“There are so many products in use around the home that identifying the exact source of these chemicals is difficult,” Melissa says.  “But we can minimise these chemicals in our bodies by choosing beauty products that do not contain chemicals and are Australian certified organic.”


* Harmoni’s Kiss is Australia’s first skincare and personal hygiene range specifically formulated for teenage girls that has been endorsed as Australian Certified Organic (ACO).
ACO is Australia’s largest certifier for organic and biodynamic produce. ACO endorsement for any commercial product stipulates that food and other products must contain 95 percent organic ingredients, with the remaining five percent restricted to natural ingredients meeting stringent requirements. The product must adhere to strict national production standards, undergo annual audits, and show total transparency - allowing any person to trace the origin of every ingredient.

Recycling, the art of re-invention

 

A gorgeous new product we have in store at Biome has inspired this post for Planet Ark's National Recycling Week being celebrated right now.

Made from reclaimed cotton shirts, this little recycle yourself doll on a key fob is accompanied by a booklet that tells its story from cotton on the bush transforming to a smart business shirt, then to a discarded shirt, before its re-invention into this quirky doll.  As the story concludes: 
And today, someone who reminds you that in your heart you have the strength to recycle yourself into whatever you want to be.

Isn't that so true about all recycling?  A material or an ingredient has a useful life in one form, but when that use comes to an end there are so many ways it can be re-invented, re-loved, re-used or upcycled. Upcycled being the term de rigueur that refers to the process of converting waste or useless products into new materials or products of better quality.

We don't recycle at Biome - well not much...

With all the deliveries of stock we receive in our stores, we gather a mountain of cardboard boxes and stuffing of various kinds from bubble wrap to polystyrene beads, shredded paper and compostable beads - but we take joy in not recycling.  Don't panic!  We re-use -- rather than recycle -- as much as we can.  Where ever we can re-box (as in re-use a box) or re-stuff (re-use stuffing materials) we will.  In fact, we even have our neighbours on the bandwagon.  The restaurant gives us their wine cartons, the laundromat gives us freebie magazines and the coffee shop gives us boxes.  They love it because their bins are less full and we love it because we don't have to buy boxes and stuff.  Some of our suppliers send re-boxes to us as well, then we use them again to send to you...so that is at least three useful lives before any more energy is used to recycle them!

Where can I recycle certain things?

Planet Ark's Recycling Near You program is gold. That is, Planet Ark deserves a gold medal for all their incredible work to promote education and uptake on recycling.  They have a telephone hotline, or, visit the website where you can type in your location and it delivers links on where you can recycle certain things.

The page for recycling in the Brisbane area has a wealth of leads.  For example, one link tells me what materials I can put in the household kerbside recycling bin in Brisbane
All these materials are collected:

• Glass Bottles and Jars (but not drinking glasses and plates)
• Aluminium Cans
• Aluminium Foil
• Newspapers
• Magazines
• Office Paper
• Envelopes Without a Window
• Envelopes With a Window
• Phone Books
• Pizza Boxes (scrape the food out, some grease is ok)
• Egg Cartons (unless you know someone with chickens that can reuse them)
• Cardboard
• Steel Food Cans (does a magnet stick to it? it's steel if it does)
• Steel Paint Cans (empty)
• Steel Aerosol Cans (empty)
• Milk cartons
• Juice cartons
• Tin-plate or aluminium lids from steel food cans
• Plastics marked with
   

The last one is great news - they accept all plastics marked from 1 to 6, which is pretty much most firm plastics these days.  This was not always the case.
We aim to ensure that every plastic item stocked at Biome has a recycling symbol stamped on it - without that symbol there is no hope of it being recycled.

If you are into re-crafting, there are so many books and internet resources on how to make new things from old things.
Happy re-inventing!

Six reasons we love Goodbyn lunch boxes

Six new colours, six reasons we love Goodbyn...

(1) In our house, Goodbyn are the only lunch boxes we have bought for two years, which I feel makes them great value. The children have used theirs every day for school for two years and they are still going strong.  The plastic is sturdy but flexible, and there are no hinges to break.

There is no need to buy a new lunch box each year. The kids can apply Goodbyn stickers to refresh the design they want on their lunch box.

(2) Only one lid to keep track of - and it always seems to come home (unlike the 10 or so other containers in my drawer whose lids have disappeared, or vice versa).

How to close the Goodbyn lid? First, push down firmly on the two horizontal ridges across the middle, then pinch together all around the outside edges. Once the kids get the knack it is easy.

(3) The kids love packing their own lunch - what more do you want in the mornings? :-) For some reason they enjoy filling the little compartments and making their lunch look all creative and neat. They seem much more motivated to pack their own (or, is that because they want to sneak extra treats in...?)

(4) The layout of little compartments makes it easier for me to pack the lunches when I need to! It breaks things down into five sections that require less brain power to fill - sandwich here, fruit there, some dip there, crackers here and a sweet treat there. Done!

(5) Goodbyns are made from food-safe plastic, no PVC (unlike most soft lunch boxes), no lead, no BPA, phthalate-free and its made in the USA.

Rather than a faceless manufacturer, we know the story behind who makes them and who is accountable for the safety and environmental performance.  Goodbyn makes public their product testing results

(6) There's something about Bento boxes and a plastic wrap-free lunch!  Lunch seems much more appetising when it is not squished inside sweaty plastic wrap, but rather laid out in the Bento system. The Japanese have served food in this way for centuries after all.

Six new fruity colours now available in Australia in Goodbyn original and Bynto sizes, plus ice packs, three types of stickers and replacement bottles.

Visit here to see all of Biome's lunch boxes.