Planet Savers blog

“The UN says it takes 232kg of corn to fill a 50-litre car tank with ethanol. That is enough to feed a child for a year. Last week, the UN predicted “massacres” unless the biofuel policy is halted.” Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the telegraph today. One of the best articles I’ve read setting biofuels into perspective. If you are getting a bit jittery about using food for fuel – read this!

Another show stopper today comes from one of NASA’s top scientists. Stepping outside the square, James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, raises the stakes on the carbon debate. Earth in Crisis: Global warming has plunged the planet into a crisis and the fossil fuel industries are trying to hide the extent of the problem from the public.

I have become more and more aware that I use toooooo many tissues. I’ve managed to remember to recycle them but I still grab one to clean my hands of oil and mess when cooking instead of a cloth. It’s a habit I have to break!

Incidentally, I was just reading about Kimberly-Clark. They make a point of using virgin wood pulp as this makes softer tissues.

It’s good to hear from Science Daily that there is a growing demand for more enviro-conscious cleaning products. Probably the one we all know best is Ecover. Their website is full of alternative solutions and not just for cleaning materials, either.

As the twelfth night approaches you will be getting ready to take down the decorations and Christmas cards. The Woodland Trust are offering to recycle them for us via WHSmith, Tesco, TKMaxx and M&S.

You have until 31st January!

Graham Harvey in an article in The Independent (30.Dec.07) points out that TB was a problem for humans in the 19th century that was eventually solved, not by drugs, but by better diet, better housing and better public hygiene.

He raises very interesting questions about the quality of food and housing of our sick livestock. For example, why do we feed our ruminants on grain? These animals like to be fed on good old fashioned grass – the green stuff that grows quite naturally and freely all over our countryside. Of course, it is much easier to find a scape goat, or rather a scape badger, to blame than to address the whole issue of industrialisation of farming methods.

He points out that “Industrial cropping, with its heavy dependence on chemical fertilisers, depletes soil organic matter and curbs the biological activity without which plants can’t take up trace elements.” As a result most food has to be propped up with additives in order for it to have any goodness. As ever, British people are voting with their feet as more and more look towards the farmer’s markets and organic box schemes.

The recent surge in the bio-fuels industry has had an interesting knock on effect. Grain is no longer a cheap commodity to feed to livestock, which means that farmers have started putting cattle back in the fields to graze. Which set me wondering, could it be that the bio-fuels industry will see a return to old fashioned methods of feeding cattle which, in turn, will wipe out TB and save the badger? I hope so.

Can you remember what your partner bought you for Christmas last year?

Well, apparently, more than half of the UK’s men forget what their partner bought them. Women were not much better either! According to the BBC today, we spend £2.3bn on unwanted gifts.

I found this rather sobering.

I was given an energy monitoring device which we have been using at my office. Without being tooooo much of an anorak (which we were:>) we established that we could make five mugs of tea from a full kettle at a cost of 0.018p, whereas cooking a couple of burgers on the grilling machine cost 0.025p.

If our desktop PCs were working flat out all day (which, of course, modern ones don’t as they have energy saving options) they would cost 0.31p per day. So, although the kettle draws 2Kw it is in such short bursts that the PC usage is much higher. OK, we can all guess that but it’s good to see how much.

Correction: see comments

I’m really glad to see that the Local Government Association is looking into plastic packaging in supermarkets. Still too much, they say. Well, I think anyone looking at this site will agree wholeheartedly with that. Worst offender was LiDL for the amount of packaging but, surprisingly for their environmental statements, Marks&Spencer were worst for using recycle-able packaging. However, the report did not say if this was because they are using materials that are already recycled.

There’s a lot to learn about plastic packaging and the whole carrier bag issue. It’s one to be investigated further. Watch this space!

“For some reason energy consumption has become a status symbol,” David King told Reuters today. “If we invert that and look down on people who are wasting energy, I think we can begin to manage the problem.” David King is the UK’s chief science adviser, “Treat energy as a very precious commodity…never use energy unless you are making good use of it. We’re talking here about a culture change.”

Well, this calls for a serious culture change but I think it’s a goodie.

This site is all about the individual. What we are and what we do has an effect of those around us. That doesn’t mean we have to walk around polishing our halos. Just drop this title into the conversation and watch the subject change :>)

I have a conundrum.

As a regular Riverford Veggie Box person, I took advantage of their dairy delivery as well so my organic milk arrived with my box once a week.

A few days ago there was a knock at the door and a rep from the local family run dairy asked if I were interested in being part of their milk round. “Think local” is very much a part of saving the planet. So, having established that they do organic, I signed up.

My first pint arrived on the doorstep this morning and I noticed that the milk comes from an organic farm in Bedfordshire. This means it has travelled from there to my dairy in Chesham and then out to my house via the milk float. Since I am still having my Riverford box delivered, I have increased my milk road miles considerably.

Environmentally, of course, I should go local for all my produce and some would say that I should put this above my preference for organic produce. I disagree with this one, though, health and principles play a part in our decisions. I don’t want to fill my body with chemicals and I don’t want to encourage their use in our fields. Neither do I want to eat meat from an animal that has been badly treated during its lifetime.

Having said that, I try to buy UK grown produce or, if not much is available, EU. I won’t buy courgettes from Israel, beans from Kenya, or peppers from Chile. We can no longer sustain the luxury of airfreighting food around the world to places where there is sufficient without it.

Which brings me back to my milk conundrum and buying local…