elloriac

I think that this is hugely variable - depends on what you are doing and what the state of the house is at the moment. There are lots of articles online on the topic weighing which improvements are best and which won't bring any extra... Before we moved to East Dulwich, we were considering having a new kitchen put into our old place. Got a few quotes, then decided to have a few estate agents in to see how much they thought it was worth spending/what it might add to the property value. Now of course, they do have a vested interest in trying to persuade you to sell now. We had a good number round though and they agreed that in the bracket of similar properties, it was wasn't worth it, as we wouldn't be able to get much more than what our place was currently valued at because of its size. Of course, if we wanted to hang onto it for another 5 years or so, then we may have been able to recoup the costs. (but as you can guess, we decided to put the place on the market instead, and moved here!)

Apologies for this post as this is not going to be of any interest to anyone, bar myself, but I did try and send a PM but haven't had a response so... Please James, what is the brand of soya milk that doesn't come in tetra paks? I've been to two health food stores and Sainsbury's and haven't seen one - the closest was the granovita brand, IIRC, doesn't claim to be in a tetrapak, but still looks like a waxed drink carton & therefore has to be recycled the same way... Thank you.

And most farmed fish are fed wild fish as food!

Unfortunately, there are no companies that provide milk alternative drinks (soya, oat, hemp, rice, etc etc) in plastic bottles. Tetrapaks or nothing. Would love to have the choice.

Hi James, we don't seem to have any choice about whether we get Tetrapaks or not, and their use seems to be growing and growing at supermarkets. Tetrapak claim to be a carbon neutral company so I assume that they are offsetting the shipping costs to Sweden. Though we can have a whole separate argument about the usefulness of offsetting... I would argue that the 14kg per week is a reflection of people having to make an effort to recycle them, rather than lack of demand for recycling facilities. Ideally we wouldn't have tetrapaks at all...

Tetrapaks can be recycled at Sainsburys on Dog Kennel Hill and I noticed that there are now tetrapak bins in the car park at Peckham Rye Park. Of course, it would be ideal that Southwark would collect them at the door, but there are places that we can take them...

I found a bluetooth earpiece/headset thing in Peckham Rye Park yesterday morning. If it's yours, send me a PM...

I would imagine that bonniebird thought the park manager might remove the dead bodies before they rot and fester away. Also, those dead fish might be an indication of low oxygen levels in the pond - though that's normally only seen in warm weather, which we haven't been lucky enough to have yet! The parks people can normally pump oxygen into the water if this is the case. (this happened where I used to live and the park mgmt posted a notice telling people to contact them if dead or distressed fish were seen)

Just a note that we've had leaflets through our door that quoted a charity number, which turned out to be where I work but had nothing to do with my workplace - the company was just quoting our number without our authorisation. So if you want to be sure that you are giving to a particular charity, it's probably safest to contact them directly and find out if they are collecting in your area.