Green? Or PR?
Posted: Thu 15 June, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green, News 5 Comments »Isn’t it interesting how all of a sudden, a lot of media stories – and government policies – are becoming more ecologically-based?
Two this week came to my attention – first the “green rating” of houses when they go up for sale, as part of the HIP (Home Information Pack) concept that’s being introduced in June 2007. Of course, it’s a bit half-arsed, as there’d be no financial incentives to home-buyers for buying a house that was more ecological/green than another.
The second one, which interested me more, was about the possibility of charging people more for rubbish collection if they don’t sort their recyclable stuff from the normal household crap.
To me, that’s a good idea – we need to increase the amount we recycle, and anything that works to persuade people to do so is, to me, a good thing. It still amazes me on our refuse collection day, seeing how much recyclable stuff we have in comparison to the other people on our street. Maybe we end up with a lot more packaging etc. that is able to be recycled, but I don’t think so – I think that at the moment most people still see it as “easier” to just chuck everything into one bin, instead of sorting it out.
Rubber Roads
Posted: Fri 9 June, 2006 Filed under: Green, Travel 3 Comments »Interesting idea in this story from the BBC about a company with plans to use old disused/decommisioned railway lines, and create a road made from recycled rubber car tyres along them, which may go some way to helping relieve congestion.
So – a green option for helping to recycle rubber tyres instead of flinging them on landfill, and a way to make certain roads quicker and (possibly) cheaper than normal methods. And that uses less water etc. than the concrete that’s used in roads?
Sounds like a plan to me…
Just Because I Eat…
Posted: Thu 11 May, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Green 1 Comment »Good to see the BBC news site today having a feature about composting and wormeries.
As regular readers will know, our first attempt of using a wormery was a disaster – and quite honestly I’m not convinced about the second attempt, currently under way – but the compost bins we’ve used, along with the giant version we’ve now got, seem to be doing pretty well.
All the same, it’s good to see this kind of idea getting more mainstream acceptance and information.
Not Easy Being Green
Posted: Sun 9 April, 2006 Filed under: Green, Thoughts 4 Comments »At the moment BBC is showing a programme (no link, because I can’t find one, although there’s a small piece about the series here) called “It’s Not Easy Being Green”. No, it’s not about the Muppets, but instead about a family, the Strawbridges, who have moved to Cornwall and are working to live in an ecologically sound manner.
It’s a strange programme in a number of ways, because while it contains some good ideas and good advice, it also helps to do more damage to the Green and Ecological lifestyles than it should, because frankly Mr and Mrs Strawbridge (as opposed to the children) spend half the time looking like nutters.
In the most recent episode, for instance, they managed to merge some excellent ideas about glass recycling and heatsinks, solar-heated showers etc., with a visit to the Big Green Gathering, or whatever it was called, which had an awful lot of hippies in a field, and some of the most manky “recycled” tat in existence.
Now, I don’t mind hippies per se, nor do I overly object to the Big Green Gathering and its like. I do, however, have a problem with the way that hippie-type people seem to always become the enthusiastic/lunatic fringe for things to do with Green and Ecological living, and thus become the poster-children for all this kind of thing.
I don’t know, this entire mental process hasn’t yet been fully thought-out by me, but if we are to start living in a way that encourages things like recycling, sustainable power, self-sufficiency and so on, perhaps the first step on the way to mainstream acceptance of these concepts is to have some sane non-hippies taking in the lifestyle, and becoming a better advert than the current crop of users?
Hosepipe
Posted: Mon 3 April, 2006 Filed under: Green, News, Thoughts 2 Comments »There’s something that seems distinctly bizarre about the hosepipe bans that are coming in to force today across a lot of the south of England.
For one thing, it specifies that you can’t use a hosepipe to wash the car, or water the garden. You can still use one to fill a swimming pool, or a hot-tub. In theory we could get away with using one to play with Hound, who loves being zapped with the hose, and runs round the garden like a mad thing as a game. No idea why she likes it so much, but she does. Bizarre creature.
And despite the fact that it’s necessary for the hosepipe ban in order to preserve levels of water, I bet that every golf course is still allowed to use sprinkler systems etc. in order to keep the greens all beautiful. They seem to be exempt from every other water conservation method, so I bet they don’t get hit by this one. Fuckers.
If the water boards were serious about water conservation, the first thing they’d do is sort out their own leaking pipes. Yes, I know that Thames Water (and others) say they’re doing their best, and that they’re spending more than ever on repairing leaks, but they also said that ten years ago when I worked for their customer services department. They haven’t changed their story in a decade, and will continue to get away with doing as little as possible for as long as they can.
Oh, and the second thing the water boards should do is offer discounts to people who conserve water, who have water butts to store rain water for garden or domestic use, and perhaps even subsidise the purchase of those water butts. Now that would be doing something to help the situation…
Repulsive
Posted: Mon 3 April, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Green 1 Comment »Last year, we bought a wormery for helping with composting our household waste, so we could use it on the garden. We’d already got one big compost bin, but the wormery was also supposed to be able to deal with food scraps and so on, which you’re not supposed to put on a normal compost heap.
Over the last six months or so, we’ve been using it a lot – but obviously not properly. I’m not sure how so much water got in (possibly rain, but I’m not certain) but it obviously managed to drown/kill all the worms, and so the entire thing was just a festering pile of scum.
We cleaned it out this weekend – I’d been considering taking photos of “how not to do it”, but once the covers came off, in all honesty I just wanted to get the entire lot into black bags, and dispose of it all as quickly as possible. Photos would’ve taken too long.
The first layer was OK, just lots of mould, fur, and standard stuff. The second one, bluntly, stank. It was gross. Flies all over the place (luckily we’d been prepared, and had bought stuff like fly spray already – we’d opened it last weekend, so we knew what it was going to be like) and the smell was just unbelievable. Truly, truly manky.
The third layer didn’t smell as bad, but seemed to be entirely populated by worm corpses and maggot larvae.
So all in all, it was a bit of a disaster. We’ve got rid of it all – and I pity the poor fucker who opens those binbags, I tell you – and will start again from scratch once the new pack arrives. Only time will tell how we do this time…
We Are What We Do
Posted: Wed 29 March, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green, Health, Thoughts 1 Comment »via a fairly convoluted route (that I can’t be arsed to repeat right now) I came across a site called We Are What We Do, which falls into line with a lot of my own feelings about life.
We’re not another charity. We’re not an institution. We Are What We Do is a movement. We’d like to inspire people to use their everyday actions to change the world. Whoever they are. And wherever they are. And that includes you.
We’ve created 50 simple, everyday actions that can improve our environment, our health, and our communities, making our planet and the people on it much happier. We started by putting these actions in a book, but the whole movement is getting bigger. And bigger.
The 50 actions aren’t anything hugely strenuous, but they’re ideas on what can be done to help out. As it turns out, I’ve done about half of them already, and regularly do a third of the list. So I’m well on the way.
But it’s a great idea, and one that should go a long way…