Now that April (aka Earth Month), is in full swing, it’s the perfect time to get moving with your eco-fabulous resolutions.
But the prospect of where to begin can be daunting, especially when you factor in the myths floating around about reasons not to shift your behavior towards that which is more eco-conscious. So enjoy Earth Month to its fullest and don’t be fooled by these six eco-myths.
Myth #1: Organic and recycled products are hard to find.
While this may have been true several years ago, even big-box stores like Walmart and Target are stocking up on organic and recycled goods.
You don’t even have to visit a food co-op or natural market to get your fix of sustainable goodies, as almost every grocery store now has an extensive organic selection.
What’s more, Web sites such as Green America’s National Green Pages have listings for everything from sustainably produced clothing to socially responsible mutual funds.
Myth #2: Too many choices make it difficult to get educated about sustainability.
Certification is not just for organic anymore. There are several organizations that offer screenings and certifications for environmentally and socially responsible producers.
In addition to Green America’s Seal of Approval, which requires companies to undergo a vigorous screening process, there is the Forest Stewardship Council, which reviews the business practice of paper and wood producers. TransFair USA certifies that products like coffee are produced under fair trade conditions, and of course, the USDA has stringent regulations on products that are carry the organic label.
In order to stay up on the latest news and understand the latest green lingo, follow a few of your favorite eco-conscious Web sites. Also, remember that a quick web search can answer almost any of your questions about getting the most out of your greening efforts.
For more information on what all of those regulations and labels actually mean check out our Top 10 Green Labels Guide.
Myth #3: Recycling and reduction is inconvenient.
As our society begins to view trash as a potential resource rather than a nuisance, more and more municipalities are instituting curbside pickup options so residents can recycle everything from metal to food scraps.
Even if your municipality doesn’t accept a recyclable item it in its regular curbside pickup (think televisions, cell phones or batteries), you can easily locate a local drop-off center. Check out Earth911 to find out what to do with those tough-to-recycle items.
As for reduction, your efforts can range from the simple – taking reusable bags to the grocery store, using a refillable water bottle, buying items with little or no packaging or taking shorter showers – to the complex – buying nothing for a week, shopping exclusively at secondhand stores or crafting new items out of old ones. For further inspiration, check out the No Impact Man or The Story of Stuff.
Myth #4: One person can’t make a difference.
Does it really matter if you don’t recycle or if you throw your food waste away instead of composting it? Yes. Much of what is in our landfills could have been reborn as a new product had it been reused. According to the EPA, 63.9 percent of what goes into landfills is paper, plastic, metal and glass.
An additional 44.8 million tons of food scraps and yard waste resides there as well, and the rotting organic matter in landfills turns into methane, one of the most potent global warming gasses.
With natural resources dwindling and climate change looming, it is more important than ever to utilize and support strong recycling infrastructures, while at the same time looking for creative ways to transform our trash into new stuff.
Myth #5: Going green is too expensive.
Putting aside the obvious joy of reducing your overall footprint, many steps that you take towards this goal will also help you to save money.
One person really can make a difference. Americans buy an estimated 29.8 billion plastic water bottles every year. Nearly eight out of every 10 bottles will end up in a landfill. Do your part and make that one less bottle by recycling. Photo: Amanda Wills, Earth911.com
Reducing the number of times per week you drive, turning down the heat or air conditioning a few degrees and reducing the amount of water you use can all add up to big savings on your bills.
On the culinary front, if you decide to compost your food waste and grow your own food, your grocery bill for that organic meal will drop significantly too.
Also, it’s important to take a whole-systems view when analyzing the cost of products you buy.
While many eco-friendly products are more expensive up front, consider that your purchase is supporting sustainable and oftentimes your local economy.
Plus, given all of the money you are going to save with your reduction efforts, your budget should still come out in the black!
Need more proof with some hard numbers? Check out our 8 Ways to Go Green and Save Hundreds.
Myth #6: Recycled and all-natural products are lower quality.
It is true that certain materials, such as paper, do gradually downcycle; however, as paper nears the end of its life (after five to seven cycles), pulp that is too small to be used ends up being filtered out of the machines and becomes waste.
When plastic downcycles, it is simply used to make lower-quality products. Today’s Tupperware might be tomorrow’s traffic cone. In the case of other materials, there is no loss of quality. Glass melts down to glass, and metal to metal (so long as the metal is pure). In these instances, there is virtually no difference between recycled or “virgin” products, such as bottles or sheet metal.
When it comes to food, the proof lies in the taste. Anyone who has eaten a giant, tasteless tomato will tell you that making something bigger isn’t the same as making it better.
Natural farming methods, aside from keeping food free of pesticide and chemical fertilizer residues, often result in a smaller, but more flavorful harvest. Products made through natural processes have the added health benefit of reducing air and water pollution (byproducts of chemical manufacturing), and everyone can benefit from a better quality of life as a result.
Showing posts with label Reduce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reduce. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Don’t underestimate the value of hot water
Don’t underestimate the value of hot water
Electric water boilers are rapidly growing in popularity. Primarily because these nifty appliances prove that green gadgets can be better not only to the environment and to your wallet, but also to your lifestyle.
Heating water with an electric water boiler is faster and more energy efficient than using your electric or gas stove. This is because the heating coil is suspended in the water you’re trying to heat. So, there isn’t a loss of energy into the surrounding air. Also because the heating coil is submerged, the coils energy is extracted into the water more completely, whereas an electric stove’s coil has to cool down after removing the water.
Because an electric water boiler is more efficient, it is also faster. Making a pot of tea takes nearly half the time. If you are cooking with boiling water, you can heat the water in your electric boiler before adding it to the stove. An electric boiler is also a great solution for a dorm room or office break room that lacks a stove, which the millions who depend on ramen noodles can appreciate.
If you need water which is only warm, it is safer to use cold tap water and then heat it up in your electric water boiler. This is because warm water in your plumbing is a perfect environment for bacteria. While this bacteria is okay for showering and washing your hands (because you are also using soap) it is bad for young and old people as well as house pets and plants.
Electric Water Boilers are sold anywhere you can find other household appliances and start at about $10. Some more advanced models even allow you to control the exact temperature, which any baker out there will love
Electric water boilers are rapidly growing in popularity. Primarily because these nifty appliances prove that green gadgets can be better not only to the environment and to your wallet, but also to your lifestyle.
Heating water with an electric water boiler is faster and more energy efficient than using your electric or gas stove. This is because the heating coil is suspended in the water you’re trying to heat. So, there isn’t a loss of energy into the surrounding air. Also because the heating coil is submerged, the coils energy is extracted into the water more completely, whereas an electric stove’s coil has to cool down after removing the water.
Because an electric water boiler is more efficient, it is also faster. Making a pot of tea takes nearly half the time. If you are cooking with boiling water, you can heat the water in your electric boiler before adding it to the stove. An electric boiler is also a great solution for a dorm room or office break room that lacks a stove, which the millions who depend on ramen noodles can appreciate.
If you need water which is only warm, it is safer to use cold tap water and then heat it up in your electric water boiler. This is because warm water in your plumbing is a perfect environment for bacteria. While this bacteria is okay for showering and washing your hands (because you are also using soap) it is bad for young and old people as well as house pets and plants.
Electric Water Boilers are sold anywhere you can find other household appliances and start at about $10. Some more advanced models even allow you to control the exact temperature, which any baker out there will love
Friday, April 2, 2010
What NOT to Put in the Bin
Ever wondered if that cryptic greasy paper plate could go in your recycling bin? Or would it really be a big deal if you threw in just one plastic bag?
It may seem simple to determine what doesn’t go in a recycling bin because of the labels, but unfortunately, it’s not that straightforward.
So, where do you begin to find out of the specific materials that shouldn’t go in a recycling bin? Listed below are some materials that you can pretty much guarantee should be kept out of your community’s recycling bins (unless of course the bin or the program specifically says that you can drop it in).
Shredded paper
When you shred paper with a paper shredder, you dramatically decrease the value of the paper because you shorten the length of the paper fiber, which is the source of value of the paper, according Eric Lombardi, the executive director of Eco-Cycle, one of the largest nonprofit recyclers in the U.S.
Nice white computer paper has a long, strong fiber, and every time you recycle that paper, the fiber gets shorter. If done properly, that computer paper can be recycled six to eight times.
However, if you shred that same crisp computer paper, you’re lucky if it can even be recycled once. Oftentimes, paper mills won’t accept shredded paper because of the difficulties it creates during the sorting process, says Lombardi.
“It gets mixed with everyone’s paper that day, and you put it in a giant pile at the recycling facility, there’s no way somebody is going to put ‘humpty-dumpty’ back together again,” says Lombardi.
If you have a document that is semi-confidential, rip it by hand three or four times, then throw it into the recycling bin. For documents that absolutely require shredding, locate a source in your area that specifically handles shredded paper for recycling. Some curbside programs may even accept your shredded paper if it is bagged separately.
Brightly colored paper
Believe it or not, bright paper can stop a whole batch of paper from being recycled. The idea behind this one is simple, explains Dan Baril, recycling program manager at the University of Colorado at Boulder, “It’s like the red sock in the white load sort-of-syndrome.” If you need to buy colored paper, avoid really rich colors, and opt for pastels. Paper mills can usually handle the lighter tones.
Read more
The Best DIY Paper Projects
http://earth911.com/news/2010/02/22/the-best-diy-paper-projects/
Juice boxes and milk cartons
This is a good opportunity to check with your municipality for the best recycling options. Some cities will accept milk and juice cartons for recycling with the paperboard stream. However, this is not true everywhere.
And while Eco-Cycle will accept milk and juice cartons, even with the plastic drinking-spot left in, they do not recycle milk and juice cartons found in non-refrigerated aisles used for packaging products such as soup and soy, rice or almond milk.
Last year, Tropicana and Waste Management launched a national initiative to increase the rate of juice and milk carton recycling. The initiative kicked off the long-term goal to increase beverage carton recycling nationwide, a program being promoted through the Carton Council.
Read more
Milk and Juice Carton Recycling Made Easy:
http://earth911.com/news/2009/04/10/milk-and-juice-carton-recycling-made-easy/
Paper coffee cups
Currently, paper coffee cups (also called hot cups) are accepted for recycling at only few communities in the U.S. The thin polyethylene plastic coating on the cups that helps prevent liquid leaking has made it difficult for most processing services to recycle the cups.
With about 58 billion paper cups used each year in the U.S., the best thing you can do is simply reduce your usage. Bring along a reusable mug or ask your barista if they offer mugs for serving if you’re staying in the store to sip your drink.
“At the end of the day, we wouldn’t have a problem with paper hot cups if everyone was going to the coffee shop with their reusable mug,” says Wendell Simonson, marketing-director of Eco-Products, Inc. a Boulder, Colo., based company that sells single-use products that can generally be recycled or composted.
Secondly, if your community offers composting, look for cups made with plant-based coating, which allows the cups to be composted.
Starbucks has a pilot program that is working to prove that hot cups, even with the plastic coating, can be integrated into the cardboard recycling stream.
Read more
Starbucks Pilots Coffee Cup Recycling Program
Pizza boxes, soiled paper plates, napkins
Many people assume that pizza boxes are recyclable. In fact, most boxes have recycling symbols on them and are traditionally made from corrugated cardboard. They are, in and of themselves, recyclable.
Pizza boxes that are tarnished with food, or any paper product that is stained with grease or food, are not recyclable – unless you remove the tainted portions. Photo: Flickr/massdistraction
However, what makes parts of them non-recyclable is the hot, tasty treat that comes inside them, specifically, the grease and cheese from pizza that soil the cardboard.
Food is one of the worst contaminants in the paper recycling process. Grease and oil are not as big of a problem for plastic, metal and glass, as those materials are recycled using a heat process.
But when paper products are recycled, they are mixed with water and turned into a slurry. Since we all know water and oil don’t mix, the issue is clear.
Grease from pizza boxes causes oil to form at the top of the slurry, and paper fibers cannot separate from oils during the pulping process.
Essentially, this contaminant causes the entire batch to be ruined. This is the reason that other food related items are non-recyclable (used paper plates, used napkins, used paper towels, etc).
Read more
The Pizza Box Mystery
Plastic bags and film
When left to the machines to sort the recyclable materials, “The one that causes the most heartburn is plastic bags,” says Lombardi. Plastic bags wrap themselves around the equipment, and as a result, the whole plant may have to shut down – expending time, energy and money. Repairmen often are hired to come in with knives to cut the plastic bags out of the guts of the machinery, Lombardi explains.
But this doesn’t mean you have to toss your bags into the trash. The good news is that most grocery stores throughout the U.S. now offer plastic bag recycling. In 2007, more than 830 million pounds of plastic bags and film were recycled nationwide, up 27 percent from 2005. Plastic bags can be made into dozens of new and useful products as well.
Read more
360: Recycling Plastic Bags
The wrong plastic resin
Plastics #1 and #2, made from polyethylene terephthalate (PETE) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE), are the most commonly accepted plastics for recycling. However, just because a plastic is made from HDPE and PETE does not mean that it will be accepted by your community’s recycling program. Instead of just focusing on the plastic’s number, also look for the specific details provided by your community’s program, such as, “narrow-necked bottles” and “rigid plastics.”
Even with a recycling program that accepts plastics #1-7, it’s often the shape of the plastic product that determines whether or not it can be recycled in that specific program. The most important thing to remember is to check your program and pay attention to the type of plastic you’re recycling.
Read more
The Ultimate Plastic Breakdown
Bottle caps
Polypropylene (PP), or plastic #5, often makes up the plastic caps on bottles. So, what’s the big deal if the bottle is a #1 and the cap is a #5? They’re both plastic right? It’s not that simple.
It all comes down to the melting point, which has a difference of nearly 160 degrees Fahrenheit between the two. If a cap gets mixed in with bottles, the entire batch may be ruined because there is un-melted plastic in the mix.
A general rule of thumb is to remove all of the plastic caps and lids from your plastic bottles, jugs and tubs before recycling them. To check if your city accepts caps for recycling call or visit the Public Works or Department of Sanitation section of its Web site.
If you’re in an area where plastic cap recycling is not available, seek out retailers that accept them. Also, a few of companies are taking the lead when it comes to tackling the issue of recycling #5 plastics, such as Aveda.
Read more
360: Bottle Caps
Broken glass
Broken glass is recyclable, but it might not be reprocessed into new glass bottles. This is because when glass breaks, it can often be a challenge to separate it by color given the tiny pieces.
This glass can be used as an additive in fiberglass, tile and flooring, pavement or even turned back into sand to stop beach depletion. However, just because glass is crushed during recycling doesn’t mean you should do this prior to putting it in your bin. This could injure waste haulers or people sorting material at the MRF.
Read more
Your Top Glass Questions:
http://earth911.com/news/2010/03/08/your-top-glass-questions-answered/
What causes contamination
Knowing what goes in the bin is critical to ensuring the success of the recycling process. That’s because recycling actually happens when materials that would otherwise become waste are turned into valuable resources.
Putting the wrong materials into the recycling bin may ruin the entire batch. The material in a recycling container is taken to a material recovery facility (MRF), where the material is separated and processed for selling to companies that buy recycled materials for making products. The higher the quality of the recycled material, the more the companies will want to buy it, and the higher the price they’ll pay for it.
However, when you put materials into the recycling bin that shouldn’t be there, you may (at the very least) be slowing down the entire recycling process. Here’s what can happen when you put the wrong things in the recycling bin:
* Machines that handle the sorting of the materials can become damaged, which means that precious time, energy and money will be needed to repair the machines.
* If no equipment is available to do the job, more material in the bin that shouldn’t be there makes the job far more difficult and inefficient for workers sorting the material by hand.
* Also, it may inhibit the materials in the bin that should be there from turning into the highest quality materials possible, or it could even send everything in the bin straight to the landfill. It may be cliché, but the expression, “one bad apple could spoil the bunch” pretty much sums up the situation.
It may seem simple to determine what doesn’t go in a recycling bin because of the labels, but unfortunately, it’s not that straightforward.
So, where do you begin to find out of the specific materials that shouldn’t go in a recycling bin? Listed below are some materials that you can pretty much guarantee should be kept out of your community’s recycling bins (unless of course the bin or the program specifically says that you can drop it in).
Shredded paper
When you shred paper with a paper shredder, you dramatically decrease the value of the paper because you shorten the length of the paper fiber, which is the source of value of the paper, according Eric Lombardi, the executive director of Eco-Cycle, one of the largest nonprofit recyclers in the U.S.
Nice white computer paper has a long, strong fiber, and every time you recycle that paper, the fiber gets shorter. If done properly, that computer paper can be recycled six to eight times.
However, if you shred that same crisp computer paper, you’re lucky if it can even be recycled once. Oftentimes, paper mills won’t accept shredded paper because of the difficulties it creates during the sorting process, says Lombardi.
“It gets mixed with everyone’s paper that day, and you put it in a giant pile at the recycling facility, there’s no way somebody is going to put ‘humpty-dumpty’ back together again,” says Lombardi.
If you have a document that is semi-confidential, rip it by hand three or four times, then throw it into the recycling bin. For documents that absolutely require shredding, locate a source in your area that specifically handles shredded paper for recycling. Some curbside programs may even accept your shredded paper if it is bagged separately.
Brightly colored paper
Believe it or not, bright paper can stop a whole batch of paper from being recycled. The idea behind this one is simple, explains Dan Baril, recycling program manager at the University of Colorado at Boulder, “It’s like the red sock in the white load sort-of-syndrome.” If you need to buy colored paper, avoid really rich colors, and opt for pastels. Paper mills can usually handle the lighter tones.
Read more
The Best DIY Paper Projects
http://earth911.com/news/2010/02/22/the-best-diy-paper-projects/
Juice boxes and milk cartons
This is a good opportunity to check with your municipality for the best recycling options. Some cities will accept milk and juice cartons for recycling with the paperboard stream. However, this is not true everywhere.
And while Eco-Cycle will accept milk and juice cartons, even with the plastic drinking-spot left in, they do not recycle milk and juice cartons found in non-refrigerated aisles used for packaging products such as soup and soy, rice or almond milk.
Last year, Tropicana and Waste Management launched a national initiative to increase the rate of juice and milk carton recycling. The initiative kicked off the long-term goal to increase beverage carton recycling nationwide, a program being promoted through the Carton Council.
Read more
Milk and Juice Carton Recycling Made Easy:
http://earth911.com/news/2009/04/10/milk-and-juice-carton-recycling-made-easy/
Paper coffee cups
Currently, paper coffee cups (also called hot cups) are accepted for recycling at only few communities in the U.S. The thin polyethylene plastic coating on the cups that helps prevent liquid leaking has made it difficult for most processing services to recycle the cups.
With about 58 billion paper cups used each year in the U.S., the best thing you can do is simply reduce your usage. Bring along a reusable mug or ask your barista if they offer mugs for serving if you’re staying in the store to sip your drink.
“At the end of the day, we wouldn’t have a problem with paper hot cups if everyone was going to the coffee shop with their reusable mug,” says Wendell Simonson, marketing-director of Eco-Products, Inc. a Boulder, Colo., based company that sells single-use products that can generally be recycled or composted.
Secondly, if your community offers composting, look for cups made with plant-based coating, which allows the cups to be composted.
Starbucks has a pilot program that is working to prove that hot cups, even with the plastic coating, can be integrated into the cardboard recycling stream.
Read more
Starbucks Pilots Coffee Cup Recycling Program
Pizza boxes, soiled paper plates, napkins
Many people assume that pizza boxes are recyclable. In fact, most boxes have recycling symbols on them and are traditionally made from corrugated cardboard. They are, in and of themselves, recyclable.
Pizza boxes that are tarnished with food, or any paper product that is stained with grease or food, are not recyclable – unless you remove the tainted portions. Photo: Flickr/massdistraction
However, what makes parts of them non-recyclable is the hot, tasty treat that comes inside them, specifically, the grease and cheese from pizza that soil the cardboard.
Food is one of the worst contaminants in the paper recycling process. Grease and oil are not as big of a problem for plastic, metal and glass, as those materials are recycled using a heat process.
But when paper products are recycled, they are mixed with water and turned into a slurry. Since we all know water and oil don’t mix, the issue is clear.
Grease from pizza boxes causes oil to form at the top of the slurry, and paper fibers cannot separate from oils during the pulping process.
Essentially, this contaminant causes the entire batch to be ruined. This is the reason that other food related items are non-recyclable (used paper plates, used napkins, used paper towels, etc).
Read more
The Pizza Box Mystery
Plastic bags and film
When left to the machines to sort the recyclable materials, “The one that causes the most heartburn is plastic bags,” says Lombardi. Plastic bags wrap themselves around the equipment, and as a result, the whole plant may have to shut down – expending time, energy and money. Repairmen often are hired to come in with knives to cut the plastic bags out of the guts of the machinery, Lombardi explains.
But this doesn’t mean you have to toss your bags into the trash. The good news is that most grocery stores throughout the U.S. now offer plastic bag recycling. In 2007, more than 830 million pounds of plastic bags and film were recycled nationwide, up 27 percent from 2005. Plastic bags can be made into dozens of new and useful products as well.
Read more
360: Recycling Plastic Bags
The wrong plastic resin
Plastics #1 and #2, made from polyethylene terephthalate (PETE) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE), are the most commonly accepted plastics for recycling. However, just because a plastic is made from HDPE and PETE does not mean that it will be accepted by your community’s recycling program. Instead of just focusing on the plastic’s number, also look for the specific details provided by your community’s program, such as, “narrow-necked bottles” and “rigid plastics.”
Even with a recycling program that accepts plastics #1-7, it’s often the shape of the plastic product that determines whether or not it can be recycled in that specific program. The most important thing to remember is to check your program and pay attention to the type of plastic you’re recycling.
Read more
The Ultimate Plastic Breakdown
Bottle caps
Polypropylene (PP), or plastic #5, often makes up the plastic caps on bottles. So, what’s the big deal if the bottle is a #1 and the cap is a #5? They’re both plastic right? It’s not that simple.
It all comes down to the melting point, which has a difference of nearly 160 degrees Fahrenheit between the two. If a cap gets mixed in with bottles, the entire batch may be ruined because there is un-melted plastic in the mix.
A general rule of thumb is to remove all of the plastic caps and lids from your plastic bottles, jugs and tubs before recycling them. To check if your city accepts caps for recycling call or visit the Public Works or Department of Sanitation section of its Web site.
If you’re in an area where plastic cap recycling is not available, seek out retailers that accept them. Also, a few of companies are taking the lead when it comes to tackling the issue of recycling #5 plastics, such as Aveda.
Read more
360: Bottle Caps
Broken glass
Broken glass is recyclable, but it might not be reprocessed into new glass bottles. This is because when glass breaks, it can often be a challenge to separate it by color given the tiny pieces.
This glass can be used as an additive in fiberglass, tile and flooring, pavement or even turned back into sand to stop beach depletion. However, just because glass is crushed during recycling doesn’t mean you should do this prior to putting it in your bin. This could injure waste haulers or people sorting material at the MRF.
Read more
Your Top Glass Questions:
http://earth911.com/news/2010/03/08/your-top-glass-questions-answered/
What causes contamination
Knowing what goes in the bin is critical to ensuring the success of the recycling process. That’s because recycling actually happens when materials that would otherwise become waste are turned into valuable resources.
Putting the wrong materials into the recycling bin may ruin the entire batch. The material in a recycling container is taken to a material recovery facility (MRF), where the material is separated and processed for selling to companies that buy recycled materials for making products. The higher the quality of the recycled material, the more the companies will want to buy it, and the higher the price they’ll pay for it.
However, when you put materials into the recycling bin that shouldn’t be there, you may (at the very least) be slowing down the entire recycling process. Here’s what can happen when you put the wrong things in the recycling bin:
* Machines that handle the sorting of the materials can become damaged, which means that precious time, energy and money will be needed to repair the machines.
* If no equipment is available to do the job, more material in the bin that shouldn’t be there makes the job far more difficult and inefficient for workers sorting the material by hand.
* Also, it may inhibit the materials in the bin that should be there from turning into the highest quality materials possible, or it could even send everything in the bin straight to the landfill. It may be cliché, but the expression, “one bad apple could spoil the bunch” pretty much sums up the situation.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Not Done Yet !!!
We do not have the fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement that millions around the world hoped the world leaders gathered here would deliver.
Not Done YetDespite overwhelming scientific evidence, and massive popular support from citizens in countries North and South, world leaders chose national political self-interest over the fate of future generations and failed to resolve the issues blocking the road towards a just outcome. While this deal cannot be judged as a success, it is impossible to be without hope.
This year, from a strong, but small seed of climate campaigning, a movement touching millions of people in hundreds of countries around the world has grown. Over the last two weeks while leaders were dithering an additional 5 million people joined the campaign, resulting in a total of 15 million voices calling for a fair, ambitious and legally binding deal.
More than 250 partner organisations have come together to form an unprecedented alliance under the TckTckTck banner – including development, human rights, environment, religious and youth groups, trade unions and scout groups. Over three days of global action, these partners have mobilized unprecedented numbers of people campaigning for urgent action on climate change. In Copenhagen on December 12, one hundred thousand people marched in a powerful manifestation of this unity.
And, when naysayers, fearmongers, and the business-as-usual-crowd try to usurp the issue, they will be met by a surging sea of people from all around the globe and all walks of life unified in their demand for a real deal.
The global climate movement - more diverse than ever before - stands united in the face of tonight's disappointing news. This weekend we are mounting an unprecedented response, with joint messaging appearing on the global public websites of our partners, to ensure world leaders know we are unimpressed with their lack of real progress and failure to deliver a real deal.
We have come so far in a short space of time. Millions around the world look to the future and see hope, justice, and opportunity. It is up to each of us to make our voices heard and to get the real deal that the world needs.
The world’s leaders still have a chance to get it right. They must realize that we expect, and will not accept, anything less.
They’re not done yet. Neither are we.
The following organisations have taken the extraordinary step of adding this consistent response to take over the home pages of their global websites.
http://www.panda.org/
http://oxfam.org/
http://greenpeace.org/
http://amnesty.org/
http://avaaz.org/
http://www.oikoumene.org/
http://www.conservation.org/
http://www.christianaid.org.uk/
http://www.consumersinternational.org/
http://www.1sky.org/
http://www.civicus.org/
http://www.iclei.org/index.php?id=10325
http://www.wcrp.org/
http://www.oneworld.net/
http://www.350.org/
Not Done YetDespite overwhelming scientific evidence, and massive popular support from citizens in countries North and South, world leaders chose national political self-interest over the fate of future generations and failed to resolve the issues blocking the road towards a just outcome. While this deal cannot be judged as a success, it is impossible to be without hope.
This year, from a strong, but small seed of climate campaigning, a movement touching millions of people in hundreds of countries around the world has grown. Over the last two weeks while leaders were dithering an additional 5 million people joined the campaign, resulting in a total of 15 million voices calling for a fair, ambitious and legally binding deal.
More than 250 partner organisations have come together to form an unprecedented alliance under the TckTckTck banner – including development, human rights, environment, religious and youth groups, trade unions and scout groups. Over three days of global action, these partners have mobilized unprecedented numbers of people campaigning for urgent action on climate change. In Copenhagen on December 12, one hundred thousand people marched in a powerful manifestation of this unity.
And, when naysayers, fearmongers, and the business-as-usual-crowd try to usurp the issue, they will be met by a surging sea of people from all around the globe and all walks of life unified in their demand for a real deal.
The global climate movement - more diverse than ever before - stands united in the face of tonight's disappointing news. This weekend we are mounting an unprecedented response, with joint messaging appearing on the global public websites of our partners, to ensure world leaders know we are unimpressed with their lack of real progress and failure to deliver a real deal.
We have come so far in a short space of time. Millions around the world look to the future and see hope, justice, and opportunity. It is up to each of us to make our voices heard and to get the real deal that the world needs.
The world’s leaders still have a chance to get it right. They must realize that we expect, and will not accept, anything less.
They’re not done yet. Neither are we.
The following organisations have taken the extraordinary step of adding this consistent response to take over the home pages of their global websites.
http://www.panda.org/
http://oxfam.org/
http://greenpeace.org/
http://amnesty.org/
http://avaaz.org/
http://www.oikoumene.org/
http://www.conservation.org/
http://www.christianaid.org.uk/
http://www.consumersinternational.org/
http://www.1sky.org/
http://www.civicus.org/
http://www.iclei.org/index.php?id=10325
http://www.wcrp.org/
http://www.oneworld.net/
http://www.350.org/
Monday, December 21, 2009
Tomorrow is “Buy No Food in Plastic” day!
You are invited to take up the challenge for just one day, tomorrow
the following ideas for participation:
* Look at how your favourite foods are packaged. (Do you really need your sandwich wrapped if you are going to eat it right away?)
* If you do purchase plastic-wrapped food; reuse or recycle the packaging.
* Use washable knives, forks and coffee cups, rather than disposable items
* Use your own reusable bags
* Purchase plastic-free-food where possible
How to cut your paper footprint?
Each of us throws away, on average, a quarter of a ton of paper every year. Vicki Hill meets a woman on a mission to slash our waste and save the forests
First came two great bales of flattened cardboard then a tower of 1,500 catalogues, magazines, reports and printouts, topped off with a tumble of 120 toilet rolls, two bin bags full of junk mail and a thick layer of brown paper bags. Finally, Mandy Haggith tipped hundreds of receipts and bus tickets over the 5ft heap. Then she stood back and waited.
Villagers trickled into the hall one by one, smiles at the spectacle quickly fading as they realised that Mandy's mountain represented the 250kg of paper they, personally, had thrown away over the last year. Much of it barely used, most of it made by sending an ancient tree from the most threatened areas of the world crashing to the forest floor.
"People were really shocked," says Haggith, 41, who gathered the six loaded wheelbarrows full of paper from local businesses at her Highland home of Lochinver. "Paper comes in and out of our lives so fast we barely notice it. Put it in a pile and then get people to imagine it at 20 tons, which is the amount they will use in a lifetime, and it gets frightening. Especially when they realise that apart from a few books, this is also the amount they will end up throwing away."
No one likes to think of trees being felled, but many of us have a cosy image in our heads that it all comes from recycling or "sustainable" woodlands growing in neat rows, perhaps somewhere in Sweden. It's a myth. Globally, 70 per cent of the 335 million tons of paper the world uses each year comes from natural, un-farmed sources. In Canada, the UK's biggest source of pulp, 90 per cent of its output comes directly from its ancient forests.
"Paper production is revolting and it's lethal," says Haggith. "Leaving aside the destruction of the forests, the poisoning of the rivers from the processing of the wood, the decimation of local communities and wildlife ... the co2 that results is making a massive contribution to global warming. Exposed peat lands and felled trees give off huge amounts of methane and carbon and then you have further CO2 release when it all ends up in landfill at the end.
"The Bali climate change conference recognised deforestation as the source of around 20 per cent of all emissions: that's three times the amount resulting from global aviation. And for what? Flyers advertising double glazing, fashion magazines we skim through, a bundle of paper napkins in a café we leave behind on the table."
Haggith's paper mountain and a slideshow of what she uncovered on her trip, had an immediate effect on her village. A Recycling Group was set up with local parents, shop owners and a ranger. After lobbying the Highlands council and a letter campaign to the local paper, the village got its first paper bank – "which is always crammed". They are now stepping up the pressure for cardboard recycling – one local shop has been given a bailing machine and flattens and keeps all their old boxes until the village can find a trader willing to buy the waste cardboard: "Or we will come up with some other way of re-using it locally such as shredding it for animal bedding or insulation," says Haggith. "The idea is to be able to sell or reuse every bit of all the community's cardboard."
One of the first visitors to Mandy's Mountain was the local school and now, led by enthusiastic teachers, they have set up paper recycling bins all over school. There are very few people in the village who are not involved in some way. "Telling people what is really happening is the first step, then it's vital that you show them what they can do about it," says Haggith. "That's giving people back control and they can become very motivated very quickly when that happens." Almost everyone has vowed to cut down on their paper usage.
Haggith, a veteran forest campaigner and the co-ordinator of the 21-member European Environmental Paper Network (EEPN), began the local action on her return from the trip in 2006 which took her round most of the great forests of the world for her new book: Paper Trails. It tracks the devastation left behind by the production of the 12.5 million tons of paper gobbled up by the UK every year.
Although about 42 per cent of that figure comes from recycled sources, we generally only reprocess paper once (it can be used up to 10 times). Haggith, an Oxford graduate with a PhD in artificial intelligence, began fighting for the forests by developing software for organisations such as the UN, to link people involved in forest protection across the world. She set up "Worldforests" with her partner, land rights campaigner Bill Ritchie, working with scientists and activists to bring governments and communities together. By the time of her trip she realised the worldwide consumption of paper had increased fourfold in her lifetime.
"I had visited many forests in the early days of campaigning and I wanted to see if anything had changed. In many cases it was far worse," she says. In Indonesia, she describes how she stood at the edge of a ruined forest in the beating Sumatran sun, weeping with rage. Before her stretched thousands of acres of scorched, lifeless land. Beside her, Pak Jafri the tribal leader of the nearby village of Kuntu, pointed to the area where his people had picked herbs, to the hills where they had gathered honey. All before the government licensed the forest to a multinational paper company, which slashed it down to plant non-native acacias: fast growing, toxic, rampant and perfect for producing office copier paper for the UK.
"I was speechless," says Haggith. "Every last living thing had rotted away except for these plastic-leafed acacias rising like Triffids out of a dried up moonscape. And I was embarrassed. As a British person using copier paper, I was the root cause of all this destruction."
The story was the same throughout Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand, but there was a brief respite for Haggith in, of all places, China. Although using vast amounts of timber for construction, their paper record is inspiring. Much of it comes from recycled sources – this is where most of the UK's recyclable paper is sent. But more horror was waiting over the border in Russia. Having traced UK copier paper to Sumatra, Mandy had also visited the great paper mills of Finland, which supply most of our ready-made paper products. While there was some good news – the Finns have tight pollution controls, for example – despite being covered in artificial paper-producing pine forests, Finland, Europe's biggest manufacturer and consumer of paper, is running out of wood and is now importing it on a massive scale from Russia. "Forget the Amazon," says Haggith. "Russia and Canada, between them, hold 50 per cent of our vital forests. But where the Amazon can regenerate very quickly, these northern boreal forests take 200 years to re-grow."
After a good start in Karelia, where hard-line campaigning has managed to protect some of Russia's primeval forests, Haggith visited the ancient shores of Lake Baikal, which contains 25 per cent of the world's fresh water. It is also the home of the Baikalsk pulp mill. "It stank," says Haggith. "This is partly because it has been pouring lethal chlorine compounds into the lake for 40 years. The lake hosts the only freshwater seals in the world and 75 per cent of its species are only found here, all of which will now have absorbed, irrevocably, the mill's carcinogenic effluents.
"But it was Canada that depressed me the most," she says. "Canada is incredibly wealthy, yet 90 per cent of its logging is from old growth forests and its pollution record is horrific. It has some of the worst cases of paper mill pollution I found. Native Americans living near the mills have nerve and skin diseases and soaring rates of cancers from the bleaches used on the pulp."
Canada is also relentless in its pursuit of profit. "Ten years ago I was one of the blockaders fighting to stop the building of logging roads into the temperate rainforest of Clayoquat Sound on Vancouver Island," she says. "It's a vital forest of giant red cedars and spruce and home to bears and wolves." After years of campaigning, a moratorium was finally set to halt the felling. "To my horror, on my return, I discovered this had been arranged to last only 10 years. I had to watch as the logging trucks drove past me and back into the forest. It was chilling."
Haggith is appalled by the paper industry, but years of experience have taught her that focusing on shreds of hope is the only way forward. She highlights the reforms sweeping the book publishing industry after Canadian publisher, Cindy Connor, insisted that the Harry Potter books were printed on recycled paper. This has had a direct impact on companies such as Penguin and HarperCollins who are now changing their paper sourcing policy in the UK.
Another success has been the UK's newspaper industry which voluntarily agreed to raise its recycled paper content to 70 per cent. "This led to a UK paper mill converting to processing recycled paper," says Haggith. "It's an invaluable example to try to pressure the government to set up more." And ironically, it was through conversations with the paper barons that Haggith began to realise where the real answer lies. Presenting to corporate chiefs at the Paper World conference in Frankfurt at the start of her trip, she was expecting opposition and instead found common ground. "Many of them genuinely want to clean up their act," she says. "But they are waiting for the demand to come from their customers. I now know that I don't need to go to Borneo or Ecuador or Russia any more to find the people who can save the forests. The answer lies right here, it's us.
"We have enormous power. By simply making sure we only buy loo roll from recycled sources, we will have an immediate effect on what's happening. Then we need to influence the business consumers who make the decisions for us – such as the producers of junk mail. That starts by simply saying: no."
Last month the EEPN launched "Shrink", an interactive website to help individuals and businesses make a pledge to cut their paper use and take action on a wider scale. And although she has had to stand before so many of the scarred and bleeding forests of the world, Haggith still has unshakeable hope for the future. "Its a wonderful feeling to fight back," she says. "Not just for us but people in the paper industry, too. When Cindy Connor placed her recycled paper order, she said it felt great that she was no longer signing a death warrant for the trees. The forests are, quite literally, our future. If we realise we have the power to save them, there's just a chance we'll act now and stop chucking them in the bin."
How to save the trees
* Do not pick up paper napkins in cafés.
* Ask yourself: do I need to print this? If so, use both sides of the paper.
* Sign up to the Mail Preference Service: www.mpsonline.org.uk
* Make sure any paper you buy (toilet rolls through to writing paper) comes from recycled sources.
* Re-use paper bags or compost receipts and torn-up bank statements
* Cut down on and share magazines, return unwanted catalogues to the sender.
* Re-use envelopes and make your own cards.
* Read small print carefully and never tick the "more information" box.
* Ask your boss to buy recycled paper for your workplace.
Pulp facts
* Deforestation caused by paper production is thought to be a bigger cause of global warming than transport.
* Each person in the UK gets through 250kg of paper a year. The worst offenders are the Finns at 333kg. The average Somalian uses 20g.
* Much of the UK's paper is barely used and a large proportion ends up in landfill. Just 42 per cent is recycled – but as there are so few recycling mills in the country, most of this ends up being sent abroad.
* It is a myth that most paper comes from sustainable sources. Seventy per cent of it comes from natural forests.
* The UK produces virtually none of its own pulp and imports 80 per cent of its pulp.
* Around 75 per cent of the paper for magazines is production wastage and is never read.
* Advertisers know that 99.7 per cent of recipients of junk mail throw it away unread. They think it's worth it for the 0.3 per cent who might.
First came two great bales of flattened cardboard then a tower of 1,500 catalogues, magazines, reports and printouts, topped off with a tumble of 120 toilet rolls, two bin bags full of junk mail and a thick layer of brown paper bags. Finally, Mandy Haggith tipped hundreds of receipts and bus tickets over the 5ft heap. Then she stood back and waited.
Villagers trickled into the hall one by one, smiles at the spectacle quickly fading as they realised that Mandy's mountain represented the 250kg of paper they, personally, had thrown away over the last year. Much of it barely used, most of it made by sending an ancient tree from the most threatened areas of the world crashing to the forest floor.
"People were really shocked," says Haggith, 41, who gathered the six loaded wheelbarrows full of paper from local businesses at her Highland home of Lochinver. "Paper comes in and out of our lives so fast we barely notice it. Put it in a pile and then get people to imagine it at 20 tons, which is the amount they will use in a lifetime, and it gets frightening. Especially when they realise that apart from a few books, this is also the amount they will end up throwing away."
No one likes to think of trees being felled, but many of us have a cosy image in our heads that it all comes from recycling or "sustainable" woodlands growing in neat rows, perhaps somewhere in Sweden. It's a myth. Globally, 70 per cent of the 335 million tons of paper the world uses each year comes from natural, un-farmed sources. In Canada, the UK's biggest source of pulp, 90 per cent of its output comes directly from its ancient forests.
"Paper production is revolting and it's lethal," says Haggith. "Leaving aside the destruction of the forests, the poisoning of the rivers from the processing of the wood, the decimation of local communities and wildlife ... the co2 that results is making a massive contribution to global warming. Exposed peat lands and felled trees give off huge amounts of methane and carbon and then you have further CO2 release when it all ends up in landfill at the end.
"The Bali climate change conference recognised deforestation as the source of around 20 per cent of all emissions: that's three times the amount resulting from global aviation. And for what? Flyers advertising double glazing, fashion magazines we skim through, a bundle of paper napkins in a café we leave behind on the table."
Haggith's paper mountain and a slideshow of what she uncovered on her trip, had an immediate effect on her village. A Recycling Group was set up with local parents, shop owners and a ranger. After lobbying the Highlands council and a letter campaign to the local paper, the village got its first paper bank – "which is always crammed". They are now stepping up the pressure for cardboard recycling – one local shop has been given a bailing machine and flattens and keeps all their old boxes until the village can find a trader willing to buy the waste cardboard: "Or we will come up with some other way of re-using it locally such as shredding it for animal bedding or insulation," says Haggith. "The idea is to be able to sell or reuse every bit of all the community's cardboard."
One of the first visitors to Mandy's Mountain was the local school and now, led by enthusiastic teachers, they have set up paper recycling bins all over school. There are very few people in the village who are not involved in some way. "Telling people what is really happening is the first step, then it's vital that you show them what they can do about it," says Haggith. "That's giving people back control and they can become very motivated very quickly when that happens." Almost everyone has vowed to cut down on their paper usage.
Haggith, a veteran forest campaigner and the co-ordinator of the 21-member European Environmental Paper Network (EEPN), began the local action on her return from the trip in 2006 which took her round most of the great forests of the world for her new book: Paper Trails. It tracks the devastation left behind by the production of the 12.5 million tons of paper gobbled up by the UK every year.
Although about 42 per cent of that figure comes from recycled sources, we generally only reprocess paper once (it can be used up to 10 times). Haggith, an Oxford graduate with a PhD in artificial intelligence, began fighting for the forests by developing software for organisations such as the UN, to link people involved in forest protection across the world. She set up "Worldforests" with her partner, land rights campaigner Bill Ritchie, working with scientists and activists to bring governments and communities together. By the time of her trip she realised the worldwide consumption of paper had increased fourfold in her lifetime.
"I had visited many forests in the early days of campaigning and I wanted to see if anything had changed. In many cases it was far worse," she says. In Indonesia, she describes how she stood at the edge of a ruined forest in the beating Sumatran sun, weeping with rage. Before her stretched thousands of acres of scorched, lifeless land. Beside her, Pak Jafri the tribal leader of the nearby village of Kuntu, pointed to the area where his people had picked herbs, to the hills where they had gathered honey. All before the government licensed the forest to a multinational paper company, which slashed it down to plant non-native acacias: fast growing, toxic, rampant and perfect for producing office copier paper for the UK.
"I was speechless," says Haggith. "Every last living thing had rotted away except for these plastic-leafed acacias rising like Triffids out of a dried up moonscape. And I was embarrassed. As a British person using copier paper, I was the root cause of all this destruction."
The story was the same throughout Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand, but there was a brief respite for Haggith in, of all places, China. Although using vast amounts of timber for construction, their paper record is inspiring. Much of it comes from recycled sources – this is where most of the UK's recyclable paper is sent. But more horror was waiting over the border in Russia. Having traced UK copier paper to Sumatra, Mandy had also visited the great paper mills of Finland, which supply most of our ready-made paper products. While there was some good news – the Finns have tight pollution controls, for example – despite being covered in artificial paper-producing pine forests, Finland, Europe's biggest manufacturer and consumer of paper, is running out of wood and is now importing it on a massive scale from Russia. "Forget the Amazon," says Haggith. "Russia and Canada, between them, hold 50 per cent of our vital forests. But where the Amazon can regenerate very quickly, these northern boreal forests take 200 years to re-grow."
After a good start in Karelia, where hard-line campaigning has managed to protect some of Russia's primeval forests, Haggith visited the ancient shores of Lake Baikal, which contains 25 per cent of the world's fresh water. It is also the home of the Baikalsk pulp mill. "It stank," says Haggith. "This is partly because it has been pouring lethal chlorine compounds into the lake for 40 years. The lake hosts the only freshwater seals in the world and 75 per cent of its species are only found here, all of which will now have absorbed, irrevocably, the mill's carcinogenic effluents.
"But it was Canada that depressed me the most," she says. "Canada is incredibly wealthy, yet 90 per cent of its logging is from old growth forests and its pollution record is horrific. It has some of the worst cases of paper mill pollution I found. Native Americans living near the mills have nerve and skin diseases and soaring rates of cancers from the bleaches used on the pulp."
Canada is also relentless in its pursuit of profit. "Ten years ago I was one of the blockaders fighting to stop the building of logging roads into the temperate rainforest of Clayoquat Sound on Vancouver Island," she says. "It's a vital forest of giant red cedars and spruce and home to bears and wolves." After years of campaigning, a moratorium was finally set to halt the felling. "To my horror, on my return, I discovered this had been arranged to last only 10 years. I had to watch as the logging trucks drove past me and back into the forest. It was chilling."
Haggith is appalled by the paper industry, but years of experience have taught her that focusing on shreds of hope is the only way forward. She highlights the reforms sweeping the book publishing industry after Canadian publisher, Cindy Connor, insisted that the Harry Potter books were printed on recycled paper. This has had a direct impact on companies such as Penguin and HarperCollins who are now changing their paper sourcing policy in the UK.
Another success has been the UK's newspaper industry which voluntarily agreed to raise its recycled paper content to 70 per cent. "This led to a UK paper mill converting to processing recycled paper," says Haggith. "It's an invaluable example to try to pressure the government to set up more." And ironically, it was through conversations with the paper barons that Haggith began to realise where the real answer lies. Presenting to corporate chiefs at the Paper World conference in Frankfurt at the start of her trip, she was expecting opposition and instead found common ground. "Many of them genuinely want to clean up their act," she says. "But they are waiting for the demand to come from their customers. I now know that I don't need to go to Borneo or Ecuador or Russia any more to find the people who can save the forests. The answer lies right here, it's us.
"We have enormous power. By simply making sure we only buy loo roll from recycled sources, we will have an immediate effect on what's happening. Then we need to influence the business consumers who make the decisions for us – such as the producers of junk mail. That starts by simply saying: no."
Last month the EEPN launched "Shrink", an interactive website to help individuals and businesses make a pledge to cut their paper use and take action on a wider scale. And although she has had to stand before so many of the scarred and bleeding forests of the world, Haggith still has unshakeable hope for the future. "Its a wonderful feeling to fight back," she says. "Not just for us but people in the paper industry, too. When Cindy Connor placed her recycled paper order, she said it felt great that she was no longer signing a death warrant for the trees. The forests are, quite literally, our future. If we realise we have the power to save them, there's just a chance we'll act now and stop chucking them in the bin."
How to save the trees
* Do not pick up paper napkins in cafés.
* Ask yourself: do I need to print this? If so, use both sides of the paper.
* Sign up to the Mail Preference Service: www.mpsonline.org.uk
* Make sure any paper you buy (toilet rolls through to writing paper) comes from recycled sources.
* Re-use paper bags or compost receipts and torn-up bank statements
* Cut down on and share magazines, return unwanted catalogues to the sender.
* Re-use envelopes and make your own cards.
* Read small print carefully and never tick the "more information" box.
* Ask your boss to buy recycled paper for your workplace.
Pulp facts
* Deforestation caused by paper production is thought to be a bigger cause of global warming than transport.
* Each person in the UK gets through 250kg of paper a year. The worst offenders are the Finns at 333kg. The average Somalian uses 20g.
* Much of the UK's paper is barely used and a large proportion ends up in landfill. Just 42 per cent is recycled – but as there are so few recycling mills in the country, most of this ends up being sent abroad.
* It is a myth that most paper comes from sustainable sources. Seventy per cent of it comes from natural forests.
* The UK produces virtually none of its own pulp and imports 80 per cent of its pulp.
* Around 75 per cent of the paper for magazines is production wastage and is never read.
* Advertisers know that 99.7 per cent of recipients of junk mail throw it away unread. They think it's worth it for the 0.3 per cent who might.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Reduce paper usage with paper free bills
According to research done by Mandy Haggith; author of “Paper Trails“, the average person throws away 250kg of paper per year.
It is made up of junk mail, toilet rolls, magazines, receipts and other paper goods.
One simple thing you can do to reduce your paper footprint is to say no to paper bills. If you already pay by direct debit or standing order, then making the switch is simple.
Many companies will offer you a monetary incentive for this such as reduced fees, so it’s a win-win.
Most banks, electricity suppliers and telephone companies support paperless billing, so why not contact yours and see if you can go paper free?
It is made up of junk mail, toilet rolls, magazines, receipts and other paper goods.
One simple thing you can do to reduce your paper footprint is to say no to paper bills. If you already pay by direct debit or standing order, then making the switch is simple.
Many companies will offer you a monetary incentive for this such as reduced fees, so it’s a win-win.
Most banks, electricity suppliers and telephone companies support paperless billing, so why not contact yours and see if you can go paper free?
Thursday, December 17, 2009
The importance of buying locally
We’re all aware of the amount of packaging we can be left with when purchasing food. Have you ever stopped to think how this could be reduced by buying locally?
Today’s guest article is from Rebekah Sachno who provides us with ‘food for thought’ about our buying habits. By changing just one thing we could dramatically reduce the amount of stuff we send to landfill.
Rebekah lives in rural County Down and is a SAHM to her two year old daughter. Her hobbies are baking, reading and going for walks by the sea.
Behind my house, there is a wheat field. About 18-20 acres in size, much of it has been reclaimed from the nearby bog, of which only remnants now remain.
In the last few days I’ve watched the wheat being harvested, separated and poured into massive combine harvesters. We’ve collected the leftover chaff to use as bedding for our chickens over winter.
The sad thing is, those acres and acres of rustling golden stalks were destined for one thing only: animal fodder.
It’s easy to forget, in this age of urbanisation and service economies, that the UK as a country was largely self sufficient until relatively recently. It still could be, if the still plentiful agricultural land was used to its full capacity.
Step into your local greengrocers and within a few minutes you can easily find a number of fruit and veg, which could easily be grown in the UK, yet, which hail from the farthest corners of the globe- Brazil, Kenya, New Zealand, Israel.
Apples from New Zealand or apples from Armagh?
It can be easy, if one is in a hurry, to quickly grab the product that has the least amount of packaging. But take a minute to really look at the label on the crate. Not locally grown? Think of the air miles it’s taken, the oil, petrol, or diesel burnt, in order for that fruit or vegetable to reach your shopping basket.
To stop waste before it has even started, buying locally is a must. It is important not only on an individual level, but on a nationwide scale also. Imagine if farmers, as a condition of receiving subsidies, had to put a certain percentage of land aside, to grow food, which would then be distributed and sold within, say, a radius of 30 miles at the most. With the need for imports cut drastically, we’d be making big reductions on pollution levels and CO2 emissions as well.
Hidden waste, the sort we sometimes forget about, the fuel used in the boats or planes shipping our food, the plastic crates and wrappings discarded as the produce moves from train to lorry, sometimes seems out of the control of the individual. After all, you can’t put it in your recycling bin. However we do have a choice, and we as consumers do have influence. In fact, as a group we hold the biggest influence of all, and with the right focus we can use our power to make changes. Environmental awareness is not only just a lifestyle choice, it is a political issue.
Create a debate. Ask the manager of your local Tesco’s why he doesn’t stock eggs or honey from a local smallholder, instead of selling overseas and battery farmed brands. Grow your own food if you have the space- even if you only have a patio, a few big pots can provide a whole season’s worth of tomatoes or soup veg. Ask why, if the government can nationalise the banks, why it can’t nationalise the land creating food security at a time of disappearing oil reserves- surely this should be a priority for any government
By recycling we deal with the after effects of consumption, but by carefully choosing what we purchase and consume in the first place, we can nip the entire cycle in the bud.
Today’s guest article is from Rebekah Sachno who provides us with ‘food for thought’ about our buying habits. By changing just one thing we could dramatically reduce the amount of stuff we send to landfill.
Rebekah lives in rural County Down and is a SAHM to her two year old daughter. Her hobbies are baking, reading and going for walks by the sea.
Behind my house, there is a wheat field. About 18-20 acres in size, much of it has been reclaimed from the nearby bog, of which only remnants now remain.
In the last few days I’ve watched the wheat being harvested, separated and poured into massive combine harvesters. We’ve collected the leftover chaff to use as bedding for our chickens over winter.
The sad thing is, those acres and acres of rustling golden stalks were destined for one thing only: animal fodder.
It’s easy to forget, in this age of urbanisation and service economies, that the UK as a country was largely self sufficient until relatively recently. It still could be, if the still plentiful agricultural land was used to its full capacity.
Step into your local greengrocers and within a few minutes you can easily find a number of fruit and veg, which could easily be grown in the UK, yet, which hail from the farthest corners of the globe- Brazil, Kenya, New Zealand, Israel.
Apples from New Zealand or apples from Armagh?
It can be easy, if one is in a hurry, to quickly grab the product that has the least amount of packaging. But take a minute to really look at the label on the crate. Not locally grown? Think of the air miles it’s taken, the oil, petrol, or diesel burnt, in order for that fruit or vegetable to reach your shopping basket.
To stop waste before it has even started, buying locally is a must. It is important not only on an individual level, but on a nationwide scale also. Imagine if farmers, as a condition of receiving subsidies, had to put a certain percentage of land aside, to grow food, which would then be distributed and sold within, say, a radius of 30 miles at the most. With the need for imports cut drastically, we’d be making big reductions on pollution levels and CO2 emissions as well.
Hidden waste, the sort we sometimes forget about, the fuel used in the boats or planes shipping our food, the plastic crates and wrappings discarded as the produce moves from train to lorry, sometimes seems out of the control of the individual. After all, you can’t put it in your recycling bin. However we do have a choice, and we as consumers do have influence. In fact, as a group we hold the biggest influence of all, and with the right focus we can use our power to make changes. Environmental awareness is not only just a lifestyle choice, it is a political issue.
Create a debate. Ask the manager of your local Tesco’s why he doesn’t stock eggs or honey from a local smallholder, instead of selling overseas and battery farmed brands. Grow your own food if you have the space- even if you only have a patio, a few big pots can provide a whole season’s worth of tomatoes or soup veg. Ask why, if the government can nationalise the banks, why it can’t nationalise the land creating food security at a time of disappearing oil reserves- surely this should be a priority for any government
By recycling we deal with the after effects of consumption, but by carefully choosing what we purchase and consume in the first place, we can nip the entire cycle in the bud.
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