/green

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/

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 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.