Planet Savers blog

… ran the headline that caught my eye.  “Junk mail’s carbon footprint equals nine million cars”. These are figures for the US where there is a growing campaign to stop junk mail. In 2005, junk mail overtook first-class post as the most delivered item. And the carbon footprint of all this is ridiculously high.

So, what can we do about it here in the UK?

Well, the IEMA are looking into it. Unfortunately, the time for comments is passed but lets hope some sanity is forthcoming.

My suggestion? I’d like to see all unaddressed mail banned, it’s always junk anyway (with the exception of the sensus forms for the Electroal Roll). All bill payments, organisations, etc., to give you the option for email instead of post (most do but this should be compulsory). All drop outs in papers and magazines should be banned, there’s only so many paper darts you can make.

Here’s a question: Does anyone ever read drop-outs? I mean, who voluntarily puts up their hand and says “Here I am! Please advertise to me.” If you are looking for something, you will go to the web or look for adverts in an appropriate magazine. Gratuitous drop-outs drive me mad and go straight into the re-cycling. I’ve also taken to returning junk mail to sender. It seems to be the most effective way to stop it coming.

This will be an interesting blog to watch:

Chris Jeavans of BBC is going to live without buying anything plastic for the whole of August.

Everyone’s starting to take this more seriously. It even got scripted into Dr Who! When confronted with slaves on one planet or other, Donna commented that the Earth was beyond this barbaric practice. The Doctor disagreed and said: Who makes your clothes?

Earlier this year, during the Fair Trade week, Clem (Traidcraft) had a ‘tree’ set up and lots of tags. We were encouraged to write on a tag something we would do to become from world friendly. I wrote that I would not buy any more clothes that were not Fairtrade. I’ve stuck to that as well.

So, I was most impressed with the BBC Thread pages. Lots of information and ideas. I’ll have to look out my sewing machine…

Are we, at last, seeing some sense filtering through with regards bio-fuels? It would seem so. The EU has revised targets for renewable energy now that it is clear that this particular agri-business is causing worldwide food prices to rise beyond the means of many peoples.

Quoted in IPS: “A World Bank paper says production of agrofuels is responsible for 75 percent of the increase in the price of food. The confidential report leaked to the media says higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for only 15 percent of the increase.”

French minister for the environment and energy, Jean-Louis Borloo, says “over the years, agrofuels were the one and only (ecological) truth; now, we are about to change our minds at the highest speed. What we considered the solution a couple of months ago is now in disgrace.”

That’s good, then.

Saw this on Climate Ark:

“Why we never need to build another polluting power plant: Coal? Natural gas? Nuke? We can wipe them all off the drawing board by using current energy more efficiently. Are you listening, Washington”

It had my attention! Their argument ran this way:

“Suppose I paid you for every pound of pollution you generated and punished you for every pound you reduced. You would probably spend most of your time trying to figure out how to generate more pollution. And suppose that if you generated enough pollution, I had to pay you to build a new plant, no matter what the cost, and no matter how much cheaper it might be to not pollute in the first place. Well, that’s pretty much how we have run the U.S. electric grid for nearly a century…”

The article shows that, if the other states were to follow California’s lead, the US would slash their electricity consumption by 40%. Apart from the more obvious improvements in efficiency of heating and air-con units, they also looked at street lighting and changed traffic lights to work with LEDs. And then they did something pretty crucial which was termed “decoupling”. They decoupled the the profits of energy companies from their production of energy and made it profitable to save energy. Unsurprisingly, the energy company’s seemed to know a thing or two about making savings.

I guess the moral of this story is that, not matter how well intentioned we may be as a race, if the big companies are not making profits, our social structure will de-stabalise and break down. We have built our civilized world, our survival on this planet, on our ability to make profit. Those of us who dream of living a sustainable eco-minded life will always be climbing a very steep hill unless someone somewhere can make a profit out of what we are doing. We have more Rules of Acquisition than the Ferengi.

But there is another way, too. And that way comes back to people. People thinking twice; people caring about issues greater than themselves. It involves stepping back and looking at what we are doing from a global perspective. Food production, waste management, energy consumption, and so on. When enough people care about their relationship with the planet, our carbon footprint will come in line with sustainable requirements.

But that is the long road. Until then, we will continue to live on Ferenginar.

PS. If you want to be one of the people making the difference, join the Transition Town movement :>) Chesham in Transition - coming soon to a meeting room near you!

I’m not sure whether to rejoice or scream!

The National Geographic reports that the EU’s farm chief has suggested allowing misshapen fruit and veg into the supermarkets in order to help with the food crisis.

When I was a kid, I remember noticing that the misshapen fruits and veggies were usually the sweetest and tastiest. Somewhere along the way supermarkets decided that only those that fitted the packaging were ‘perfect’ and we lost out on the fun of ‘eating the knobbly bits first!’

So I rejoice in the fact that the issue has been raised. But I scream because of the question it raises: If allowing misshapes into the supermarkets is going to help with the food crisis and keep costs down,  what has been happening to the misshapen fruit and veg all these years? I’d kind of assumed that is was all going into some other process like soup or tins. But this item seems to suggest that we have been discarding it.

Does anyone have the answer to this?

Each day I read the climate change news delivered via RSS feed from Climate Ark, or Science Daily or One World UK and so on. After the Stern Report and then the IPCC report, the news was fascinating as various suggestions and innovations were put forward that looked as though we were going to change our way of living on this planet.

These days it is a continuous stream of information about the way biofuels have distorted the lives of thousands, causing starvation and poverty in various parts of the globe.

Last night I watched a film called Peak Oil. It was put on by the Berkhamsted Transition Towns group. It explains clearly why oil prices are rising. Demand has outstripped supply - and the supply is running out and will never meet the demand.

Instead of looking to biofuels as a replacement fuel, we should be looking for ways of living sustainably. It is a tall order. We need to reconnect with our own planet and each other. Start working together in our communities for the general good. We need to relearn old technology and find ways to improve it. And we can do this with the benefit of today’s hindsight and innovative technique.

Chesham will soon be forming its own Transition Group. Many have already shown an interest and an initial meeting will be held in July. There are now about 700 towns like this, all looking to make a change. We cannot wait for the government to impose changes. It is down to us at local level to do something for ourselves.

And there is much we can do :>)

I’ve been a bit quiet lately. That’s because my mother has just moved house so there has been much to do helping her sort things out. But it gave rise to a couple of interesting purchases.

Her new home has a couple of small lawns and she wanted a light weight push mower rather than plugging in the hover she bought from the old house. this led us to The Green Warehouse where we found a neat little mower just right fora small lawn.

Whilst looking at the site we saw a rather interesting shower head, too. It oxygenates the water which makes it feel as strong as an all water shower but in fact you are using, they say, 75% less water. We fitted it a couple of days ago and I am really pleased with the results. It is also very obvious that I am using less water. The bath is not filling up as it used to and there is far less splashing. It feels great, too.

In Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, women farmers make a subsistence living by growing food in the fields. This is pretty consistent with the way humans beings have survived for countless millennia.

Unfortunately, these women do not own the fields but have been allowed to work on them by the people that do. Now the women are being turned off the lands because there is a lot of money to be made in cash crops - for biofuels.

This is patently wrong from a humanitarian point of view. But you can’t really blame the guys who own the fields from doing it. There is so much money to be had from biofuels right now.

What is it with human beings? Where there is quick money to be made, we lose all our concerns about living in peace alongside our fellows in a rush to make a profit. I know this does not apply to everyone living on the planet but is seems to infect a goodly proportion of us.

Food, clothing, fuel. All basic human needs and, surely, all basic human rights. Yet in all these fields we a guilty of exploitation. If our lifestyle means that our neighbour, who is prepared to work in the fields to stay alive, is denied these rights, the system should raise alarm bells. Instead, it raises a few bank balances.

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On the subject of fuel, with Shell and BP dropping out of the renewables market whilst reporting record profit, its is interesting to note that they intend using their winnings to extract even more oil from the hither to difficult (and therefore too costly) sources. Presumably, part of this will have to be spent on a new advertising spin.

But then I read in the Guardian that the Rockefella’s give Exxon a ticking off :

“There are an awful lot of people who are getting increasingly annoyed with Exxon,” said economist Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, a great-granddaughter of the company’s founder, calling for Exxon’s chief executive Rex Tillerson to hand the role of chairman to an outsider. She spoke of “serious disjunctures” between Exxon’s short-term actions and “the long-term health both of this company and of the world’s economy”.

Good on her, I say.

Amid all the doom and gloom stories about deforestation, this one really cheered me up. In Costa Rica they replanted some of their worn-out cattle pasture with trees in a bid to reclaim their forest. Fifty years later, it looks as though it is working :>)