8wisewebsite

[8wisewebsite]

Plant-Based Meals In UK Schools

Nature expert and TV presenter Chris Packham has said he’s “very pleased” to be backing a campaign urging UK schools to serve plant-based meals.

ProVeg set up “School Plates” in 2018. The non-governmental organization campaigns for food system change. It aims to help schools make the move to plant-based cooking for the good of children’s health, to save money, and to benefit the planet.

Animal agriculture is one of the biggest environmental problems we face. One study from the University of Oxford found that Western countries need to reduce beef consumption by 90 percent to avoid climate collapse.

Another study found that eating plant-based is the “single biggest way” people can reduce their impact on the earth.

To help accelerate food system change, ProVeg works with school staff, cooks, and caterers. Training opportunities are provided to help them make the switch to plant-based. The organization also provides recipe books that are available to download from its website completely free of charge.

Chris Packham’s vegan advocacy

Packham, who is a vegan himself, said that information is provided in a “gentle, encouraging way.”

“One of the things that we can do relatively easily here in the UK is change what we eat,” he added. “There’s no ambiguity about the fact that we need to be eating less meat.”

He also reiterated the importance of helping people “transition.”

“Asking people who eat a lot [of meat] to eat a little less,” he added. “Being patient and kind as they go through that process.”

ProVeg is currently working with more than 3,500 schools across the UK, feeding 588,000 children every day. A spokesperson told Plant Based News that the reception from these schools has been “extremely positive.”

They added: “We encourage our partners to run tasting sessions with the children before launching new menus. Feedback is crucial – whether it be from partners, parents, or the kids themselves. We want to change school food for the better – gone are the days of Turkey Twizzlers!”

Plant-based campaigns

This is just the latest campaign to urge public services to offer plant-based meals in the UK.

This year, more than 70,000 people have signed a Pro Veg petition urging the EU to serve calcium-fortified dairy-free milk in schools.

They were described by ProVeg as a “healthy, sustainable option.” The group stated that they “should be included in the school scheme as European society shifts towards a more plant-based diet.”

Also this year, a number of doctors wrote to NHS Scotland. They outlined the reasons why vegan meals should be served in hospitals.

The letter compared serving meat to “distributing cigarettes in the pulmonary-care unit. It added: “Switching to 100 percent vegan menus … would help NHS Scotland improve patient recovery, reduce costs, prevent animal suffering, and meet its commitment to reaching net-zero carbon emissions.”

WOOVVE is a specialised vegetarian directory; we only list 100% vegetarian specialist organisations, with Vegan, Organic and Eco businesses. Everyone that lists with our vegan directory must be 100% fully vegetarian. WOOVVE has been designed to help vegetarians, vegans and eco conscious individuals who want to shop ethically and organically. Helping you to find and support organisations who live by the same principles and to help those organisations find customers.

[8wisewebsite]

THE RISING COST OF LIVING

It’s been all over the news for the last few months, and it affects millions of people in Britain. We’re of course talking about the dramatic rise in living costs that we’re experiencing currently.

According to the Office for National Statistics, two thirds of adults in Britain have said that their cost of living has increased in the last month. This is due mainly to the rise in energy prices. The wholesale price of gas in January 2022 was almost four times higher than in early 2021. Now millions of people are having to choose between ‘heating or eating’. What’s more, this month the energy price cap is set to increase even further still, rising by a whopping 54%. This increase is expected to add £693 to the average annual household bill.

Money is one of the most common causes of stress, and this news is of course causing stress and anxiety for a lot of people. As you know, Financial Wellness is one of our core elements within our 8Wise Model as it’s intrinsic to our overall health and wellbeing. Not only is it essential in itself, poor Financial Wellness can also negatively impact other wellness elements. For example, money worries can cause you to feel anxious or even depressed (Emotional Wellness), this can lead us then to feel rubbish physically and become more susceptible to colds and infections (Physical Wellness).

So how can you protect your Financial Wellness during this time?

Firstly, it’s important to keep up to date with the news and what it means for you. What changes are coming up? What do all these financial terms mean? Is there any support available that you qualify for? Having a good understanding of the situation makes it easier for you to create a plan and make decisions that are best for you.

It’s also worth making sure that you’re getting the best deals available on everything. That includes your mobile phone, internet, car insurance, utility bills, gym membership etc. When you’ve made sure that you’re not paying more for things than you need to, it’s a good idea to sit down and set yourself a budget. What are your monthly outgoings and incomings? How much expendable income are you left with each month? How much do you want to be saving?

It’s also important to identify what money means to you. Perhaps your favourite thing to do is try different restaurants – money is a means for you to do this. Or maybe money is important to you because it means you can donate to the causes close to your heart. Understanding your own unique relationship with money is a really important step for budgeting, and for developing Financial Wellness.

Finally, it’s important to look after yourself! Go for a walk, get 8-9 hours of sleep, fuel your body with healthy foods, drink water, talk to friends… It’s easy to neglect self care when you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, but it’s one of the most important things you can do to prevent mental health issues from arising down the line.

For more advice on finances, we really recommend Martin Lewis’s website www.moneysavingexpert.com

https://8wise.co.uk way is meant to help you to manage potential turbulences, triggers, and traumas, so that you can continue to work towards a state of optimal mental health. It helped me, it has helped my clients, and I passionately believe that it can help you too.

[8wisewebsite]

What is Just Transition?

One of the 5 targets of COP27 this November in Egypt is to achieve a managed and just transition to an economic model based on low emission and climate resilience as defined in the Paris Agreement.

But what is a “just transition”?

The principle of just transition is that a healthy economy and a clean environment can and should co-exist. The process for achieving this vision should be a fair one that should not cost workers or community residents their health, environment, jobs, or economic assets. Any losses should be fairly compensated.

An example of how governments may action these “just transitions” is in Scotland.

“We are committed to ending our contribution to climate change in a way that is fair and leaves no one behind.

The actions needed to become net zero by 2045 will transform all sectors of our economy and society and will require rapid structural change

In Scotland, we have seen how unplanned structural changes in the past have left inter-generational scarring and deprivation, most notably in our former coal mining communities. Our transition to net zero must be managed differently. If we plan ahead and take action, ending our contribution to climate change presents a unique opportunity to improve the collective wellbeing of our nation. The Climate Change Act 2019 embeds the principles of a just transition. This means as we reduce our emissions and respond to a changing climate, our journey is fair and creates a better future for everyone – regardless of where they live, what they do, and who they are. By utilising our efforts towards emissions reductions and adaptation to tackle existing inequalities, we can deliver an economy and society which is centred on people’s wellbeing.”

And to achieve a “just transition” finance will play a crucial role!

During COP26 in Glasgow governments focused on a just transition away from coal. Following the G7 meeting in Cornwall the governments of South Africa, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, along with the European Union, announced a new ambitious, long-term Just Energy Transition Partnership to support South Africa’s decarbonisation efforts. The Partnership aims to accelerate the decarbonisation of South Africa’s economy, with a focus on the electricity system, to help it achieve the ambitious goals set out in its updated Nationally Determined Contribution emissions goals. It will mobilise an initial commitment of $8.5 billion for the first phase of financing, through various mechanisms. The Partnership is expected to prevent up to 1-1.5 gigatonnes of emissions over the next 20 years and support South Africa to move away from coal and to accelerate its transition to a low emission, climate resilient economy.

Should we all aim for just transition?

Do you want to make an impact on the World’s sustainability? Does your business have a positive sustainability business model?

The World Sustainability Collective has been founded to help you and others like you increase your impact now and grow it in the future so that as a Collective you have an equal voice in the Global Sustainability Arena! Visit us at https://worldsustainabilitycollective.com/

[8wisewebsite]

MASTERING MONEY MADNESS

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Live the 8Wise™ Way podcast with me, Kim Rutherford, psychotherapist and creator of 8Wise™, the methodology for better mental health and wellbeing. Today we are on episode nine and we are going to be talking about mastering money madness. How excited does that sound, because let’s be honest, money tends to make us all go a little bit mad from time to time and today I just want to talk through the reasons for that and things that we can do to try and prevent those issues surrounding money from taking over our brains too much and causing us mental health issues, or certainly mental health deterioration.

So, as always, the episode is based on my 8Wise™ methodology, which if you haven’t done already, you can learn more about, you could head to my website which is www.8wise.co.uk, which gives you some information there or you can purchase one of the books. So 8Wise™ has been turned into a few different books, you can get a copy of what we are calling the mental health manual side of things, which is 8Wise™ Ways to a Healthier, Happier Mind and that’s the book that you can use to follow along with each of these podcast episodes as well. Of course, if you are wanting to commit to developing your mental health and wellbeing using 8Wise™, then not only can you buy the book, but you can also use the 12-week journal which helps you set some very simple goals to achieve over the next 12 weeks, linking into 8Wise™ and the 8Wise™ methodology. If you are looking to change your life entirely and start living your life the 8Wise™ Way, then you can also get a copy of the 12-month planner which helps you to manage your life day to day, month by month, throughout the year, embedding all of the skills, knowledge, and methodologies of the 8Wise™ program. For those of you who are thinking, do you know what I just need a cheeky little reminder every now and then, then you can get yourself a copy of the 8Wise™ wellness pocketbook as well. If you’re wondering where you can get those, well you can pretty much get them anywhere that sells books plus all the big ones, names will not be mentioned, and you can also get a copy from my website too. Again, that is www.8wise.co.uk.

Now, if you already have a copy of the book, then for today’s episode, if you head two page 190 you can follow along and there’s a lot more detail with regards to the topic that we’re talking about today.

So, mastering your money madness. What does money mean to you, and that’s the big question for today really. We are on the final element of the 8Wise™ model, the final element that links into the lifestyle dimension and, in our last episode we talked about occupational wellness, which links us beautifully to financial wellness because, let’s be honest one of the main reasons we all go to work is to earn money and we all go to work to earn the money so that we can then live the life that we want to live. We know what life we want to live if we have gone through all of the previous elements of the 8Wise™ model as well, which has explained to us how we keep a healthy body and mind, it’s taught us about who we are and knowing what our purpose is and what we believe in, it’s helped us to identify what stimulates us and keeps us changing and growing and out of our comfort zone. So far, we’ve also learned about which environment stimulate us and make us feel safe and secure and then we also touched upon which and who are the right people for us to have in our lives as our support system, through our social wellness.

So, so far we should know everything we need to know about ourselves now to keep a healthy mind and the final one is financial wellness, as we’re going to talk about today, mastering money madness.

I guess the first way to start this, and this is how I would work with any one of my clients when they talk about financial issues, is really you need to establish what money means to you and that might seem like a really silly question, but realistically speaking finances and money are one of the number one stressors in the modern world, meaning that a lot of the stress that we have in our life tends to come from financial issues in one way or another. We know that, again I’m going to be talking about the pandemic, but we know that during the pandemic, people were hit quite hard financially. We know we’re entering a recession soon, so we are seeing worse and worse scenarios with regards to finances all the time and we know that financial pressures tend to lead quite strongly towards mental health issues and very, very sadly to worst case scenarios and what we see an increase in suicide linked to issues surrounding financial wellness.

It all starts with understanding what money means to you. Now money can mean lots of different things to lots of different people. For example, some people really just love all of the bling in life, you know, the nice cars, the nice houses or the wonderful handbags, the best shoes. So they might be interested in the status elements and the materialism that comes with money. Absolutely fine, no judgment whatsoever, but it’s important for you to know that if that’s who you are and own that that’s who you are, because then you’ll understand why it’s such a big deal to always be able to afford your car payment because your car means so much to you. For some other people, money might mean security for themselves and safety for themselves. For others, it might mean that they’re able to provide to other people or for other people, or maybe look after their family. For me personally, my financial wellness comes from being able to have some freedom and some independence, knowing that I can look after myself no matter what happens and to not be able to look after myself really worries me and it bothers me and it causes me some stress when it might be threatened. I understand myself from a financial perspective, I know that if suddenly I don’t have enough in the bank, that means that I can look after myself no matter what, that I don’t have to rely on other people, that I can’t be independent that starts to cause me some major issues. It’s demonstrated through all of these different types of things, it’s demonstrated through the fact you might have two different people.

For example, two different people, both with £10,000 pounds in the bank. Now one person might look at that £10,000 and go brilliant, that is fantastic, that is exactly what I need to be able to survive the life I want, to be able to get what I want, it gives me some freedom, it gives me some independence. I feel safe and I feel secure with that £10,000 in the bank. Somebody else might look at that £10,000 in the bank and go, oh my God that is not enough, it’s hardly enough. I can’t look after my kids with that, I can’t give my kids what I want to be able to give them, I can’t provide for my family members as much as I want to with only £10,000 in the bank. Somebody else might look at that £10,000 in the bank and go, well £10,000 is quite nice, it means I can get a couple of handbags and I’m quite happy with that.

So, it means different things to different people when it comes to what money really means to you. If you are wondering, how do I work it out, how do I find out what that is, give this a little go right now. Think about if you won the lottery tomorrow, what five things would you do with your money immediately. So, if you won the lottery tomorrow, what five things would you do with your money immediately. Now put those five things down and then rank them in order of what you would do first and what you would do last. If at the top of your list you’ve identified that you’re going to buy things, then ultimately, right now money means for you some form of status. If you say you are going to go on holiday straight away, then that indicates that money for you represents some freedom. If you’ve put on there straight away I’m going to pay off mom and dad’s mortgage, then that shows you that looking after other people, when the safety and security of others is your priority, when it comes to money. If you say to yourself, you know what I’m probably going to do is save most of it and then invest most of it straight away that indicates to you that money is something that you have because you want to feel safe and you want to feel secure with it.

Ask yourself, if you won the lottery tomorrow, what are you going to spend your money on, what’s the first five things you’ll spend your money on and identify the importance of each of those things, ranking them one to five, and that gives you some indication.

Now, like I said, it’s really important for you to understand what money means to you and what money represents to you before you fall into all of the other trappings of financial wellness and financial wellbeing, because ultimately money and financial wellness all links to stress. As I said, in the modern world, it’s one of the number one stress triggers in the world and it causes most stress on a day-to-day basis and it has a huge, huge implication on people’s mental health and wellbeing.

Understanding, as I said from the beginning, what money means to you starts to help you understand what is going to be your stress trigger related to money, which then means you have some idea of the things you need to implement into your life and into your money management skills and into your financial planning in order to try and prevent that stress or reduce that stress or you know what you have to do if money becomes a problematic situation.

So understanding your financial wellness and what money means to you, helps you to prevent yourself from entering into serious issues with regards to money if you’re in the position to actually start stopping that and preventing that from happening, but it also means you’ll understand better when you are stress triggered and you can implement really good and effective strategies for coming out of that. So, as I said, question number one, what does money mean to you. When you understand what money means to you, you then need to go and understand money and by that I mean you need to develop financial literacy.

Financial literacy is all about the skills and the knowledge linked to money so that when you walk into a bank, you know all of the lingo, you know all the language that they’re going to use, you understand what all of that means. You understand information with regards to credit and debit and things like understanding what your credit score is, that this is language that you understand, that it’s processes that you understand, it’s systems that you understand.

It just means that when you are dealing with your money, you know what to ask for, you know what support to ask for, you know what questions to ask and you know which of these elements really affect your financial income and your payments and things like that. So after you know what money means to you, you need to then understand financial literacy.

There is nothing worse than being in a situation where you were okay financially and then, because you didn’t understand something, you’ve then been seriously affected. I, don’t judge me on this guys, but when I was at university and I had to pay the rent I wasn’t lucky enough to be able to get gigantic big loans and things like that, so I pretty much had to pay my way through uni, I went and worked in debt recovery and I was that horrible person who would ring you up and get you to pay your bills and I’m sorry for anybody I rang, it was just my job I had to pay my own bills. But I learned an awful lot through that was understanding different financial situations.

Now I personally was a mess with money so everything I’m talking to you about today genuinely comes from experience professionally and personally. When I was younger, I did not understand financial literacy. I just didn’t understand it. What I knew is you could go to the bank, you could get a loan out and you had to repay that loan. That’s all I knew. So one day when I was 18 years old and I was legally old enough to go and get a loan that’s exactly what I did. I went and got a loan and I used that loan to help me with my personal situation at the time with regards to paying rent and putting a roof over mine and my sister’s head at the time. But what happened was, I got to a stage where I couldn’t repay that loan and because I was young and I was stupid and I was naive and I didn’t really understand anything, I just stopped making payments because I didn’t have the money coming in, so I just stopped making payments. Eventually, obviously, for those who’ve been in my situation know, if you stop making payments, you go into arrears.

If you can’t pay off those arrears, then that causes major issues and my major issues actually led me to a CCJ at that time, and for those of you who don’t know what a CCJ is, it’s a county court judgment. I had a county court judgment from the age of 21. Now you imagine being in your twenties and you can’t have a bank account, a proper bank account, you’ve got no credit options to you whatsoever. You can’t have credit cards or anything like that. Literally the only bank that would touch me with a barge pole was actually a building society and the only way that I could pay in and pay out was to actually go in and give money and go out and go and be able to take money. I couldn’t do direct debits. I couldn’t do standing orders. The amount of stress that I had in my life because of that situation was humongous.

I was living in a situation where I had to rent, and most places want you to rent either by direct debit or standing order, all of which I wasn’t able to do. Some places wanted me to be able to provide 12 months’ worth of cheques and they would then cash the cheque once a month, all of which I couldn’t do. I had to rely really heavily on friends and family to be able to provide me with those options and sometimes it was just as simple as I would tell them I’d set the standing order up and then I would be rushing around town with hundreds of pounds in my handbag, going to my bank to be able to make these payments because it was the only option I had. Every single week, every single month, my financial situation caused me major, major stress. It caused me major depression because I couldn’t live life, I couldn’t do the things that everybody else needed to do or wanted to do at my age and that stayed with me. It stayed with me for, I think it was seven or eight years.

I remember now very clearly the day that I finally got a credit card, I burst into tears. In fact, who I bank with now I’m so loyal to them because they were the people who gave me a credit card. I couldn’t believe it after seven or eight years that suddenly, finally, I was able to have the normal bank accounts with everything else. Even to this day, I will never take my financial situation for granted ever again and I will never take it for granted because I know how horrific it felt, that fear, that anxiety that would come through and when the bank letters came through the door, that fear and that anxiety when the phone rang just in case it’s someone trying to collect something from you.

I know what it’s like to have a bailiff turn up on your door and they’re looking around your house, identifying what you have in your home that equates to the amount that you owe. I know what that feels like. It’s horrific. It feels horrific and it’s incredibly stressful and a lot of that came from the fact that I didn’t have really good financial literacy.

I didn’t have the knowledge and I didn’t have the skills, I was just really, really naive with regards to money and the fact of the matter is, if I’d had a better understanding, I would’ve known to go and have a conversation with my bank before it got to that stage, not be scared of it, not be ignorant to and actually make some arrangements. When I was working in debt recovery, and I had all of this going on in my own life, I was actually really empathetic towards the other people and I used the time to help them do the one thing that I hadn’t done earlier on in my life, which is the financial planning and helping to educate them on that financial literacy.

When you know what money means to you, and you’ve developed those skills and knowledge with regards to financial literacy that suddenly starts to make you feel like you’re in control, that starts to reduce the anxiety and it builds your confidence because now you know if I’m in a mess I know who to talk to, I know what to do.

So now what you’ve got to do is do the financial planning stage and this is facing realistic situations head on. This is looking at your life and going, okay realistically, what is my current financial situation, and this will mean that you’ve got to do some sort of analysis of what money you’ve got coming in and what money you’ve got going out and maybe think about budgeting and all of those types of things.

When you’ve got a really clear understanding of what your current financial situation is, then it’s about setting financial goals. Those goals might link to what you want to be able to achieve financially in the future and some of those goals might be well, how do I rectify the financial situation that I’m in right now.

A big part of financial planning is actually having a budget and understanding, trying to set up direct debits to pay off your bills, direct debits to pay off any of your debts if you can, trying to manage that debt credit cycle so you are paying off what debt you have rather than getting more and more into debt. The reason I say all of this is that without financial planning, it’s very easy to spend without understanding and knowing what you’re spending and then what happens is it leads to these issues with regards to finances and what we’re trying to do is, if we can try and get in front of the game and we understand the literacy and we know our own financial situation and we know where we want to be, and we know the things we can do to get there we feel less stressed out about the money because we feel like we’re in control of it all and as I said, that’s really, really important.

If you haven’t done so yet, I highly recommend that you start a budget. Look at it, you can actually go online, you can go online and you can find so many different budget forms. You can find so many websites that will help you develop a budget. I highly recommend you go and do that and start that for yourself. I’d say for the next three months, just really keep a close eye on what’s coming in and what you are spending. Just focus on that to start with. Then when you know what that looks like over about a three-month process, maybe then start looking at okay If I’m spending too much, what could I change, where could I save the pennies a little bit more. So look at savings. Look at things that you don’t need. Get back down to basics. Maybe choose some different shops to shop from, do what you can in that financial planning stage so that you are starting to make the changes you want to change, or you need to change in order to reach those financial goals that you might have.

When you’ve done all of that, you then need to move on to the next stage and the next stage is money management. This is about making sure you’ve got access to all the tools and techniques that you need in order to manage your money effectively so that it meets your financial plans, it means that you are understanding that financial literacy well enough and putting it into practice with these tools and techniques and skills that you now have and it means that no matter what, you are always focusing on reducing the stress linked to what money actually means to you.

I have so many clients come into me with high levels of stress and anxiety, especially linked around jobs for example. Those people who are worried about not doing a good enough job in the workplace. When we always delve deeper, and we always do, we always delve deeper, and we delve deeper, and we delve deeper, one of the biggest things that comes out pretty much anybody who’s got major stress at work is the fear of losing their job. Because if they lose their job, then they would lose their income stream and if they lose their income stream, that then triggers all of those different things that is linked to what money means to them.

I have a lot of parents who come in and their fear is that they won’t be able to provide for their kids. I have those people who just think, oh my God it means that I’d have to rely on my own parents again and I will lose all my freedom. So when we start to look at all of the stress that comes from other areas in our life, it’s then really useful to identify well how many of those also link to the financial implications. Finances, when we’re looking at it from a psychological perspective, actually link in to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and it’s right at the foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Ultimately, we want to feel safe and we want to feel secure and in order to do that in our society, we need money and therefore, anything that could affect us from getting an income stream, that could affect the amount of money that we are getting, that triggers that primitive response with regards to safety and security. That just happens to be safety and security looks different for lots of different people and again, whatever money means to you, there’s no judgment on you whatsoever, it’s your life, money can mean whatever you want it to mean to you, but it is really important that you understand that, own that, and live your life by that.

That’s why financial wellness sits within the lifestyle dimension, but it triggers and affects all the other elements of the 8Wise™ model as well. As I said, financial wellness will trigger emotional wellness without doubt the amount of stress that can be linked to it. Therefore, it triggers our physical wellness because, as we know, anything that affects us on a mind perspective or mentally it’s going to affect us physically. Money, and links to money, can really affect our value base and who we are and our identity. I mean, I work with a lot of people, senior people, who have worked up the ladder to those CEO roles with that certain financial income stream coming in, then they have to retire and suddenly it’s not just then losing their title, which is affecting their spiritual wellness, but suddenly they lose that income stream as well. So who are they now without that income stream, who are they now without that big salary, those big bonuses. Money really plays a huge part in our identity and therefore it heavily influences our spiritual wellness as well.

Money is what we have to spend to do all of the things we want to do. All of those hobbies and all of those interests that help stimulate our mind and keep us intellectually well, they all come at a price of money. So having no money or having issues around money, then triggers our intellectual wellness too.

When it comes to safe environments, there are lots of people that, unless they have financial support, can’t get out of unsafe environments and we can’t necessarily always create the safe environments if we don’t have the money to support us in doing that. Then we have social systems at the end of the day. If we want to spend time with people, you can argue spending time with people is free, but let’s be honest, most of us want to do exciting things with our people and a lot of family situations or situations with friends actually come from money. Lending people money that we didn’t want to lend money to, or lending money to people we don’t get paid back and this causes relationship issues, which then causes major stress, which opens the gateway to that plethora of mental health issue as well.

We know at the end of the day, occupational wellness wise, we’re in work because we want to earn money to live the life we want to live, the amount of stress that comes from not hitting a bonus each month or not getting the pay rise that you deserved, or the fear of redundancy, all of that links to financial wellness and the fear of losing money.

So people ask me an awful lot, Kim why does financial wellness play such a huge role in what you’re calling a mental health and wellbeing model. Because whether we like it or not, money makes the world go round and because it makes the world go round it implements itself firmly within our lives and firmly within our stress triggers.

I work with my clients and when we start to understand what money means to them, we start to look at what was their knowledge and understanding of money when they were growing up. It’s always quite interesting to see those that have always had money, how hungry they are to still have money and for those who never had money, how driven they are to have that safety and security with money in the future as well.

So, you’ve got to look at your life and go, am I mastering this money madness for myself, am I reducing the amount of stress that is in my life that is linked to my financial wellness, do I know what money means to me, do I have good skills and knowledge with regards to financial literacy, do I know how to create a financial plan, do I understand my current situation realistically with open mind and open eyes. Do I know what I want to achieve with money and how I’m going to get there and do I have good money management tools and skills. If the answer to all of those is no I don’t, no I don’t, no I don’t then you know right now where you need to start, you need to start with that one. What it means to you. You need to develop financial literacy, you need to start financial planning and you need to go and get the tools to help you manage your money effectively.

As I said, financial wellness and money is one of the biggest triggers of stress in the world and as I’ve said multiple times, stress itself is not a mental health issue, but it is certainly a big gateway to many mental health issues and if you already experience a mental health issue, you already know that financial issues don’t help that in any way, shape or form. When we’re looking at the continuum of mental health and we’re looking at going from thriving and excelling down to crisis, you might have somebody on an everyday basis that is firmly in the middle at the survival zone and just a bad month with regards to money can take them into crisis. I was watching a friend’s Facebook page only a couple of days, they were very upset on Facebook and what they did is they shared this video of a friend of theirs filming themselves, just explaining a few things and what that video was, was actually a video taken just a few minutes before this person had taken their own life due to financial issues, not knowing what to do, not knowing who to turn to, not knowing who to talk to, just feeling so lost and so alone because money and money issues was causing them so much pain. I don’t want that for people. I’m sure you don’t want that for people.

As I said, money makes the world go round and it can make us all feel really mad and I mean, mad in all of the senses, mad in angry and mad in chaos as well. So learning to master your money will hopefully help you to look after your mental health and wellbeing and develop a healthier, happier mind, and also lead to a better quality of life for you, for your family and also your friends and all the loved ones around you as well. So please, please, please, if you haven’t done it already, start to look at how you can develop your financial wellness and start reducing that stress and start Living the 8Wise™ Way for better mental health and wellness.

I hope that one has been useful for you. I can’t believe we’re at episode nine already. Join me next week for episode 10, which I’m not telling you about now because it’s going to be all a surprise on the day.

Little competition time for you now. If you would like to get a free signed copy of my 8Wise™ Ways to a Healthier, Happier Mind book, then you just need to do the following. Follow me on my LinkedIn page, follow me on my Twitter page, follow me on my Facebook page and follow me on my Instagram page. You will find me everywhere either as Kim Rutherford or @8Wise something, so it will be @8WiseKim or @8WiseTherapy or @8Wise. Follow me there, support the posts that are linked to the podcast and then the big one, this is the big one that I want you to do, I would love it if you would share the podcast with 10 people on those platforms and tag me into the post. So, share the podcast with 10 people on the social media platforms and tag me into the post. The first 10 people who do that, I will get you a signed copy of the book sent out to you ASAP.

So get on that and do it, or just follow me anyway, why not just follow me anyway, where I give you day to day tips with regards to 8Wise™ and helping you to Live the 8Wise™ Way as well.

Now, if you want more information, please head to www.8wise.co.uk. There you’ll find all of the books that you can access, you’ll get all of the episodes of the podcast as well so you can listen back to those. There is so much free resource for you as well plus the 8Wise™ evaluations so that you can learn to identify where your current level of wellness is so you can actually look at where you might be with regards to that mental health spectrum. That’s all there at www.8wise.co.uk.

Some exciting news is that I’m currently recording the audio version of 8Wise™ Ways to a Healthier, Happier Mind, and that should be available in the autumn. If you are somebody who likes to listen rather than read, then absolutely fine, that is coming to you very, very soon and I hope that you love listening to that when it does come out. If you do want to listen to more, and this is your first episode of Live the 8Wise™ Way, then you are at episode nine so head back and start listening from the beginning at episode one, where you will learn all about the 8Wise™ model and how it can affect your mental health and wellbeing.

What I would really, really love you to do is, if you don’t mind, why not subscribe now to Live the 8Wise™ Ways podcast so that you can always know when a new episode is coming out. It would be great if you would like the podcast or all of the episodes, whichever one you want to do and I would love it if you shared, it, told your friends and family about it and would leave me a little review as well. That would be fantastic.

I always say this, there’s one in four people who are currently experiencing a mental health issue, which means three in four people are always at risk. 8Wise™ was developed to help the one in four experiencing mental health issues but it’s also been developed to be used as a prevention model for those who are trying to prevent mental health issues from developing so we look after the one in four, and we’re trying to look after the three in four as well. But we can only do that if we reach as many people as we possibly can so I’m really, really relying on everybody listening to this, to share and review and get the message out there and get the news out there that mental health can be looked after if you choose to Live the 8Wise™ Way.

Now another way that you can be able to Live the 8Wise™ Way moving forward, and I’m really, really excited about this is, as of next year I am going to be traveling around delivering 8Wise™ training, and you will also be able to access 8Wise™ training online as well.

If you are someone who’s really loved listening to the podcast and would really like to learn an awful lot more and almost have me as your own personal psychotherapist within a group format, then you will be able to book on 2-hour training courses as of September. A lot of those training courses will be available from early 2023 and, as I said, the face to face courses are going to be delivered around the country later next year as well so I would love to see you there. I would love you to come on and learn to Live the 8Wise™ Way with me personally and I can take you through all of the tools and techniques that I share with my one-to-one clients as well.

So that’s it. Episode nine, mastering money madness. Go ahead and start looking after your finances in order to look after your mind.

Thank you so much for joining me. Kim Rutherford psychotherapist, author, podcast host and, most importantly, the creator of the 8Wise™ method.

I hope you have a great month and I look forward to seeing you at our next episode of Live the 8Wise™ Way.

Take care and bye for now.

https://8wise.co.uk way is meant to help you to manage potential turbulences, triggers, and traumas, so that you can continue to work towards a state of optimal mental health. It helped me, it has helped my clients, and I passionately believe that it can help you too.

[8wisewebsite]

Technology to Clean Marine Plastic Pollution

It was Sir David Attenborough’s TV programmes that first alerted most of us to the problem – marine plastic pollution.

Scientists estimate that perhaps 8m tonnes of plastic waste enters the ocean each year, discharged by rivers or shed from ships. Plenty stays close to shore. Some, though, is carried by currents to mid-ocean gyres.

The biggest of these is located halfway between California and Hawaii—and so littered with flotsam that it has been nicknamed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

A study found that it contains between 45,000 and 129,000 tonnes of plastic debris spread over an area roughly the size of Alaska.

The idea of sweeping it all up might sound fanciful. To Boyan Slat it seemed merely ambitious. What if, he wondered in 2012 (then aged 18), you could build a massive bow-shaped floating barrier, anchor it to the seabed and let currents shuffle the litter into the scoop? Despite his youthful age and madcap scheme, Mr Slat set up the Ocean Cleanup to put it into practice.

In 2018, €20m ($23m) and several prototypes later, the device set sail from San Francisco on September 8th, escorted by a Coast Guard vessel, a shipload of camera crews and a flotilla of curious boaters.

Mr Slat wants to deploy another 60 booms, measuring 1km or more. Corporate sponsors will foot the bill of €5m apiece for construction and three years’ operation, Mr Slat hopes. He already enjoys the backing of deep-pocketed endowments and of tycoons like Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce, and Peter Thiel, a noted investor.

To clean an area of this size, a strategic and energy-efficient solution is required. The system is comprised of a long U-shaped barrier that guides the plastic into a retention zone at its far end

The floating systems are designed to capture plastics ranging from small pieces, just millimetres in size, up to large debris, including massive, discarded fishing nets (ghost nets), which can be tens of meters wide.

Modelling predicts they need around 10 full-size systems to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch alone.

BUT after fleets of systems are deployed into every ocean gyre, combined with source reduction, The Ocean Cleanup projects to be able to remove 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040.

Rivers are the arteries that carry waste from land to the ocean. Research found that 1000 rivers are responsible for roughly 80% of riverine pollution.

The Interceptor is The Ocean Cleanup’s answer for river plastic waste. It is the first scalable solution to prevent plastic from entering the world’s oceans from rivers. It is 100% solar-powered and extracts plastic autonomously.

Do you want to make an impact on the World’s sustainability? Does your business have a positive sustainability business model?

The World Sustainability Collective has been founded to help you and others like you increase your impact now and grow it in the future so that as a Collective you have an equal voice in the Global Sustainability Arena! Visit us at https://worldsustainabilitycollective.com/

[8wisewebsite]

Going vegan: can switching to a plant-based diet really save the planet?

Research in 2018 showed that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, the EU and Australia combined – and still feed the world!

The UK business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, is considering a “full vegan diet” to help tackle climate change, saying people will need to make lifestyle changes if the government is to meet its new emissions target of a 78% reduction on 1990 levels by 2035.

How much difference would it make if everyone turned to a plant-based diet? Experts say changing the way we eat is necessary for the future of the planet but that government policy is needed alongside this. If politicians are serious about wanting dietary changes, they also need to incentivise it, scientists and writers add.

The literature on the impact of reducing or cutting out meat from your diet varies. Some studies show that choosing vegetarian options would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions per person by 3%. Others show a reduction in emissions per person of 20-30% for halving meat consumption.

Probably the most important thing to point out is that emissions are often viewed as the only metric of sustainability: they are not. Impacts of farming systems on carbon sequestration, soil acidification, water quality, and broader ecosystem services also need to be well considered,” said Matthew Harrison, systems modelling team leader at the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture.

“There is also a need to account for farming systems that may replace livestock,” he said.

The writer and environmental campaigner George Monbiot says the numbers on the impact of going vegan are different because of what scientists measure. “There are two completely different ways look at the carbon impact of diet: one is carbon released by producing this or that food – that is ‘carbon current account’. But another one is ‘carbon capital account’, which is the carbon opportunity cost of producing this food rather than another one,” he said.

“If you are producing meat, for example, what might land be used for if you took meat away? If you are growing forests there instead or peat bog there.”

Monbiot says what we eat is a “huge issue”, alongside our transport habits. “Most of what you can do at an individual level is weak by comparison to what governments need to do … but changing diet does not. That has a major impact,” he said.

“It is easier done if the government acts to change the food system but in the absence of that, we should still try and change our diets.”

In 2018, scientists behind the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage of farming to the planet found avoiding meat and dairy products was the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet. The research showed that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world.

Credit to the guardian for this article  –  www.theguardian.com

WOOVVE is a specialised vegetarian directory; we only list 100% vegetarian specialist organisations, with Vegan, Organic and Eco businesses. Everyone that lists with our vegan directory must be 100% fully vegetarian. WOOVVE has been designed to help vegetarians, vegans and eco conscious individuals who want to shop ethically and organically. Helping you to find and support organisations who live by the same principles and to help those organisations find customers.

[8wisewebsite]

Vegan Myths

#1 Vegans dont get enough protein in their diets!! Simply not true – Spinach, among many more vegetables,  is a fantastic source of protein.

One cup of uncooked spinach has about 7 grams of protein. Quinoa  has around 9 grams of protein per cup (cooked). One cup of cooked lentils has about 18 grams of protein

#2 Vegans cant build muscle to become stronger!! Again, simply not true

Products such as hemp powder, non-dairy whey protein contain incredible amounts of protein that allow for muscle growth

#3 Vegans are weak!! Venus & Serena Williams, Lewis Hamilton, Graham Souness, Novak Djokovic are all vegan. Enough said!!

#4 Vegan diets are not healthy.

Vegan diets mostly exist of fruits and vegetables, non-GMO/ no GSM – If this ain’t healthy then what is???? These help in flushing out free radicals and toxins in the body.

#5 A Vegan’s diet will need to be supplemented with expensive vitamins

As long as you replace the vitamins found in meat with nutrients found in a plant based diet, there will be no need for any extra vitamins!!

#6 Vegan food is not tasty

Vegan food consists of a broad range of fruit, vegetables, nuts, juices, non-dairy milks and contribute to some of the most wonderfully tasting foods on the planet!

WOOVVE is a specialised Vegan directory, we only list 100% vegetarian specialist organisations, with Vegan, Organic and Eco businesses. Everyone that lists with us must be 100% fully vegetarian.  

Woovve.com has been designed to help vegetarians, vegans and eco conscious individuals who want to shop ethically and organically. Helping you to find and support organisations who live by the same principles and to help those organisations find customers.

[8wisewebsite]

Answers to Common Vegan Questions

Let’s be honest. If you grew up eating meat, milk, and eggs in almost every meal, the idea of going vegan certainly seems hard—maybe even impossible!

But most vegans discover the switch is far easier than they ever imagined. All you have to do is focus on crowding out animal-based foods rather than cutting them out. That is, don’t eliminate a meat, dairy, or egg product from your diet until you’ve found two or three great new vegan foods than can take its place. When you focus on crowding rather than cutting, you eliminate all feelings of strain and sacrifice. Your diet actually becomes more interesting, varied, and delicious as you fill it with more and more vegan foods.

Some ideas for beginning your transition:

- Remember that you’re not the first person to do this, so you don’t have to figure it all out by yourself. Invest in a vegan guidebook, which can provide invaluable pointers while making your journey quicker and easier. Understanding veganism Understanding Veganism: Biography and Identity – Nathan Stephens Griffin is a great choice because it’s nicely written and vegan-the-cookbook is full of recipes, and has gorgeous full-color food photography throughout.

- Visit your closest natural foods store, and buy at least ten vegan products you’ve never before tried.

- Buy a few basic cookbooks. We highly recommend BOSH!: Simple Recipes. Amazing Food. All Plants. – Ian Theasby, Henry Firth and Five Ingredient Vegan: 100 Simple, Fast, Modern Recipes – Katy Beskow as two perfect cookbooks for aspiring vegans.

- Visit woovve.com and do a search for Vegan to see what vegan-friendly restaurants are in your area.

- Check out Meera Sodha – East : 120 Vegan and Vegetarian recipes from Bangalore to Beijing list.

- Subscribe to our woovve membership, for shopping, eating, travel discounts, listings, recipes, tips, tricks, and ideas.

- Pick up a good vegan nutrition book like The How Not To Diet Cookbook : Over 100 Recipes for Healthy, Permanent Weight Loss – Michael Greger to make sure you steer clear of any needless nutrient deficiencies.

Don’t put pressure on yourself. Just make a point of constantly trying new vegan foods, and move at whatever speed you feel comfortable. If you make a mistake and end up consuming animal products, don’t call the whole thing off. You’ll find that over time, it gets easier and easier to stick with a mostly or entirely vegan diet.

Where do you get your protein?

Despite what you may have heard, protein is actually not much of a worry for most vegans.

Not so long ago, conventional wisdom had it that vegans and vegetarians would inevitably develop dangerous protein deficiencies. But over time this myth has largely died out, doubtless due to the fact that have been virtually no instances of vegans dropping dead from lack of protein.

Unfortunately, a harmful counter-myth has arisen within the vegan world: that plant-based foods are so loaded with protein that vegans need never give the topic a thought. That’s an unreasonable belief that has set a lot of vegans up for inadequate protein intake, even if they’ll never be hospitalized for deficiency. Protein is a vital nutrient and falling short of your needs is harmful in a variety of ways. So it’s worth making sure you’re incorporating several rich sources of protein into your everyday diet. Here are some protein-rich vegan foods that will help ensure your needs are met.

- Beans

- Nuts

- Tofu

- Lentils

- Temph

- Plant milk

Maybe the best approach to making this happen is to make sure that most of your meals include a solid source of protein. That can mean using nuts, seeds, or gomasio as a garnish. It could mean adding sautéed tempeh or vegan meats to your spaghetti sauce. Or it could mean making a side-dish of fried tofu mixed with a little barbecue sauce and a dusting of nutritional yeast. If you construct your diet with protein in mind, you’ll find an abundance of vegan foods to meet your needs. But protein is just the start of nutrients worth paying attention to: also keep an eye on zinc, iron, calcium, and especially Vitamin B-12. For more on these and other nutrients, visit the vegan nutrition vitamins at the woovve shop.

Only eat free range eggs, that’s ok isn’t it?

Free-range is certainly better than caged eggs, but virtually every commercial free-range egg farm slaughters its hens.

When it comes to animal welfare, free-range eggs are certainly better than battery cage eggs. Sometimes even a lot better. But better isn’t perfect, and free-range eggs are far from perfect.

The hatcheries that provide hens to most free-range egg farms kill their male chicks immediately upon hatching. These newly-hatched male chicks are generally ground up alive; in other cases they smother in garbage bags or dumpsters.

Even if kept in spacious conditions, free-range hens can have an unpleasant life. Like their battery cage counterparts, they’ve been bred to lay eggs at especially high rates, which in turn exposes them to all manner of health problems. And nearly all hens, both caged and free-range alike, are slaughtered before reaching the midpoint of their natural lives. That’s because egg yields decline as the hens age, and the cost of purchasing new hens is trivial when set against the increased egg output of younger birds.

Finally, since cage-free eggs can cost more than twice the price of conventional eggs, there are countless egg farmers who have a big incentive to do the bare minimum possible to label their eggs as cage-free. Unless you personally visit the farm and check the conditions out for yourself, the quality of life for the hens who produce your eggs can fall far short of your expectations.

Isn’t it expensive to be Vegan?

Once you learn the basics, your food bill can be lower than omnivores while consisting of higher-quality food.

There’s plenty of cheap yet high-quality vegan food out there, and the trick to finding it all is learning how to shop effectively. Once you learn a few basic shopping tips, it’s actually easier to eat an affordable vegan diet than one that contains animal products.

The key to being vegan on the cheap is to buy unprocessed foods in bulk. Every good natural foods store has a bulk section where you can buy everything from beans to grains to nuts to granola.

But what about produce? You’ll dramatically cut costs if you learn when different fruits and vegetables hit peak of season. In UK, that means strawberries in June/July and parsnips in winter. When you buy produce items at its peak of season, you’ll get the highest quality food at the lowest price. If you extra-motivated to minimise your produce costs, remember that most supermarkets offer outrageously good sale prices on a few produce items every week—just check the market’s weekly flyer when you walk into the store.

The one area where vegan foods consistently cost more is ready dinners. That’s largely because vegan offerings tend to be made from high quality organic ingredients, whereas conventional TV dinners are made from the worst factory-farmed dreck imaginable. If most of your food is frozen vegan dinners, you’ll undoubtedly have a higher grocery bill than a typical omnivore. But you can get around this by learning to cook. Two cookbooks are specifically geared to eating cheaply on a vegan diet: The Vegan Cookbook – Over 80 Plant-Based Recipes, and Vegan on the Go – Fast, easy, affordable – anytime, anywhere.

I could never be vegan, I love the taste of meat too much.

Just try some of the vegan meats on the market, you’ll probably be very impressed.

You’ll be amazed by how much meat alternatives have improved in the past few years. In fact, some of the vegan meats on the market today are so convincing that many die-hard meat eaters can’t even tell the difference. There are wonderfully convincing versions of hamburger, chicken, bacon, deli meats, and even shrimp and jerky.

And don’t forget falafel! These flavourful and satisfying balls don’t taste at all like meat, but stuffed into a pita with veggies and tahini dressing they’ll leave you as satisfied as any hamburger.

If the idea of going 100 percent meat-free seems too much for you, you can still make a big difference by cutting out meat products you eat but don’t particularly enjoy.

Does the bible endure eating animals?

The bible actually has contains some remarkably strong passages in favour of veganism.

When it comes to food, the bible sends a lot of mixed messages. But there are some surprisingly pro-vegan bible passages. The Old Testament’s very first reference to food, Genesis 1:29, seems a clear admonition to be vegan:

And God said: ‘Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed—to you it shall be for food.

Later in the Old Testament, when God lays down which meats are permissible (kosher or halal), you get the sense he’s doing so begrudgingly, after being nagged into it by people lacking the fortitude to eat healthier vegan foods.

The Old Testament’s first book of Daniel likewise offers a strong endorsement for vegan eating. When Daniel and his companions visit the king, Daniel asks permission for the group to eat only vegetables and water for ten days. At the end of this time they’re in clearly superior health to other guests who ate animal-derived food from the king’s table.

To be clear, there are plenty of biblical references that support meat-eating. So no matter whether you want to be vegan or you want to eat meat, you’ll find biblical references to defend your position.

Haven’t we evolved to eat meat? It’s natural!

The question isn’t whether humans have in the past relied on meat to survive, the question is whether there’s any clear benefit to eating meat today.

There’s no doubt that at many times in history, especially during periods of war and famine, the ability for people to eat meat helped ensure their survival. Likewise, there are some parts of the world today where local populations depend of fish, poultry, or livestock for protein and calories. That’s because marginal lands that won’t support agriculture can often still support the grazing of livestock, and some coastal areas have insufficient land for farming but access to substantial amounts of fish.

That said, few people living in developed countries can credibly claim that their survival depends on animal products. In terms of nutrition, there’s nothing in animal products that isn’t readily available from a well-planned vegan diet.

And if we were really intent on feeding the world, we would stop feeding a huge portion of the worldwide grain crop to livestock (which entails massive food waste), and instead grow grains for human consumption.

What would happen to all the animals if we stopped eating them?

Wildlife populations would surge, as new habitats were freed up by humankind’s smaller dietary footprint.

Domesticated cattle and chickens are poorly suited for life in the wild. So in a world that’s increasingly vegetarian, we would see their numbers decline with every passing year. Given that most of these domesticated animals suffer incredibly on factory farms, it’s probably best for everyone involved if the number of farmed animals raised worldwide falls into steep decline.

As fewer farmed animals are raised, much of the land that’s currently being used for pasture or to grow feed crops would revert to nature. So a world with fewer farmed animals would be one with far more wildlife, as well as far more quality habitat for animals currently threatened by human activities.

Of course, nobody’s predicting the extinction of modern-day cows, chickens, and turkeys. There’s little doubt that animal agriculture will exist for decades to come. With any luck, though, the number of animals raised for food will one day be counted in the millions rather than the billons.

You don’t have to kill animals to get dairy and eggs, so what’s wrong with those products?

The truth is that all commercially-raised animal products—including milk and eggs—involve killing.

When it comes to killing, the only difference from eggs and dairy products is that while meat comes from an animal who has been slaughtered, milk and eggs come from animals who will be slaughtered. Guaranteed. Every dairy cow and egg-laying hen inevitably goes to slaughter (unless they die prematurely from disease).

Milk and eggs have one major thing in common: they’re the reproductive products of young females. As cows and chickens age, their milk and egg yields decline markedly. In consequence, nearly all dairy cows and layer hens are sent to slaughter at less than half their natural life expectancy; replaced by younger animals who will also in turn be slaughtered when their yields decline.

Add to this that the America’s egg industry breeds more than 200 million replacement hens every year, and that it’s standard practice for dairy cows to be kept pregnant nine months out of every year. What happens to the males born in these systems? Male chicks are unwanted since, being of the egg-laying variety, they can’t profitably be raised for meat. These animals are generally ground up alive, or smothered within hours of hatching. Male calves produced by the dairy industry likewise have little value. Some are sold for a pittance to veal farms, while others are slaughtered immediately upon birth.

These dark realities tend to be true regardless of whether we’re talking about the worst factory farms, or the best free-range egg farms and organic dairies.

Cows need to be milked, don’t they? We’re just doing them a favour.

Once you understand how the dairy industry operates, you’ll see that cows get a raw deal.

A cow only needs to be milked because she had her calf taken away from her within a day or two of birth. The calf gets a cheap replacement formula generally made from slaughterhouse plasma and vitamins. Perhaps this strikes you as an unfair deal all the way around. And in a few months, after the cow’s milk yields peak, she’ll be re-impregnated once again to start the whole cycle all over.

All in all, it’s a terrible life for these animals, especially the cows who live on “dry lot” dairies who are confined in crowded sheds. Disease is common, especially mastitis—an infection of the udders brought on by the enormous milk yields of modern-day dairy cows.

Luckily, it’s never been easier to go dairy free. Excellent vegan versions of traditional dairy products are abundant and easy to find. Most groceries today carry soy, rice, and almond milk. And you can find excellent vegan cheese and ice cream at any natural foods store, and in better supermarkets. It’s also easy to find non-dairy yogurts, margarine, and even coffee creamer. Look for all these products in the dairy section.

Hope that helps to answer some of the questions we certainly get asked most the time!

Credit and source to vegan.com

WOOVVE is a specialised Vegan directory, we only list 100% vegetarian specialist organisations, with Vegan, Organic and Eco businesses. Everyone that lists with us must be 100% fully vegetarian.  

Woovve.com has been designed to help vegetarians, vegans and eco conscious individuals who want to shop ethically and organically. Helping you to find and support organisations who live by the same principles and to help those organisations find customers.

[8wisewebsite]

Regenerative Farming

Is farming at an “end of history” point with only 60 harvests left in depleted soils, a call to end farming and the production of food in labs?

Regenerative farming is a recognition that many farming practices have been ‘degenerative” and there is a need to farm in a way that rebuilds the “biome”.

But proponents of Regen-Ag have arrived at similar conclusions in different ways. Alan Savory attempting to reverse the spread of desert in sub-Saharan Africa, Gabe Brown in North Dakota farming depleted post-Dust Bowl soils and Jamie Blackett farming on his estate in Dumfries and Galloway!

It has been estimated that increasing the carbon content of the world’s soils by four parts per thousand we can solve the climate crisis!

So how do we go about doing that!

Also, Regen-Ag enhances biodiversity by rebuilding the eco-system from the soil up so that the food chain relies on more insects and invertebrates.

In order to maintain fertile soils farming should deviate as little as possible from natural processes in the eco-system. The most important technique is creating a virtuous cycle by mimicking what happened before man interfered. Cattle grazing on and trampling vegetation and depositing saliva, urine and dung transferred plant matter into carbon in the soil which provides plant food underground. The plants grow and absorb CO2 and this balances the methane from the cows.

Cattle are moved daily to new pastures and parasite killing plants such as chicory help avoid worm build up and chemical wormer products. This is a gamechanger because a cow will create a fifth of its body weight in insects every year from its cow pats if not chemically wormed! That’s a lot of insects for others to feed on.

So, integrating livestock into all farming systems particularly arable ones is a key part of Regen-Ag. Another is avoiding ploughing land because this interferes with the complex biology of the rhizosphere or root zone on which soils fertility depends and it releases carbon from the soil! People who eat rice for environmental reasons are kidding themselves – rice paddies are large contributors to climate change. Not ploughing has another advantage because maintaining a green covering of “soil armour” prevents erosion too.

Regen-Ag encourages keeping living roots in the soil all year round to prevent leaching of nutrients by planting catch crops after harvest to feed cattle on over the winter. Nature abhors monocultures and plant diversity in crops leads to far greater yields with a knock on help to biodiversity.

Do you want to make an impact on the World’s sustainability? Does your business have a positive sustainability business model?

The World Sustainability Collective has been founded to help you and others like you increase your impact now and grow it in the future so that as a Collective you have an equal voice in the Global Sustainability Arena! Visit us at https://worldsustainabilitycollective.com/

[8wisewebsite]

EMOTIONAL WELLNESS: HOW CAN WE UNDERSTAND AND MANAGE OUR EMOTIONS?

Emotional Wellness is one of the core elements in our 8Wise approach, and makes up half of our ‘foundation dimension’. As suggested by the name, the dimension creates a solid foundation for your mental health and wellbeing, allowing you to manage whatever life throws at you.

What are emotions? Well, they are energy that need to burn off. That’s why suppressing your emotions is very unhealthy and can eventually lead to an uncontrollable explosion of emotions.

Our emotions impact every part of our life. They affect our ability to do everyday activities, our relationships, mental health. They drive our thought patterns, behaviours, mood, decisions… That’s why it’s so important to develop Emotional Wellness.

Emotional Wellness allows us to adapt to stress, life changes and challenging periods. It means that we are able to manage every emotion that we experience.

So, how does Emotional Wellness connect to the other seven wellness elements? Let’s take a look…

- Our emotions create a physical response in our body. For example, if you are feeling anxious your heart rate will increase, and you might start to sweat. (Physical Wellness)

- They affect our how we see and think about ourselves (Spiritual Wellness)

- They can make us feel like we can’t do things, and trap us in our comfort zone (Intellectual Wellness)

- They can make us feel a certain way in specific places, e.g. overwhelmed or scared (Environmental Wellness)

- Emotions affect our relationships with others (Social Wellness)

- They affect our performance and satisfaction at work (Occupational Wellness)

- And they even affect how we spend our money. For example if you are sad you may buy a bottle of wine or go shopping as a coping mechanism

How can we control our emotions? Let’s look at something called the CBT Triangle (CBT standing for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy).

In the triangle there are three things: Thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. They are all connected. Your thoughts create feelings, feelings create behaviours, and those behaviours reinforce thoughts.

In order to develop Emotional Wellness, we need to break this cycle by mastering the following:

- Emotional regulation

- Emotional transparency

- Combatting negative thinking

What do we mean by ‘emotional regulation’?

It’s simply balancing your emotional and rational mindset, so you can use your ‘wise’ mindset effectively. A rational mind uses facts, figures and logic and doesn’t consider emotions. On the other hand, an emotional mind is guided by feelings. It has poor logic and reasoning, is often stressed or anxious and makes reactive decisions.

The ideal mindset is a balance between the two so that we can experience mindful processes.

What is ‘emotional transparency’?

As humans, we experience so many emotions. It’s important to know exactly what emotion we’re experiencing so that we can identify the trigger and then problem solve it. It’s helpful to sit regularly with yourself and think about how you are feeling. Really try and pinpoint your emotions.

Once you have done that, think about what has happened to cause that emotion? When your emotions become tangible, you are able to understand what you’re feeling, know why and think about how you can change it, or prepare yourself for similar experiences in the future.

How can you combat a negative thought cycle?

Our thought cycles are made up of: Thoughts, feelings, behaviours. So which of these can we change? We can alter our thinking with time and practice, by challenging it.

Let’s look at an example…  

Thought: Social events make me anxious so I can’t go to the party tomorrow

Feeling: Rapid heart rate, breathlessness, sweating

Behaviour: Avoid the situation and don’t go to the party

This behaviour then reinforces the thought that you can’t go to social events.

We need to challenge the thought to change the cycle into a positive one. Once we change the initial thinking stage, the rest will naturally change with it.

In this situation:

Thought: I’m looking forward to the party, I will have fun

Feeling: Relaxed and willing to do things

Behaviour: Go to the party and have a good time

If you’re thinking that achieving Emotional Wellness seems difficult and that it will take a long time – don’t worry! Because it’s connected to everything we do, it naturally improves when you start to look at the other 8Wise elements.

For example, if you start exercising more or making sure you’re drinking eight glasses of water a day, you’re automatically going to start feeling better emotionally.

Nothing happens overnight, and wellness is a journey. Make sure you’re showing up for yourself every day!

For more information about Emotional Wellness and our other wellness elements, be sure to check out our online store which includes our book and wellness journals.

https://8wise.co.uk way is meant to help you to manage potential turbulences, triggers, and traumas, so that you can continue to work towards a state of optimal mental health. It helped me, it has helped my clients, and I passionately believe that it can help you too.

[8wisewebsite]

How can we reduce air pollution?

Its Clean Air Day!

Half of the UK public have now heard of Clean Air Day, with eight out of ten (82%) people believing that tackling air pollution should be a priority and six in ten (64%) saying that they now choose to walk or cycle instead of using a car for short journeys, its having an impact

According to DEFRA statistics the UK has seen an improvement with pollution levels down from 2010 – NO2 -44% SO2 -70% PM2.5 -18%

Household combustion devices, motor vehicles, industrial facilities and forest fires are common sources of air pollution. Pollutants of major public health concern include particulate matter, carbon monoxide, ozone, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide

Outdoor and indoor air pollution cause respiratory and other diseases and are important sources of morbidity and mortality.

WHO data show that almost all of the global population (99%) breathe air that exceeds WHO guideline limits and contains high levels of pollutants

Air quality is closely linked to the earth’s climate and ecosystems. Many of the drivers of air pollution are also sources of greenhouse gas emissions

Policies to reduce air pollution offer a win-win strategy for both climate and health, lowering the burden of disease attributable to air pollution, as well as contributing to the near- and long-term mitigation of climate change.

Ambient air pollution in both cities and rural areas was estimated to cause 4.2 million premature deaths worldwide in 2016.

Some 91% of those premature deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries, and the greatest number in the WHO South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions.

There are many examples of successful policies that reduce air pollution:

for industry: clean technologies that reduce industrial smokestack emissions; improved management of waste, capture of methane gas emitted from waste sites

for energy: ensuring access to affordable clean household energy for cooking, heating and lighting

for transport: shifting to clean modes of power generation; walking and cycling networks in cities, shifting to cleaner low-emissions vehicles and fuels

for urban planning: improving the energy efficiency of buildings

for power generation: increased use of low-emissions fuels and renewable combustion-free power sources

for municipal and agricultural waste management: strategies for waste reduction, waste separation, recycling and reuse or waste reprocessing

Indoor smoke is a serious health risk for some 2.6 billion people who cook and heat their homes with biomass fuels and coal. 3.8 million premature deaths were attributable to household air pollution in 2016

Almost all of the burden was in low-middle-income countries. Household air pollution is also a major source of outdoor air pollution in both urban and rural areas, accounting for up to 50% in some regions of the world.

What will you do today to reduce air pollution?

Do you want to make an impact on the World’s sustainability? Does your business have a positive sustainability business model?

The World Sustainability Collective has been founded to help you and others like you increase your impact now and grow it in the future so that as a Collective you have an equal voice in the Global Sustainability Arena! Visit us at https://worldsustainabilitycollective.com/

[8wisewebsite]

SPIRITUAL WELLNESS: WHY OUR VALUES AND BELIEFS ARE IMPORTANT

Our Spiritual Wellness is one of the core elements of our 8Wise™ approach, because it is an intrinsic factor of our overall wellbeing. A very important part of having good Spiritual Wellness is identifying and living by our values and beliefs – which are our most basic and fundamental principles.

Values and beliefs help to guide our decisions and behaviour, and help determine what we prioritise, ensuring that we chose the path that is going to fulfil us and make us happy. What’s important to you? When you ask yourself this question, it may be helpful to categorise things, for example, relationships, personal life, career…

Let’s take a look at some examples. First in relationships, and this doesn’t necessarily mean romantic relationships, but friendships too. You may value honesty, a good sense of humour, and compassion. Knowing what you value in others can help you surround yourself with the right kind of people for you. In your career you may value a role that enables you to be creative, or to work as part of a larger team. In your personal life you may believe in being as green and sustainable as possible.

Our values help us create the life that we want. They also enable us to develop and grow as individuals, and give our lives a greater purpose and sense of self, which are really important to our mental health. When we live a life that is aligned with our values and beliefs, we’re understandably happier, more confident and more fulfilled. In fact, research shows that even just thinking about our values can lower our stress levels.

On the flip side, when our behaviour and way of living doesn’t align with our values and beliefs, we can have low self-esteem, feel stressed, find it hard to make decisions, and even experience anxiety or depression. Having a clear understanding of what we value and believe in enables us to live a life that we are happy with. As you can see, it also links to other core elements of our 8Wise approach such as Social Wellness, Occupational Wellness, and Environmental Wellness. If you would like more information about Spiritual Wellness and how you can strengthen it, you can read our book 8Wise Ways To A Healthier Happier Mind.

https://8wise.co.uk way is meant to help you to manage potential turbulences, triggers, and traumas, so that you can continue to work towards a state of optimal mental health. It helped me, it has helped my clients, and I passionately believe that it can help you too.

[8wisewebsite]

Plastics are bad for the environment – but are the alternatives really better?

Gut feeling says plastics are bad for the environment – but are the alternatives really better?

The images of plastic in the oceans, animals trapped in plastic or with plastic in their stomachs, and microplastics accumulating in living beings

Policy has started to address plastic through regulation but is gut feeling confirmed by life cycle assessments? Are we on the right track?

Reality is of course more complex and life cycle assessments show replacing plastics often leads to significantly higher CO2 emissions. For metals and glass, considerably more energy is required in production and in subsequent transport

Plastics frequently score points against natural materials. Compare a polyethylene shopping bag, which is now banned in Europe, with a cotton shopping bag: the cotton shopping bag would have to be used 100 to 200 times before it could equal the environmental balance of a polyethylene shopping bag used once. Plus, the cotton bag is never to be washed or the impacts of the washing process must be added on top

The reason for cotton’s poor environmental performance are the agrochemicals used in cultivation and the complex production process for the yarn, fabric and bag

In France, plastic film is now to be banned from protecting vegetables but this has the danger of higher CO2 emissions due to increased food losses and reduction in quality of the vegetables

Fruit and veg are living plants, constantly interacting in complex ways, some of which degrade the product. In supermarkets, they are photosynthesising, making new compounds, breaking down others and emitting growth regulators to the air that affect the behaviour of neighbouring crops on the shelves

Understanding these incredibly sophisticated interactions and how to control them has led to ingenious inventions including wrapping, that have dramatically extended the shelf life of crops. Waste has been slashed and nutritional quality and flavour improved.

A recent study looked at cucumber production and found that plastic packaging was responsible for only 1 per cent of the total environmental impact of this food, yet each cucumber thrown away because it spoiled has the net environmental impact of 93 plastic wraps

Of course, this is not to say that plastic films are useful in every case – but when they are beneficial for quality and CO2 footprint, they should stay! If we want to achieve a sustainable future, we need differentiated science-based guidelines and political regulations, not decisions that primarily satisfy the gut feeling of consumers and politicians!

If the plastics are produced from renewable carbon – bio-based, CO2-based or recycled – instead of the mainly used fossil carbon, their balance looks even better because the carbon is kept in a circular economy

If we’re going to use plastics, let’s use the right ones!

Do you agree we should be more specific about sustainable solutions?

Do you want to make an impact on the World’s sustainability? Does your business have a positive sustainability business model?

The World Sustainability Collective has been founded to help you and others like you increase your impact now and grow it in the future so that as a Collective you have an equal voice in the Global Sustainability Arena! Visit us at https://worldsustainabilitycollective.com/

[8wisewebsite]

THE RISING COST OF LIVING

It’s been all over the news for the last few months, and it affects millions of people in Britain. We’re of course talking about the dramatic rise in living costs that we’re experiencing currently.

According to the Office for National Statistics, two thirds of adults in Britain have said that their cost of living has increased in the last month. This is due mainly to the rise in energy prices. The wholesale price of gas in January 2022 was almost four times higher than in early 2021. Now millions of people are having to choose between ‘heating or eating’. What’s more, this month the energy price cap is set to increase even further still, rising by a whopping 54%. This increase is expected to add £693 to the average annual household bill.

Money is one of the most common causes of stress, and this news is of course causing stress and anxiety for a lot of people. As you know, Financial Wellness is one of our core elements within our 8Wise Model as it’s intrinsic to our overall health and wellbeing. Not only is it essential in itself, poor Financial Wellness can also negatively impact other wellness elements. For example, money worries can cause you to feel anxious or even depressed (Emotional Wellness), this can lead us then to feel rubbish physically and become more susceptible to colds and infections (Physical Wellness).

So how can you protect your Financial Wellness during this time?

Firstly, it’s important to keep up to date with the news and what it means for you. What changes are coming up? What do all these financial terms mean? Is there any support available that you qualify for? Having a good understanding of the situation makes it easier for you to create a plan and make decisions that are best for you.

It’s also worth making sure that you’re getting the best deals available on everything. That includes your mobile phone, internet, car insurance, utility bills, gym membership etc. When you’ve made sure that you’re not paying more for things than you need to, it’s a good idea to sit down and set yourself a budget. What are your monthly outgoings and incomings? How much expendable income are you left with each month? How much do you want to be saving?

It’s also important to identify what money means to you. Perhaps your favourite thing to do is try different restaurants – money is a means for you to do this. Or maybe money is important to you because it means you can donate to the causes close to your heart. Understanding your own unique relationship with money is a really important step for budgeting, and for developing Financial Wellness.

Finally, it’s important to look after yourself! Go for a walk, get 8-9 hours of sleep, fuel your body with healthy foods, drink water, talk to friends… It’s easy to neglect self care when you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, but it’s one of the most important things you can do to prevent mental health issues from arising down the line.

For more advice on finances, we really recommend Martin Lewis’s website www.moneysavingexpert.com

https://8wise.co.uk way is meant to help you to manage potential turbulences, triggers, and traumas, so that you can continue to work towards a state of optimal mental health. It helped me, it has helped my clients, and I passionately believe that it can help you too.

[8wisewebsite]

Can CO2 chemistry replace fossil-fuel based plastics?

We hear a lot about plant-based feedstock being used to replace fossil fuel-based chemicals that are ubiquitous throughout our modern lifestyle

BUT there is not enough land to grow a small percentage of the chemicals needed?

We need to think about this problem differently!

Carbon dioxide chemistry – just like biobased polymer production – is not about copying fossil polymers, but about developing better polymers, which can be processed on plastics industry’s existing devices

Researchers are working on a series of new polymers with exciting and extraordinary properties!

The production amounts are minute as yet, and the catalysts for these reactions to produce the new polymers are still being fine tuned

The first CO2 plastics on the market are polypropylene and polyethylene carbonate, and CO2 urethanes

Polypropylene carbonate (PPC), containing 43% CO2 by weight, seems to be the first important polymer in this new series. Its production now includes polymerization of conventional propylene oxide, from naphtha, with CO2.

Later (when artificial photosynthesis will have made a breakthrough), propylene oxide will be synthesized from CO2 itself, through methanol as an intermediate. By that time, the polymer will consist almost entirely of CO2, and will be 100% based on bio or recycled materials

It is a highly thermo stable polymer, very elastic, transparent, biodegradable, non-toxic, containing a ‘memory’. It can be foamed and processed into films and is easily mixed with other biopolymers like polylactic acid (PLA) and polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA)

in doing so, the plastic becomes less brittle, approaching an engineering plastic in its properties, but retaining its biodegradability

PPC is an absolute breakthrough, and the ultimate answer to polypropylene a widely used plastic in many applications today!

Polyethylene carbonate (PEC), another new CO2 plastic, is produced by polymerization of ethylene oxide with carbon dioxide

It has a very low oxygen permeability and is therefore very well suited for food packaging. In the USA, it is Food Contact Approved (AFC)

Polyurethanes, produced from polyols and CO2, are another new class of carbon dioxide polymers in development. They will initially be marketed as insulation foam and materials for mattress production

Do you think there is a better use for land than producing biopolymer substitutes when we can absorb and use CO2?

Do you want to make an impact on the World’s sustainability? Does your business have a positive sustainability business model?

The World Sustainability Collective has been founded to help you and others like you increase your impact now and grow it in the future so that as a Collective you have an equal voice in the Global Sustainability Arena! Visit us at https://worldsustainabilitycollective.com/

[8wisewebsite]

FOOD IS THE KEY

Let thy food be thy medicine – a term we often come across but do we really take note of what it is telling us?

Over recent years and especially since the pandemic there has been a spike in many areas of mental and emotional health, but have we ever noticed a correlation between the food we eat and our mental, physical AND emotional health?

The food a lot of us mainly consume has changed somewhat over the last few decades and quite a lot of this food could really be seen as more of a product. What we see on the supermarket shelves a lot of the time bares no resemblance to the raw ingredients, to a point that now a lot of our food is produced to look a certain way, and give us a certain experience rather than focus on what food is actually there to do, nourish, build and prolong our health.

This couldn’t be more true when we see the rise in mental health issues, physical health issues (auto -immune conditions, diabetes, cancer) and emotional eating issues (stress and comfort eating). The food we put in definitely has a huge affect on what comes out, which leads me onto exactly that, our gut health.

Over 80% of our hormones are produced in the gut and when you think our gut starts from food coming into our mouth to food leaving us via waste, it’s no wonder it plays such a big part in our overall health. You may have heard the term leaky gut, this is when our gut lining is perforated due to varying factors – our stress levels, the food we eat, the medication we take and the environment we live can all play a part. When our gut is leaking this means that particles of food and waste (eugh) leak into our system and cause huge inflammation.

Inflammation in our bodies is when we have those issues that are physical, mental or emotional. So it is key to our overall health to keep our gut healthy and the food we eat is a key part. There is a huge link between our gut and brain so it makes sense that keeping our gut healthy, in turn, keeps our brain healthy.

Our gut health is really key to so many things in our body as our hormones are what keep our bodies in a constant state, so without them we really couldn’t function. So there is really is a lot of truth of food being your medicine, maybe something to think of the next time you’re ordering take out or have that urge for that extra piece of cake, is it really what your body needs or just something your tuned into wanting?

https://8wise.co.uk way is meant to help you to manage potential turbulences, triggers, and traumas, so that you can continue to work towards a state of optimal mental health. It helped me, it has helped my clients, and I passionately believe that it can help you too.

[8wisewebsite]

Good education is one of the basic human rights

Good education is one of the basic human rights that governments around the world owe to their citizens. It’s the focus of the UN’s 4th SDG

Africa has one of the fastest growing populations in the world with an annual population growth rate of nearly 3 per cent over the last 20 years. More than 60 percent of the continent’s population is below 25 years old and the continent’s birth rates remain one of the highest in the world. By 2050, Africa’s current population of one billion would have more than doubled to 2.3 billion

This trend clearly shows an explosive demand (now and in the future) for education. And with the current situation of many government-owned educational institutions, it will be impossible to provide basic (and higher) education to Africans without the support of private businesses and organisations

Many Africans (young and not-so-young) strongly appreciate and understand the value of education and its power to lift them out of poverty

Both Africa’s rich and poor are investing huge amounts of money in their personal and children’s education

In sub-Saharan Africa school fees consume more than a quarter of a poor family’s income, covering not only tuition, but also indirect fees (such as membership of parent-teacher associations, community contributions, textbooks and uniforms).

However, due to the poor reputation of public schools, more parents are enrolling their children in paid private schools even where government schools offer free education.

Low-cost private schools, like the Omega chain of Schools in Ghana and Bridge International Academies in Kenya, are spreading across the continent in response to the huge and fast growing demand for quality education.

Omega Schools is a private primary school chain targeted at the poor in Ghana. The school runs a low-cost primary education model where parents can pay their children’s school fees on a daily basis (‘pay as you learn’).

With a daily school fee of $0.75 and more than 15,000 pupils spread across several of its schools in Ghana, Omega is making money from educating a large number of poor children at a very low price.

The Omega school model is a very practical and lucrative model that can be adopted across Africa.

This is the same business model used by Bridge International Academies in Kenya which charges a $5 school fee per month

Do you agree that business has a key role in education provision?

Do you want to make an impact on the World’s sustainability? Does your business have a positive sustainability business model?

The World Sustainability Collective has been founded to help you and others like you increase your impact now and grow it in the future so that as a Collective you have an equal voice in the Global Sustainability Arena! Visit us at https://worldsustainabilitycollective.com/