Illustration by Ella Dawson - http://elladawson.co.uk

Our choices can release CO2 – choose wisely

Posted on October 30, 2019

Did you know that the apparently simple choices that we make every day can be leading to increased CO2 emissions? In simple terms, our choices can release CO2. It’s not all about the “big bad fossil fuel companies” as really the whole system relies on our choices, and it’s easy to see this is true.

A new smartphone

When we desire that new smartphone, especially when our current phone is still working, we’re actually releasing CO2. It takes a lot of energy (not to mention raw, natural ingredients) to create a smartphone and over half of the world’s energy is currently coming from oil and gas. So we release CO2 when we get that new smartphone. And don’t forget that using a mobile requires a network of cellular towers and banks of computers running 24-hours a day in the background to deliver those cloud services, run those games, stream that music, and monitor just about everything you do. It’s a big deal for the world.

New clothes

In the same way, when we want new clothes even though our old clothes are still good, we release CO2. Desiring that new fashion item, made by our favourite designer label who have the clothes made in bulk in a far part of the world (somewhat out of sight) and then shipped all over the world, we forget the amount energy and natural resources this system is using. Again, we’re releasing CO2.

Tagged: air travel, CO2, consumerism

Important things other than Brexit

Posted on October 27, 2019

Living in the UK in recent times, it’s hard to find news reports that don’t include Brexit. Of course Brexit is an important issue that must get resolved, but there are far more important things other than Brexit that aren’t receiving enough attention. Last week, I decided to write a letter to a few of our politicians to suggest some actions that they could be considering, and preparing for, at the same time as resolving Brexit. I’ve posted the complete letter below.

The UK has some good recent momentum on environmental issues with the amazing work of Sir David Attenborough (see https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2018/plastics-watch) and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (see https://www.rivercottage.net/news/join-the-war-on-plastic) and the country really has an opportunity to help the world push forward quickly.

I’ve sent this letter to four politicians;

Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP – Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service
Rt Hon Jeremy Corbyn MP – Leader of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition
Rt Hon Theresa Villiers MP – Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Sam Gyimah MP – Member for East Surrey

I know full well that the letter might gather no attention at all and may not even be read, but I hope that’s not the case. Sending the letter certainly can’t cause any damage and, at the very least, it might be read and may have an influence on some of the future decisions made for the UK.

It’s important that we focus on pollution, and something other than Brexit. We’re definitely polluting too much and plastic and CO2 seem to be our biggest, out-of-control, polluting factors at the moment. This letter requests changes to our laws to rapidly promote the reduction of pollution as changes to laws can have almost instant effect. However, we can also acknowledge that if every one of us starting using and consuming less, that would be of great benefit as well. Both actions at the same time would be best.

See the letter below…

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Categories: Less Pollution, Recycling

Tagged: plastic, solar

Do less to save the planet

Posted on September 23, 2019

This title might sound like it’s contradictory to the theme of this blog, but it’s actually a fun play on words. I have to thank Tom Hodgkinson for the title. It’s all about the fact that just “doing less” will help save the planet. We do so many things that require more and more energy, so indeed there is considerable merit in the concept of aiming to do less to save the planet.

I first cam in contact with Tom Hodgkinson several years ago when I read his book “How to be idle” (see www.lifeintherightdirection.com/how-to-be-idle). It’s a good book and really opened my mind to the consideration that we don’t have to be doing things all the time and that there can be merit in simple idleness. That idea goes against everything we’re taught since we were about 6 or 7 years old and everything we see in the media, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It just might be that many things we’ve been taught and see in the media are wrong.

Idler Magazine

For the past few months I’ve been a subscriber to Idler Magazine (part of Idler Ltd that Tom Hodgkinson has setup). This is a fun publication that I enjoy reading. It’s published every two months and reminds me to keep thinking about the value of idleness and to stop glorifying being busy and doing things non-stop.

Along with the magazine, I get regular emails from Tom Hodgkinson and a few weeks ago I received one called “Do less to save the planet”. I read this email and I thought it was great. I would have loved to reproduce his whole email here are it fits so well with the theme of “Use 10 Percent Less”, however Tom will only allow me to reproduce 100 words maximum, so I’ll work with that.

Cashew Nuts – signs we need to change

Posted on September 9, 2019

This short news video from France 24 shows us what’s behind the cashew nuts we casually munch on in our comfortable homes. It immediately made me think that we need to reduce our overall consumption and use less. We consume things that appear cheap, and hence not so important, even though they can have severe effects on people we don’t normally see.

Unfortunately, I can only find this video on a Facebook site, so I can’t link it properly into this page. To watch the video, follow this link (or look at the static screenshots below);

http://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=382690935702720

While I was watching it, I saved a number of screen shots which I’ve posted below in the order of the video, so you can get the gist of the video from these. India is the largest source of cashew nuts in the world, mainly supplying European and US demand. Removing the shells from cashew nuts is very difficult and there are acids inside the shell that badly affect the hands of the people doing it. They can’t use gloves because that slows them down. It’s very sad to see people having to work like this.

The video really emphasises to me how we can simply buy a bag of cashew nuts, take them home and enjoy them, without thinking for a moment what had to happen for us to enjoy this luxury. At the exact other end of the chain there are women essentially forced into intolerable conditions to remove the cashew nuts from the shells. They get paid very little per day (equivalent of 2-5 euros) but they say they have no choice as there’s no other work.

All this reminds me that having something cheap in our supermarkets is rarely, actually a good thing. Somewhere along the line, someone is being abused to make it cheap. See these other related articles;

What should we do now?

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Categories: Less Waste

We are just greedy and wasteful

Posted on August 28, 2019

Forget the argument about whether climate change is being caused by humans or not, it’s perfectly clear that we humans are very greedy and wasteful. This is what has to stop. Let’s acknowledge how greedy and wasteful we are, and then let’s start trying to address it. We don’t need any other reason than the fact that greed leading to lots of waste can’t be good for anything.

Some time ago I was researching about the amount of energy we use. It’s no surprise that the world is using exponentially more energy as time passes. The counter argument goes that there are more and more people on the planet too, so maybe the extra energy usage is just natural. However, I wasn’t expecting to find what I found.

Growth of energy usage

Can I say first that humans are the only organisms on the planet that use supplemental energy? All other organisms only use the energy they get from digesting their food, breathing air and absorbing sunlight. Humans use electricity, oil, gas, coal, uranium, solar, wind, water, etc. to create supplemental energy for our benefit.

I found this graph (from Our World in Data) that shows the growth of energy consumption over the past 200 years.

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Categories: Less Fossil Fuels, Less Pollution

Tagged: air travel, CO2, sustainability

It’s Not all Rose Gold Straws and The Perfect Pantry

Posted on August 7, 2019

Today we have a guest writer, Abi Jarvis, talking about some of her advice for using less. I find Abi inspirational. She’s a young person who’s really showing us all the way and I’m glad that she’s been able to write this post for us. Until I saw her post, I’d never heard of “Rose Gold Straws and The Perfect Pantry“, so I’ve been further educated by Abi. Many thanks.

Peter.

It’s Not all Rose Gold Straws and The Perfect Pantry

By Abi Jarvis

First, I would like to start with – THERE IS NO PERFECT WAY OF DOING THIS. Whether you’re lucky enough to live near a zero waste bulk buy food shop or not, whether you don’t have time to pre-make your meals for the week or you do, you do not need to be perfect at this, you just need to try. It’s not all Rose Gold Straws and The Perfect Pantry.

I’d definitely say, buy some kind of flask or Thermos for hot/cold drinks and foods. We drink a lot of tea and coffee as a nation, also as well as cutting down on waste it means you keep it hot/cold and it’s your personal container. I love KLEAN KANTEEN for their drink opening mechanism, also CHILLY’S BOTTLES are decorative but functional, and THERMOS make great long life containers.

It's not all rose gold straws and the perfect pantry

Cut down on everyday plastic – bread, milk, fruit, veg, meat. An easy one would be buy bread from the bakery section in paper bags over pre-cut and overpackaged loaves, the bread is often of a better quality too. Sign up to MILK AND MORE (https://www.milkandmore.co.uk/) milk and juice delivery, use the drinks and then put the bottles back out for collection, think of all the plastic milk and juice bottles you go through.

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Categories: Less Pollution, Less Waste, Recycling

Tagged: plastic, sustainability

Plastic and shale gas from the US

Posted on July 23, 2019

A couple of weeks ago, I watched the BBC’s programme “War on Plastic with Hugh and Anita, Series 1, Episode 3” and was shocked by many things, but none more than the fact that the UK is shipping in US gas (from US fracking) so that we can make more and more plastics in the UK. I didn’t realise there was such a strong link with the plastic we use every day and shale gas. Now I feel quite sad, and I wonder if people are aware of the connection between plastic and shale gas.

US Gas from fracking in the UK!

Firstly I’m shocked that US gas from the fracking of their own land is being shipped to the UK. Even as the Scottish government is strongly debating whether to implement a complete ban on fracking in the country, they are allowing gas fracked in the US to come into Scotland. The UK has areas like the North Sea and the Norwegian Continental Shelf right near by, so why don’t we take advantage of that? I’m sure it’s all because it’s cheaper, but cheap is not always good (see – Is “cheap” the right direction?). Cheap means somebody is making more profit out of it, but doesn’t mean that the value of humans and the value of the environment are being adequately taken into account.

INEOS is the company that was highlighted in the programme on BBC, and they seem to be proud of bringing in US gas to their Grangemouth facility in Scotland. In the links and quotes at the bottom of this article, you’ll quickly get the impression that the owners of the company are making big profits out of plastic and shale gas and they’ve convinced the government to keep their hands off by talking about preserving jobs and supplying UK manufacturing.

Tagged: environment, plastic, shale gas, sustainability

An evil plot to pollute the world

Posted on June 20, 2019

Let’s imagine we live in a beautiful world without pollution, with plenty of fruit to eat and clean running water in beautiful streams. Everyone is happy in this beautiful place. Now, enter an evil mastermind who wants to ruin everything. What plans could he hatch to pollute the world and ruin it? Well, pretty much what humans have been doing for the last 100 years would work. Sounds like a plot for a 007 movie, and it would be amusing if it didn’t feel so true.

The plot to pollute the world

The evil mastermind hatched a plot to pollute the world. He wanted to bring the world to an end and have everyone else in the world help him do it without knowing. His first plan was to dig up enormous amounts of coal from under the ground and start burning it in large furnaces all over the world, and have people pay for it! He started industrial and technological revolutions and convinced people that all this new technology will make their lives easier (it won’t! – he loves it when he can fool people). The real reason he wants them to desire new technology is because it requires extra energy and they’ll need more and more coal-fired power plants.

Next he invents the “steam” engine. This is brilliant marketing because “steam” sounds clean but, in reality, this is an engine that burns more coal. In every possible situation, people all over the world are now wanting steam engines so they can be part of the industrial and technological revolution. More and more coal is being burnt and the skies are getting more polluted.

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Categories: Climate Change, Less Pollution

Tagged: air travel, environment, forests, meat, plastic, sustainability, trees

Plane Pollution – a huge problem

Posted on May 28, 2019

I was doing some gardening early on Monday. It was a beautiful morning and when I looked up, I was startled to see so many plane trails in the sky. In fact, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and everything I could see was caused by plane pollution. It was really surprising, and got me thinking about what a problem plane pollution is and why we generally just ignore it.

This prompted me to investigate a number of articles on the internet (you can see links to all these articles below along with the most interesting quotes from each). It’s clear that plane pollution is one of the major problems we’re facing as humankind, and we need to do something radical and quickly.

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Categories: Less Fossil Fuels, Less Pollution

Tagged: air travel, CO2, planes

Ironing – why do we do that?

Posted on May 19, 2019

Have you ever stopped to think why we do ironing? Why do we iron and press our clothes? I’m sure you’re all thinking that it’s because we need to get the wrinkles and creases out. Sure, but why is that important? Why is that we are not acceptable human beings if our clothing isn’t pressed? Surely this is just a symbol of status and it’s quite ridiculous.

If we didn’t have to iron and press our clothes, we’d actually be using less of the worlds resources;

we wouldn’t be wasting energy (mostly electricity) on heating up irons
we wouldn’t have to make irons (mostly made in far away countries, using metals and plastics, then wrapped in plastic and a box and then shipped all over the world)
we wouldn’t have to make ironing boards
we wouldn’t have to dispose of old irons and ironing boards
companies couldn’t sell the vast range of aids and sprays that they do
we’d have more money and more time to devote to better things

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Categories: Less Pollution, Less Waste

Tagged: sustainability