/green

Heard on the radio the other day that London Underground are going to install water fountains on there stations to provide free tap water to thirsty commuters and travellers. Sounds a great idea to me, especially if you'll be able to fill your own water bottles from them. So well done Transport for London. Just need to roll that out for every train, bus station, airport an shopping centre in the UK and we'll not doubt chip away at our shared carbon footprint, as well as reducing some litter to.

I got an email out of the blue the other day from a guy I used to surf with at Uni. Anyway turns out his wife runs a bottled water business, but one with a big difference. It's called Frank Water ( www.frankwater.com ) and essentially donates all its profits to providing drinking water for developing countries.

You'll have probably heard the adverts that Volvic (the French mineral water guys) have been running about their water for African water campaign. I'd like to think that it's the Frank Water guys who've kicked the Volvic guys into action, although they only promise 10 litres of water for Africa for every litre purchased, whereas the Frank Water guys provide 200 litres for every one litre purchased.

This seems a very interesting model, where we the "haves" can indulge ourselves with the likes of bottled water and do something constructive for the so many "have nots" around the globe. It will be interesting to see if this spurs any of the other water brands into similar action.

Perhaps in these times of credit squeeze and tightening family budgets bottled water will be perceived as an unnecessary luxury and people will just revert to the tap and a reusable water bottle you can buy from ay sports shop for £2 or so.

Will (King) was telling me yesterday about a dinner he had up in town earlier this week (at some cool eatery no doubt). He's a regular there and said how he's noticed the demise of bottled water on the tables, so much so that when he was there earlier this week there wasn't a single bottle of water in sight, just glasses of tap water. Maybe restaurants should start calling it "eau de robinet" (French for tap water), to make it sound a little more sophisticated.

So what's brought about this change, is it everyone's realised that £4.50 for a £0.80 bottle of water is just crazy, especially in these times of credit crisis. Or is that people are seeing that sometimes bottled water just doesn't make sense. Well let's hope so.

Certainly when I was young bottled water was something you drunk when abroad, as the foreign tap water just couldn't be trusted. Whereas back home or tap water was second to none.

I still drink tap water, although I must confess I have had an inline filter fitted (it stops the kettle scaling up honest!).

However, I did still have a penchant for carbonated water (mixed with Apple juice, very refreshing) and so did have 'bottled water' lurking in my fridge.

Anyway, I'm pleased to say those days are now over as I've ordered myself a soda siphon from John Lewis (who have a huge range of them). When I was a kid and used to go and stay with my grandparents, my granddad used to have one and as a special treat I got to use a whole cylinder of gas up during my visit, which at the time was fantastic as it certainly made orange squash a lot more exciting. So I'm looking forward to it arriving, albeit with a twist of nostalgia.

I signed up at the friends of the Earth Website last year http://www.foe.co.uk/ for their daily tips. These are sent through from Rita (who I'd like to think is a real person). My reasons for signing up were two fold; 1) as I hoped to learn something and 2) as I was intrigued on what they'd send through as producing that volume of tips can't be an easy task. As I've only been signed up a few months I don't know if the tips eventually repeat or not. Anyway, so far I've learnt a thing or two, which is no bad thing.

My two recent highlights were about keeping the coil on the back of your fridge clean as this helps it be much more efficient. I've never before (probably like you) really looked at the back of my fridge, but when I did it was somewhat dusty. Needless to say it isn't now and I'll try and keep it that way (obviously without pulling it out to clean on a weekly basis, but certainly a few times a year).

The second was about milk versus organic milk, which again I found illuminating.

"Buy organic milk

Best Wishes, Rita @ Friends of the Earth"

Obviously they are going to put their FOE twist on the info they send through, but as we're all reasonably intelligent people we can probably sort the wheat from the chaff.

So why not sign up.

It was certainly windy last night and this morning in my neck of the woods. Monday also happens to be our recycling collection day, so most people dutifully put their boxes out on the street the night before. Our local council supplies open boxes (i.e. no lids), which obviously don't stop the contents (especially lightweight items like empty plastic bottles) from blowing all over the streets, which is just what had happened this morning.

I'm expect in the short term that retro fitting lids onto the boxes would be cost prohibitive, so in the meantime it relies on householders to sort their own solution, which given the time it took for people to take recycling more seriously won't be fast in coming.

To me this indicative of poor planning at a council level, exacerbated due to the need to get a solution in place very quickly, no doubt to meet the demands of central government policy at the time, which in turn was probably driven by European targets.

It was on the same journey to work this morning listening to Radio 4 (I find listening to politicians getting some verbal abuse for avoiding the question etc. raises my spirits on the journey into work). Lord Turner (pic below) was discussing the climate report he's pulling together (for Dec? I think) and the fact that building coal fired power stations maybe ok, as we can retro fit carbon capture technology when it's a) proven at scale and b) proven we want to afford it. No doubt retro fitting to existing power plants will by that time probably cost more than to build a new plant.

Just goes to show that doing some proper planning from the 'get go' is probably is cheaper in the long run and gets you where you want to be first time around (maybe 2nd time, but certainly not 5th or 6th).

So today I'll try and practice what I preach and ensure we get our planning into order.

Lord Turner

I received my climbing mag in the post yesterday and saw it had been wrapped in Oxidegradable plastic, which to be honest is not something I'd heard of. Gave it a quick Google and got nothing, but on closer inspection there's a website in the logo that's just legible (see link below).

It's got an alarming number to represent the number of bags we've consumed globally this year. The number increases very quickly as you watch it, which is quite sobering to look at and makes me feel quite pleased with my New Years resolution to try and avoid carrier bags at all costs and try to only use the reusable ones.

Apparently this plastic can be recycled or land filled and will biodegrade harmlessly within 90 days or up to 6 years depending on the grade you use. I guess there's a cost issue as to why it's not being used more, especially for food packaging, which is so hard to recycle (my local council doesn't like the stuff).

Sadly the little logo I saw was printed not on the plastic, but on a sheet of paper inside (with my address on etc.), which didn't seem to be recycled or made from a renewable source, so some room for improvement, but still a step in a positive direction.

http://www.degradable.net/

We've all heard of a carbon footprint, but if you think about it many commodities could have a 'water footprint' assigned to them, i.e. the amount of fresh water required to produce something. With water shortages in many parts of the world, even here in the UK, this poster made me stop and think. You can order a copy for yourself here.

When pulling my wheelie bin out to the front of my house earlier this week it occurred to me how light it was and in fact how light it always is these days. So much so it almost seems worth opting out of the weekly collections to let it fill up a bit more so it’s worth the council collecting it. Especially as it doesn’t seem to get that smelly (as we compost most stuff and have a waste disposal unit or any cooked food waste and no nappies to deal with yet) even in Summer or should a I say that mildly warm and damp period we’ve just had where there should have a been a summer.

Anyhow I looked up and down the street at all the wheelie bins and the plastic recycling boxes. Our council provides us with two; one for paper/cardboard and one for plastic bottles, metals cans and glass. I’ve always wondered how they deal with all the broken glass when they sort it (as it all seems to get collected in a compactor lorry so must get crushed). When you look at all the boxes in just one street it looks like a lot of recycling (which must be good), but also an awful lot of sorting and once sorted it must have to be shipped to different plants for processing, which must mean a lot of lorry miles, a lot of carbon fuel burnt and a lot of CO² produced.

I mentioned this to one of our plastic bottle suppliers who told me he’d been to visit a state of the art incinerator on the Isle of Man, where they clean burn all their rubbish as opposed to recycling it. So this lead to a Google search and the Sita EfW (Energy from Waste) website.

It’s worth a quick read as it’s pretty interesting and certainly worthy of a part in the larger debate. It does appear to create CO² emissions, but I haven’t as yet worked out of it creates more CO² than gas fired generation per say, or more than that generated moving recycled stuff around the UK (and/or globe!).

It looks pretty funky, which is I’m sure very relevant if it forms part of the view from your house, given the general not in my backyard view on these sorts of things.

Apparently the government (in their infinite generosity) are allowing us to avoid duty on diesel if you make our own biodiesel. You can make up to 2500 litres a year for personal use (about 20K miles worth in your average diesel car). You can get a recipes here.

The website says "Anybody can make biodiesel. It's easy, you can make it in your kitchen -- and it's BETTER than the petro-diesel fuel the big oil companies sell you. Your diesel motor will run better and last longer on your home-made fuel, and it's much cleaner -- better for the environment and better for health."

Sadly my vehicle (a VW) says NO biodiesel on the filler cap, so I won't be starting right away. I will however, be asking VW why not.

Our head of design Simon told me aout this site. Seems like a really neat idea as I've got rid of stuff in the past that still worked, looked ok and just needed a home. Anyhow, I'll give it a go and see if it works or me. The slightly cynical part of me is suspicous that the stuff ends up on ebay aftwerwards, but I guess good luck to them if it does, better than landfilling it!