UNITED STATES

The following quote is the first paragraph from the introduction in an academic paper, presented in January this year, by Eric Pooley. A former managing editor of Fortune and a writer for Time magazine and who spent his fall semester at Harvard, he has written a very accessible report with the title: How Much Would You Pay to Save the Planet?

Suppose our leading scientists discovered that a meteor, hurtling toward the earth, was set to strike later this century; the governments of the world had less than ten years to divert or destroy it. How would news organizations cover this story? Even in an era of financial distress, they would throw teams of reporters at it and give them the resources needed to follow it in extraordinary depth and detail. After all, the race to stop the meteor would be the story of the century. When it comes to global climate change, it is sometimes said that we are the meteor.

Pooley is of course right when he goes on to said that the metaphor is flawed. But it is true enough. Averting or stopping climate change has now been ruled out; the ‘meteor’ will come close enough to heavily affect the planet. Everyone would accept that ‘mitigating’ a meteor would take some very determined and collective, across the board action just as our current predicament and that there would not be a single day to lose talking about who and why. Poole quotes from the director of the Environmental Defence Fund Peter Goldmark, saying, ‘It took ten years to get to the point where it was accepted that there were not two equally valid sides to climate science. [..] We are at the beginning of a new debate and we don’t have ten years to get this one right.’

Who remembers Wag the Dog, the 1997 film by Barry Levinson, with Dustin Hoffman helping Robert De Niro stage a fake war to cover up some sort love affair? It was produced and screened on cinemas during the Clinton-Lewinsky marathon in the Medias. Was there perhaps a really dirty war going on somewhere that needed to be covered-up by a presidential love-affair? The manipulation of the media is not a privilege of high office and sometimes the reporters, inadvertently of wilfully, do it to themselves. What Eric Pooley is investigating is how media in general deals with climate change and more specifically how environmental journalists has been covering the climate change debate in connection to a Senate bill. He writes:

In the first six months of 2008, as the Lieberman-Warner bill approached the Senate floor, the oil and coal industries spent $427 million on advertising and lobbying. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, another opponent of mandatory C02 reductions, held a series of “Climate Change Dialogues” around the country [...] The coal lobby prepared a TV spot warning that without cheap, high-carbon fuel, “We may have to say ‘goodbye’ to the American way of life we all know and love.

The battle over the truth of climate science is now to all effects over: almost everyone accepts that, yes, the earth is warming and yes, man is a major contributor and yes, decarbonising our society is necessary. The lobby has moved on from discrediting science to pushing the panic button of economic distress and the financial crisis, pitching those against environmental action. Faulty science was given equal weight in the name of impartial and non-biased journalist practice and flawed economics are now granted the same privilege. High-lighting short-term costs, for example higher electricity and petrol prices, the costs of greatly increased societal disruption are often left out of the story. Further on Pooley says, ‘This is the great political test, and the great story, of our time. But news organizations have not been treating it that way. [...] The press failed to perform the basic service of making climate policy and its economic impact understandable to the reader and allowed opponents of climate action to set the terms of the cost debate.‘ The end-result is biased by default if for example the reporter accepts assumptions that doing nothing about climate change carries no or little cost.

The role of level-headed, serious reporting on the politics of climate change -where legislation, economy and environmental details all come in the way of one another and makes difficult the understanding the big picture- is stressed over and over in Pooley’s text and he applauds the new environmental unit of the New York Times where eight expert reporters are assembled. It remains to be seen what news are fit to print.

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All quotes come from Eric Pooley’s paper how much would you pay to save the Planet?

The American Press and the Economics of Climate Change.

Download/read the full text here

Leif Ahnland

Posted under Climate, Corporate, Environmental News, How To's & Guides

SCOTLAND

Tomorrow, the 6th of February, Dundee Sun City Conference of 2009 opens – with a mix of interesting speakers and workshops with networking opportunities. What is called ‘a fair and local conference dinner with eco-entertainment’ is held in the Scottish city of Dundee that in partnership with the association Solar Cities Scotland [SCS] has adopted the sun as the future of energy. Offered a Sustainable Action Grant of between £26,000 and £39,000 by the Scottish Government, SCS have created the Dundee Sun City project. SCS was established in 2003 to

1. advance the education of the public concerning renewable energy and energy efficiency through a programme of training, publishing, demonstration projects, seminars and any other means for providing public knowledge and information
2. encourage and participate in research and development in renewable energy for the public benefit.
3. conserve and protect the physical and natural environment through the promotion of sustainable energy practices.

These three points are all present in the Dundee conference which is part of  the ‘participative awareness-raising campaign’ to foster changes in habits and outlook while creating a collective responsibility towards energy efficiency and renewable energy. The result is an urban community ‘that aims to develop a strategic approach to maximise use of renewable energy technologies, in conjunction with improved building thermal performance and carbon emissions reductions from the built environment.’ Aha. Aiming to develop a strategic approach is nothing for the weak of will power. But in Scotland it seems to work. The UK’s first eco-store opened on Hope Street in Glasgow ages ago and in Dundee there is more than just round table discussions.

The public is encouraged to get involved and come up with ways in which they can reduce building energy use, developing an approach which can be adapted and promoted to other communities throughout Scotland. The campaign was publicly launched in April 2007. A problem with some of these initiatives is when they are too well made. One or two features of the Dundee Sun City website catch the eye. First is the online footprint calculator. 944 households have until today completed a full carbon footprint audit. Still far from the initial target of 5000, the numbers are valid. Annually, these almost one thousand homes total an estimated energy use of 34,971,042.90 kWh and emissions of 36,027.04 metric tonnes. The site also tracks the impact of renewables in the Dundee inner city area. 414,530.60 kWh have been generated from wind, solar, hydroelectric and through which only 172.35 tonnes per year were offset, approximately 5 houses worth. Which could have been pretty good. But the problem is that more than half, 87.8 tonnes, comes from Green energy tariffs. What have we learnt? That three years of government funded and highly targetted campaigning in a well-defined and local context seems not to have achieved very much at all. Or is something coming about?

Literally constructive and very much more to the point is this very interesting and welcome ingredient Dundee does add to the green building debate: the Sun City House. Where the clever twist is? It is not a new build. Instead it is a major refurbishment and remodelling of a poorly constructed and thermally inefficient janitors house built in the 1960s. It is intended to function as a ‘showroom for technologies, materials and methods of construction that can be retrofitted to existing housing stock, where the major challenge lies in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the domestic sector in the UK.’ We do not need the latest and most eco-friendly alternative of every category of our consumption checklist. We need to understand how we can adapt both our houses and our lifestyles to a changing world. This is one of the lessons that Dundee Sun City Conference 2009 has in store for its participants.

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Visit the Dundee Sun City web site here.

See the Scottish Government’s page on Solar Cities Scotland here.

Leif Ahnland

Posted under Environmental News, Gas & Electricity, How To's & Guides

Having been in the pipeline for a while and in preparation during the whole of 2008, a new international body to promote renewable energy was officially a reality as a large number of countries signed the up to the International Renewable Energy Agency statute in Bonn on the 26th of January.

More than 120 government delegations from across the world attended the conference and a total of 75 nations, a broad cross-section of developing and industrialized countries, signed the Agency’s statute. Many others expressed their strong commitment to Irena’s goals and their intention to join in the near future.*

55 of the member governments of the organisation are now committed to full membership. The goal for IRENA is to ‘help mobilise the huge potential of Renewable Energy’ to mitigate climate change, ensure an affordable energy supply and energy security while fostering human and economic development.

In pointing out that huge potential, the unit Current Global Primary Energy Consumption is used [GPEC]. An estimate in the IRENA presentation material states that renewable energy, if fully harnessed, amount to a theoretical 2032 GPEC. This is naturally impossible but hints at our possibility to cover our energy use through alternative energy sources. That we have over two thousand times of our current consumption at our disposal relies on 1800GPEC from solar radiation. Painfully aware of how difficult it is to effectively make use of solar energy, the 200GPEC of wind energy is possibly more inspiring and the point the IRENA is trying to make is that a combination of these two and the 20GPEC derived from biomass and 10 from geothermal could see us through.

At the moment China, Japan, the US and the UK, along with other major countries are not yet on board making the IRENA another hopeful but perhaps impotent move, where international initiatives are reduced promotion and policy making. A spokesperson for the UK’s new Department for Energy and Climate Change said, ‘We are certainly supportive and in interested in joining but we need to make sure that what we are joining has the right focus. There needs to be more focus o the deployment of renewables rather than just talking policy and issuing papers and there needs to be a wider membership.’ What is meant by wider membership is not entirely clear, an organisation where everyone is waiting for the others to join will have trouble growing and remain hampered and, surprise, prone to talking about policy making. This draws to mind the problems of getting the major polluters to sign and implement the Kyoto protocol. With everyone waiting for the Kyoto successor, the climate conference in Copenhagen in December, IRENA is at least a step away from talk about reductions and carbon offset and towards actually building up alternatives. Talk is cheap it is true enough. But a signature of commitment is at least something and the countries still looking on from the sidelines are not helping what could be an important actor in the work towards switching on a large scale.

The chairman of World Council for Renewable Energy, German member of parliament Hermann Sheer and initiator of IRENA, told the the Guardian:

IRENA is the single-most important step for a speedy global introduction of renewable energies. It will give an enormous push to the use of renewables around the globe.*

The organisation has at present a budget of €25million gathered through member subscription and will give financial, practical and technological support to member countries. Chad for example, with a constant supply of strong sunlight is to date almost entirely dependent on conventional fossil fuel energies. The country will benefit from IRENA funded installations.

75 nations have signed signed on [see listing below, obtained here.] Iran and Afghanistan are among them; Japan, China, India and the US are not, nor are the UK. One wonders why.

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* Article by Kate Connolly and David Gow, ‘UK looks on from sidelines at green energy summit’ in The Guardian on 26 Jan 2009, p19

For an official pdf-format brochure on IRENA, click here.

For the IRENA website, click here.

Leif Ahnland

Founding Conference of the International Renewable Energy Agency IRENA

26 January 2009, Bonn, Germany

Signatory States

1 Afghanistan
2 Algeria
3 Argentina
4 Armenia
5 Austria
6 Bahrain
7 Benin
8 Bulgaria
9 Burkina Faso
10 Cape Verde
11 Central African Republic
12 Chad
13 Chile
14 Comoros
15 Côte d’Ivoire
16 Cyprus
17 Democratic Republic of the Congo
18 Denmark
19 Djibouti
20 Egypt
21 Eritrea
22 Ethiopia
23 Finland
24 France
25 Gambia
26 Germany
27 Ghana
28 Greece
29 Guatemala
30 Guinea-Bissau
31 Honduras
32 Iceland
33 Iran (Islamic Republic of)
34 Ireland
35 Israel
36 Italy
37 Jordan
38 Latvia
39 Liberia
40 Lithuania
41 Luxembourg
42 Madagascar
43 Mali
44 Mongolia
45 Montenegro
46 Morocco
47 Nepal
48 Netherlands
49 Nicaragua
50 Niger
51 Nigeria
52 Norway
53 Peru
54 Philippines
55 Poland
56 Portugal
57 Republic of Korea
58 Republic of Moldova
59 Romania
60 Sao Tome and Principe
61 Senegal
62 Serbia
63 Slovenia
64 Spain
65 Sweden
66 Syrian Arab Republic
67 Tajikistan
68 The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
69 Tunisia
70 Turkey
71 Uganda
72 United Arab Emirates
73 Uruguay
74 Yemen
75 Zambia

Posted under Cars & Transport, Environmental News, Gas & Electricity, How To's & Guides, Paid For Products, Renewable Energy

Note: This is labelled as Uncategorised as it has little to do with anything factual. But, since it is the Chinese New Year this weekend and the most recent figures confirm that the spectacular Chinese economic double-digit GDP growth over the last decade is losing momentum, the items below earn, perhaps, some weird sort of interconnected relevance.

Feng shui masters tell us that the Year of the Ox, which begins on Monday, will bring calmness to the stock markets.

‘This year of the Ox is an “earth” year, when people will take a breather and reflect on what they should do after a turbulent 2008,’ according to Hong Kong feng shui master Raymond Lo, who was interviewed by Reuters a couple of days ago.

So why not relax. Take your shoes off. After all, it has been very tiring to try to keep up with everything. The calendar offers us the opportunity to say, ‘Let’s start over, this year I will [insert illusion here]!’ The trouble is of course that come February, we notice that the waistline is pretty much the same as a month earlier. Just like the quick tabloid magic powder lose-weight-in-two-weeks diets are no real solution, short term cash injections will not help if we do not start exercising and eating less.

But fear not, this year help -in the form of an omnipresent super dietist- has arrived. We will all get thinner thanks to the general scrimp-and-save fever that has substituted the hopelessly naïve borrow-and-spend frenzy from the last few years. Hey, even White house officials are now ‘tightening their belts.’

More non sequiturs, anyone? ‘With the Moon in the Red and the ascendant in decline, the signs are up and about.’ Why, thank you ever so much, Mr Shui. Madame Tarot might have had something to add but we have not been able to reach her for comments.

The logics of Wall Street, High Street or any Bank-lined street anywhere right now, are completely dysfunctional. This is not news but just confirmation that as the recession celebrates its first birthday; its unmarried parents [Ms Market and Mr State] do not know what to do with their overly energetic, rampant lovechild. To be sure, technically it was born just now but make no mistake, the official birth date of this recession as just a formality. As for when it was actually conceived is another matter of debate.

In the UK, Prime Minister Brown just announced another bank bailout plan. Banks in the US, in response to declining revenue of companies with otherwise spotless loan track records, foreclose their loans as a pre-emptive measure. Some estimates suggest that over 50% of American small home building companies will fail. To the endless list of rude awakenings, we keep adding black Tuesday to grey Monday to bleak Sunday to scary Saturday to every down the spiral day since the beginning last year. And now we will substitute the Ox for the Rat.

Since this is not a 100% serious article (apart from the fact that the gloom in it is obviously not made up), here is a Wikipedia link with some excerpts from the article on the Ox as a zodiac sign. Enjoy.

The Ox is the sign of prosperity through fortitude and hard work. This powerful sign is a born leader, being quite dependable and possessing an innate ability to achieve great things. As one might guess, such people are dependable, calm, and modest. Like their animal namesake, the Ox is unswervingly patient, tireless in their work, and capable of enduring any amount of hardship without complaint.

Anyone springs to mind? Yes. 1961 was actually an Ox year. On second thought, here is the rest of the Wikipedia entry, it is irresistible.

Ox people need peace and quiet to work through their ideas, and when they have set their mind on something it is hard for them to be convinced otherwise. An Ox person has a very logical mind and is extremely systematic in whatever they do, even without imagination. These people speak little but are extremely intelligent. When necessary, they are articulate and eloquent.

People born under the influence of the Ox are kind, caring souls, logical, positive, and filled with common sense and with their feet firmly planted on the ground. Security is their main preoccupation in life, and they are prepared to toil long and hard in order to provide a warm, comfortable and stable nest for themselves and their families. Strong-minded, stubborn, individualistic, the majority are highly intelligent individuals who don’t take kindly to being told what to do.

The Ox works hard, patiently, and methodically, with original intelligence and reflective thought. These people enjoy helping others. Behind this tenacious, labouring, and self-sacrificing exterior lies an active mind.

The Ox is not extravagant, and the thought of living off credit cards or being in debt makes them nervous. The possibility of taking a serious risk could cause the Ox sleepless nights.

Ox people are truthful and sincere, and the idea of wheeling and dealing in a competitive world is distasteful to them. They are rarely driven by the prospect of financial gain. These people are always welcome because of their honesty and patience. They have many friends, who appreciate the fact that the Ox people are wary of new trends, although every now and then they can be encouraged to try something new.

It is important to remember that the Ox people are sociable and relaxed when they feel secure, but occasionally a dark cloud looms over such people and they engage all the trials of the whole world and seek solutions for them. Also the Ox people are all caring and loving but at times when you mess with them they will tear out in anger.

Wow. The Ox is now in charge. May Wikipedia and Chinese astrology be for real, both of them?

Posted under Environmental News, How To's & Guides, Uncategorized

A note on old school barbarians. They probably had a fairly organic, no-nonsense sort of approach to things in general; almost surely good at recycling, reuse, dealing with resource scarcity and, we are inclined to believe, rarely washed. Straightforward and honest if you will. The Roman Empire that the Vandals and Visigoths helped bring down, for all its roads and hot baths and technological superiority, was a large and unsustainable machine built on ideas of continuous expansion/growth, progress and war-induced peace, brimful of greed, deceit and vanity. This ex-empire is sometimes brought up today as a case in point to illustrate what happens now. In the words of Glen W. Bowersock, ‘from the eighteenth century onward, we have been obsessed with the fall; it has been valued as an archetype for every perceived decline, and, hence, as a symbol for our own fears.’ And if the decline and fall of the Roman empire is a valid precedent to our contemporary predicament, Arnold Toynbee, a British historian, might have added that in an environment of societal collapse, people resort to:

• archaism (idealisation of the past);
• futurism (idealisation of the future);
• detachment (removal of oneself from the realities of a decaying world), and;
• transcendence (meeting the challenges of the decaying civilization with new insight, as a Prophet).

What we have today is a rock n’ roll mixture of the above four points and many of the elements of what is believed to have usurped Roman hegemony such as lead poisoning, environmental degradation, deforestation, overly populated cities, civil wars, shortage of raw materials and low mining output. The difference is the magnitude and speed with which things happen these days. Some things just stay the same and greenwashing is a modern variant of good old deceit.

In a more down to earth kind of way, greenwashing would be using eco-friendly laundry powder or organic olive soap perhaps. And in many cases of corporate greenwashing that is probably part what is going on, they will make a big show of using green products wherever it can be seen from the outside. But the company in question may also boast that ‘We are proud to announce that we are now Carbon Neutral’ or ’100% of our Office paper is recycled’ or just about any ‘We have started to [insert favourite eco activity here] and intend to [insert bold statement here] in our upcoming blablabla.’ In the end, as individual actors [one person or a multi-national corporation] we can first of all see to minimising our own impact. This makes [eco]switching to a low-impact alternative a vital first step and cannot really be underestimated as such, be it locally produced groceries for a family dinner or implementing energy-saving measures in the company HQ. So far so good.

Indeed, as 2008 showed, not many companies can afford a 100% crash-and-burn attitude towards the environment but must be able to flash a brochure full of green credentials in the face of journalists or inquisitive customers. Of course, in a world as weird and crooked as ours, many of them will be hard put to it when there is such a large difference between what they are actually doing and how they want to come off publicly. Therefore, it is when reading BP statements or F1 Carbon offset measures in Mexico that we raise an eyebrow. ‘Aha… Greenwashing…’ A frustrated Ian Thompson says:

All this supposed ‘green’ focus is nothing more than an attempt to sell us products. What these companies have recognised is that consumers want to buy green products so that they can feel better about themselves. I’m willing to bet some of these companies would cheerfully club seals or burn rainforest if people liked the idea and it got them more sales *

Healthy suspicion is hereby encouraged if not outright demanded. And it is easy to shout ‘boo’  at what seems like green lies. (I usually do auth. note). To then instead try and make a case for greenwashing will of course be a tightrope walking exercise; how can something like willful trickery and intricate lying be, if not defended, then at least understood and to a certain degree accepted?

Let us try and keep it simple then. Any one thing/action that can have a positive influence on human-nature-human relationships must be good. With a bombardment of greengoing corporate messages around us and even if we sometimes get sick of doublefaced book keeping, what we can try and do is hold them to it. James Murray would prefer it if we gave them the benefit of the doubt:

Surely all that matters is whether they are seeking to cut their environmental impact or not and whether they are doing so effectively? In fact, I prefer it if their green initiatives are driven by a desire to make profits, as at least that gives them the ultimate incentive to make sure they are successful. [..] Green marketing messages might run ahead of a company’s overall ability to deliver green products and services, and will almost certainly run ahead of their ability to decarbonise their operations. But what they demonstrate is the company’s awareness that these products and services are desirable and will resonate with customers.**

So having read that and realising that nothing of this is simple, we are almost back on square one. What do we make of greenwashing? Murray has a point when he says that profit will be the best incentive for companies to really fulfill green promises and that green marketing demonstrates awareness. But to accept that we live in an age where demonstrating awareness is good enough is simply not good enough. To conclude, let people and companies and politicians boast and make claims. And then, when they quiet down a bit, hold them to it, Organic Barbarian Style.

* Blog post ‘CES 2009 Greenwash’ by Ian Thompson on Silicin Valley Seuth, read it here  here.

** Blog article ‘Is Greenwash really all that bad?’ by James Murray on Businessgreen Blog, read it here.

Leif Ahnland leif ahnland

Posted under Corporate, How To's & Guides

With carbon footprints, environment and sustainability permeating every public discourse, our medias are awash with terminology that everyone seems to take for granted. But behind innocent abbreviations, the practical application of units, theories and concepts is strangely elusive. It could be a good idea to clarify some of them. First one out, kWh.

Kilowatt Hour. It is the measure used to determine the electricity consumption for much of what we do, from omelet cooking to online chatting. We use them, we pay for them, we talk about them. In order to really know what a kilowatt hour is, we can try and translate them into a more concrete illustration of kWh per basic, everyday human activity. For example, here is what you can do with 1 kilowatt-hour: shave 1200 times with electric shavers (> 3 years), dry your hair 15 times, watch TV for four evenings, listen to 15 CDs, use a small refrigerator for 24 hours, microwave 20 meals, make 250 holes with a power drill, enjoy four evenings of light with 60 W incandescent bulbs or bask in 20 evenings of light with 11 W compact fluorescent light bulbs. As clear as this may appear; the length of your hair, what you consider a TV night, what you microwave and if you you go to bed at 9pm or 1am will influence heavily on the actual electricity spending. For what it is worth, it shows that such a mundane and seemingly irrelevant thing as cutting your hair can be environmentally friendly. Will the next governmental regulation be nationwide mandatory crew cuts for all? And, in these harsh times, we have to remember that this would create a lot of green collar jobs in hair dressing. Going green can be so simple at times, what are we waiting for?

More seriously, listing things where numbers become actions is a good way of understanding our impact. Using a 60 Watt light bulb for one hour consumes 0.06 kilowatt hours of electricity. Using a 60 Watt light bulb for one thousand hours -the typical life time for an incandescent light bulb- consumes 60 kilowatt hours of electricity. If a 100 Watt light bulb is on for one hour per day for 30 days that is 100/1000 (kilowatt) X 30 (hours) = 3 kilowatt hours. But it is almost getting too abstract already, let us stick with the plan: maximum hair length 1 cm.

As a personal anecdote I might add that since the single glazing in my terrace house flat is so useless at keeping the heat inside and so good at letting the cold in, I decided to board them up to get rid of the draft. The question is if the fact that I have to keep the lights on 24/7 negates what I save in heating. This arrangement will probably have to last until April so it means that, since I work mostly from home, I will on an average day (14-18hours) spend: 11 W x 100days x 16hours = approximately 16 kilo watt hours in lighting for my workplace alone. It is a gloomy prospect to spend the best part of three months in a dark cave in the company of a single low energy light bulb.

Oh well. Life is hard Leif. Welcome to England.

Posted under Gas & Electricity, How To's & Guides, Lifestyle & Fashion

I know what your thinking; “What has my lifestyle got to do with being eco-friendly?”

The answer; a lot.

The way that we live our lives can be altered so that we are living in an eco friendly way, for example, why drive to work when you can walk (if your place of work is close enough of course)?

A lot of people have outside lights either by their front door, in their back gardens or possibly in both, and a lot of these people have these lights on even when they are not outside, because “they look good”, which basically means that it is a ‘fashion statement’. If you’re not outside, turn the lights off, they are of no benefit to you.

Driving; a lot of people enjoy driving big cars, especially in the United States, but driving a small, energy efficient car is less polluting and not to mention cheaper. This benefits both your bank account and the environment.

It is estimated that 5 to 15 per cent of household electricity consumption worldwide, is wasted on stand-by mode. Over £150 million worth of electricity is wasted each year in the UK by simply keeping televisions and DVD players on stand-by. If we could eliminate this waste, we could close over one in 20 electricity power stations in the UK.

When you go shopping, like a lot of people, I’m guessing that you use new plastic bags every time that you go. But it is estimated that nearly 750 billion plastic bags are used worldwide every year. The vast majority of these end up in landfill sites. Buying a reusable one involves a small initial financial cost, but it eliminates that mountain of used plastic bags that accumulates in the back of our cupboards. Added to this, shops such as Marks & Spencers and Aldi charge you for the use of their plastic bags and Tesco take away club-card points for every bag that you use.

Drink tap water, not bottled. The difference in taste; not alot. As a whole, the human race like a drink with them on trips to the shopping centre or in the car, but if you use the same bottle, you could eliminate the waste of plastic in your household. But the number of people that drink water from bottles, added with the number of people that DON’T reuse the bottle, and just tend to throw the bottle away, is astronomically high. Recycle these bottles, either by reusing them yourself or putting them in the recycling bins. Or better yet, drink tap water and add ice to the drink.

When we cut the grass a lot of people throw the grass clippings in the bin. But if we throw the grass clippings on the grass, and leave them to decompose, it will improve your lawn AND prevent you from adding to the waste in our landfills.

Posted under Gardening & Outdoors, How To's & Guides, Lifestyle & Fashion

Wouldn’t it be awfully nice to plant a tree in stead of cutting one down in an altruistic spirit of Christmas? To know that somewhere out there, a gesture of yours that actually means something is turned into action. The NGO’s have been doing it for years after all and if I may indulge a little bit in self-righteousness, last Christmas my six nephews/nieces received 1000sqm each of rain forest. And that was it, no dolls, computer-games or plastic consumerism. Most of the recipients too small to understand the significance of such a gift did not seem to mind. I felt very proud and conscientious. Nothing to do with carbon offset it is true but still, a tree-hugging whim all the same. This year the alternative feel-good of inverse Christmas tree planting has reached impressive proportions with everyone, from Formula One to manufacturers of air-conditioners sowing forests to ease the bad conscience and showcase some green washing goodwill. Fair enough, it is probably better than nothing even if no-one seems to know exactly how much CO2 one tree actually soaks up. The only thing they (the newly green companies no matter what business they are in) usually want in exchange is your signature on some contract, be it for electricity or a brand new car. Sign-up now and save the world! So once again is up to you and me, the consumers, to do our bit. Since it is at least something it is perhaps not anything to get worked up about. But then we have something that is really endearing, it is when the top ten polluters do the same. From The Guardian today:

BP, one of the world’s biggest producers of carbon-emitting products [...] reported that among 100 trees planted for Andara at Alladale on 15 September 2008, the company had “allotted one tree to BP to offset carbon emissions of 0.75 tons per tree”. It’s nice to know BP is doing its bit for the climate, after all. *

Well, it is always something right? Let us put it this way, if you plant a tree it makes up for a larger percentage of your carbon footprint than that of BP when they plant one.

Merry Christmas tree planting.

* Article ‘Greenwash: Carbon offset trees are not just for Christmas’ by Fred Pearce in The Guardian 18 December 2008, read it here.

Leif Ahnland leif ahnland

Posted under Climate, Corporate, Environmental News, Gardening & Outdoors, How To's & Guides, Wildlife

The Royal Institute of British Architects is staging a competition for the design of a Wildflower Centre, the deadline for stage one of two is the 7th January next year. Launched in the middle of November, that leaves less than two months to complete the proposal. It may sound like a trivial objection but considering the Christmas holidays coming up; it leaves a very short time to produce a decent green building proposal.

How sustainable and green should a building, housing the new section of the National Wildflower Centre, be? A rhetorical question it would seem, the answer simply must be all the way. Landmark buildings today cannot ignore issues of sustainability and ecology; a design competition for a fairly large scale competition on a theme pertaining to flowers; going green is inevitable. So, apart from normal considerations, the participating teams will have their work cut out for them. Because, in all honesty, how good are we at green building? In a reality where cost dictates almost everything, time has to be allocated to make the most of available resources. With contractors routinely circumventing the architect’s design, we all too often see simplistic compromises. This should have nothing to do with building regulations or green guides; this is an issue of common sense and looking ahead.

The two-stage competition model is probably the best way to ensure qualitative design. But, if the stage one entries are to be rushed, there is a risk that proposals that would have needed more time and effort are likely to be neglected for the wrong reasons in favour of easy, quick, catalogue solutions. Any architect will tell you that the design process takes more time than there is usually room for.

What will make a proposal for the centre a winner? From the RIBA official presentation document [downloadable copy available here]:

Assessment Criteria

The Jury Panel will make their selection at the first stage on the basis of the following criteria:

* Preliminary response to the site and client brief

* Demonstration of clear thinking and understanding of the fundamental issues involved

* An innovative and architecturally striking design

* An outstanding example of sustainable design

* Cost considerations

With a fourth point hopefully followed through by participants and jury alike, we will follow up with interest the results of stage one. Having read the brief it does seem that this fourth point is weighted as it deserves but the short time factor will still play its role; let us hope it will not the determining one. Examining all initiatives of the sort, be it buildings, eco cars or switching light build campaigns; we take a deep breath, cross our fingers and touch some wood. We wish the participants a merry Christmas and that they will be taking their proposals and themselves seriously enough. Who knows, there might be some tips for your garden shed or extension in the outcome.

Posted under Eco Build, Environmental News, Gas & Electricity, How To's & Guides

Whilst browsing the internet, looking for a holiday destination next summer, I came across these eco-friendly hotels in Europe. So I thought that I would share them with EcoSwitch users.
The term ‘eco hotel’ is used to describe accommodation that has been built with important environmental improvements in its structure. This minimises the impact that it has upon the environment. There are a certain criteria that these hotels have to meet in order to be listed as an eco hotel;

• A dependence upon the on the natural environment
• Environment sustainability
• Have a proven contribution training programmes

As a label, ‘eco hotel’ is used on a regular basis by websites that are devoted to the subject of being environmentally friendly, and hotel managers wanting their hotel to be of interest to ecological travellers as well as less environmentally assertive tourists.

France
Hotel Chomel
15 Rue Chomel
75007 Paris
Telephone: +33 01454 85552

Hotel Gabriel Paris Marais
25 Rue de Grande-Prieure
75011 Paris
Telephone: +33 14700 1338

Germany
Landhotel Wiesenhof
Langestrabe 35
72535 Heroldstatt
Telephone: 07389 90950

Italy
Tradizione & Natura
Corso Torino 24/3
16129 Genova
Telephone: 01057 01042

Want to find out more about these hotels? Click on the links that I have provided below:

http://www.chomel-paris-hotel.com

http://www.paris-hotel-plessis.com

http://www.lebellechasse.com

http://www.landhotel-wiesenhof.de

http://www.tradizionenatura.it

http://www.stravenguesthouse.com

Posted under Articles, Eco Travel, How To's & Guides