I am fortunate to live in an area blessed with a plentiful supply of water. Our maritime climate is driven by moist air coming in from the Atlantic Ocean, heated by the Gulf Stream. The air cools as it rises over the mountains and loses its excess moisture as rain.
Loch Katrine in the Trossachs has supplied the city of Glasgow with clean fresh drinking water for over a century and a half thanks to the work of the Victorian engineer John Frederick Bateman. When we have such an abundance of water there is little pressure to save water and you may be thought daft for even suggesting it but are there wider environmental benefits of reducing water consumption here?
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Showing posts with label carbon footprint. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carbon footprint. Show all posts
Monday, August 13, 2012
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Milk
Sometimes nothing beats a cool refreshing glass of the milk.
But the White Stuff is not as innocent as it looks. In fact, its cool clean exterior masks a multitude of sins.
Milk has hit the headlines recently in a battle between farmers and the processors which are imposing cuts to the price paid to farmers for milk. This is leading to farm gate prices which are less than the cost of producing the milk. This is not a new fight. For several years the large powerful dairies, such as Robert Wiseman (now owned by Müller), have put downward pressure on the farm gate price of milk. This in turn has driven “efficiency” measures in the farming sector, i.e. industrialisation of the process. About ten years ago I spoke with a farmer planning to build a huge shed so that his cattle could be kept indoors all year round. This was, he said, due to pressure to cut costs. It was necessary of his farm was to remain sustainable. The surrounding pasture that the cattle had grazed for generations would be used to produce their feed which would be supplemented with commercial cattle fodder. I’m sure he wasn’t alone in this change but to me it seemed crazy – taking the cattle away from the grass so that someone can cut the grass and feed it to the cattle and at the other end, the muck would be cleared from the shed and, presumably spread on the field as fertiliser.
What are the issues with milk?
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But the White Stuff is not as innocent as it looks. In fact, its cool clean exterior masks a multitude of sins.
Milk has hit the headlines recently in a battle between farmers and the processors which are imposing cuts to the price paid to farmers for milk. This is leading to farm gate prices which are less than the cost of producing the milk. This is not a new fight. For several years the large powerful dairies, such as Robert Wiseman (now owned by Müller), have put downward pressure on the farm gate price of milk. This in turn has driven “efficiency” measures in the farming sector, i.e. industrialisation of the process. About ten years ago I spoke with a farmer planning to build a huge shed so that his cattle could be kept indoors all year round. This was, he said, due to pressure to cut costs. It was necessary of his farm was to remain sustainable. The surrounding pasture that the cattle had grazed for generations would be used to produce their feed which would be supplemented with commercial cattle fodder. I’m sure he wasn’t alone in this change but to me it seemed crazy – taking the cattle away from the grass so that someone can cut the grass and feed it to the cattle and at the other end, the muck would be cleared from the shed and, presumably spread on the field as fertiliser.
What are the issues with milk?
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Monday, July 9, 2012
BMW Attacks Efficiency Targets
BMW accused of hypocrisy over opposition to European car targets | Environment | guardian.co.uk:
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BMW is lobbying to water down European plans to improve the fuel efficiency of cars at the same time as trumpeting its green credentials as the official car sponsor of the Olympic Games, according to internal documents seen by the Guardian.According to this Guardian article, BMW want to delay or reduce implementation of Europe wide fuel efficiency targets for 2015 and 2020. BMW believe that premium manufacturers (such as themselves) will be disadvantaged compared with manufacturers of normal cars. In other words people who can afford more expensive premium cars can afford the higher fuel prices and these wealthy people don't need to worry about climate change or limited supplies of oil.
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Sunday, June 24, 2012
Plastic Recycling
Look at the recycling logo on a plastic bottle or container. It depicts a continuous loop, a virtuous circle, if you like, of plastic being made into bottles then being recycled into new bottles then the whole process repeating endlessly. Nothing falls out of the cycle and nothing new is introduced. It is a bit misleading. It doesn't take much imagination to realise that energy needs added to the process at the very least - energy for collecting the used plastic, treating it and manufacturing the new bottles. Less obvious is the fact that very few food grade bottles contain material from recycled bottles. Plant has been developed to do this but at this time its use not widespread.
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Monday, June 18, 2012
More Recycling, Please
Recycling week runs from today, the 18th of June until the 26th with the aim of promoting recycling at home and away. There are many events around the country promoted by the Recycle Now website run by WRAP (Waste & Resource Action Programme). The website also contains a lot of information on recycling.
Recycling helps to conserve limited resources and using recycled materials often use less energy than virgin materials. In addition, recycling reduces the amount of waste that goes in to landfill, hence extending the life of existing sites and reducing the need for opening new sites at great environmental and social cost. Recycling week is focusing on kerbside recycling (home) and recycling centres where you can take recyclable waste that is not collected kerbside(away). Another aspect of "away" that does not appear to be addressed is the dearth of recycling options in public places. In some countries, they standard pavement bin will have compartments for glass, metals, plastics and others but these are rare in the UK.
We really do need to encourage more recycling in the UK as we lag behind our European neighbours in terms of recycling and the proportion of waste going to landfill. We compost or recycle 34% of domestic waste compared with an average of 39% across Europe according to DEFRA figures and 55% goes to landfill compared with 40% across Europe. The figures vary significantly across the country with some areas recycling less than 20% of domestic waste and others over 50%.
Between different local authority areas recycling rates vary tremendously. The aim of recycling week is to raise awareness amongst the public and encourage participation but we should turn it around and challenge our local authorities to provide better and more comprehensive facilities and also to challenge retailers and manufacturers to make it easier for us to reduce waste.
Of course recycling isn't the whole solution, before recycling our domestic waste we should consider whether things can be reused and before that whether we actually need them in the first place.
Related Links:
http://www.recyclenow.com/
http://www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/environment/waste/wrfg08-munec/
Related Posts:
http://ecowarriorme.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/weekly-refuse-collections.html
http://ecowarriorme.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/why-cant-we-recycle-more.html
Mechanical Biological Treatment: an alternative to kerbside recycling?
"Recycling" Food Waste
Recycling helps to conserve limited resources and using recycled materials often use less energy than virgin materials. In addition, recycling reduces the amount of waste that goes in to landfill, hence extending the life of existing sites and reducing the need for opening new sites at great environmental and social cost. Recycling week is focusing on kerbside recycling (home) and recycling centres where you can take recyclable waste that is not collected kerbside(away). Another aspect of "away" that does not appear to be addressed is the dearth of recycling options in public places. In some countries, they standard pavement bin will have compartments for glass, metals, plastics and others but these are rare in the UK.
We really do need to encourage more recycling in the UK as we lag behind our European neighbours in terms of recycling and the proportion of waste going to landfill. We compost or recycle 34% of domestic waste compared with an average of 39% across Europe according to DEFRA figures and 55% goes to landfill compared with 40% across Europe. The figures vary significantly across the country with some areas recycling less than 20% of domestic waste and others over 50%.
Between different local authority areas recycling rates vary tremendously. The aim of recycling week is to raise awareness amongst the public and encourage participation but we should turn it around and challenge our local authorities to provide better and more comprehensive facilities and also to challenge retailers and manufacturers to make it easier for us to reduce waste.
Of course recycling isn't the whole solution, before recycling our domestic waste we should consider whether things can be reused and before that whether we actually need them in the first place.
Related Links:
http://www.recyclenow.com/
http://www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/environment/waste/wrfg08-munec/
Related Posts:
http://ecowarriorme.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/weekly-refuse-collections.html
http://ecowarriorme.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/why-cant-we-recycle-more.html
Mechanical Biological Treatment: an alternative to kerbside recycling?
"Recycling" Food Waste
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Plastic bags: it's not all about carbon
I recently read an article which discussed how we could tackle the problem of the 800,000 tonnes of plastic bags thrown away each year in Europe, an average of 191 for every citizen of the European Union. It highlighted the much smaller carbon footprint of disposable single use plastic carrier bags compared with alternatives. Part of the article described re-using plastic bags as bin liners rather than using purpose made bin liners and it had a nifty graphic . To a point, this makes sense but considering that many people use plastic bags for almost all of their domestic purchases, then to use every carrier bag once as a bin liner would require all that was bought to be disposed of in the bin. I know that there is a lot of waste packaging in groceries but it does generally compact down to a smaller volume than the original (unless you live entirely on tinned produce) therefore assuming that all plastic bags are re-used in this way is stretching things a bit. To then hypothesise that they could be used three times as bin liners is clearly not relevant.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
How Green are Green Fingers?
Gardening turns out to be very eco un-friendly... The Independent
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According to an article in this morning's Independent, gardening is not very environmentally friendly but I think that it depends on your approach. This is my approach to minimising the negative effects of gardening:
Compost
I keep a compost heap for garden waste and vegetable trimmings which reduces the amount of waste being carted to a landfill site and produces a compost suitable for use as a soil improver. Personally, I find it too coarse for use as a potting compost so I use a commercial peat-free compost for potting and other general purpose uses. I have successfully grown potatoes in bags with a mixture of the peat-free compost and earth.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Bag it, Bin it or Don't
I took my 6 year old daughter Christmas shopping the other week. We went to Lush, the hand made cosmetics company, looking for a gift for her mother. She was in heaven: the bright colours, the smells, the glitter and the pretty shapes of the soaps and bath bombs. There was no difficulty in choosing a gift for mother (especially one she might share), the only problem was deciding to stop!
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