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Appalled by a throwaway US culture, Amy and Adam Korst have embraced recycling, given up convenience food and boycotted excessive packaging – but cannot persuade their cat to switch to biodegradable kitty litter.
If you want to save the planet, don’t count on your cat. An American couple who set out to live for a year without producing more than a single small carrier bag of rubbish have discovered it’s far, far easier for humans to adapt to a greener way of life than felines.
Appalled by their country’s throwaway culture – the average American throws out about 4.5lbs (2kgs) of rubbish every day – Amy and Adam Korst, a couple living in a small logging town in Oregon, embarked on a personal quest last month to drastically reduce their household rubbish.
“As environmentalists, I feel like we are bombarded by so many different messages: buy local, buy organic, do all these things. And at the end of the day you don’t really see the difference it has made,” said Amy Korst. “But if Adam and I can get our total garbage output down to 5lbs at the end of the year, we’ll have really made a difference.”
Reduce your energy usage by arranging your FREE Home and Office energy survey today! Phone 0800 118 5722 to contact our friend advice team, we are here to help you and the environment.
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Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) has announced plans to recover all its packaging by 2020 and has insisted that the economic slowdown has not diluted its commitment to sustainability.
The news comes after the company published its 2008 Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Report, in which it outlined its intention to recycle 98% of the waste at its European facilities.
CCE has already reduced the weight of its aluminium cans by 5% – an innovation that could result in an annual saving of up to 15,000 tonnes of aluminium – and, after successfully recovering almost 125,000 tonnes of packaging in 2008, the company is currently more than halfway to achieving its 2010 recycling target of 200,000 tonnes.
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Two Kenyan students are hoping to market a device that allows bicycle riders to charge their mobile phones.
Jeremiah Murimi, 24, and Pascal Katana, 22, said they wanted their dynamo-powered “smart charger” to help people without electricity in rural areas.
“We both come from villages and we know the problems,” Mr Murimi told the BBC.
People have to travel great distances to shops where they are charged $2 a time to power their phone, usually from a car battery or solar panel.
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Burying our rubbish in huge pits in the ground is no longer an option in the 21st Century, says Stuart Wardlaw. In this week’s Green Room, he argues that a range of measures – some more popular than others – is needed if the UK is going to get on top of its waste problem.
Research reveals that Britain is still considered the “dustbin of Europe” because it is still dumping more household waste into landfill than any other EU nation.
It threw away a staggering 22.6 million tonnes of rubbish in 2004/5; in fact, Britain sent the same amount to landfill as the 18 EU countries with the lowest landfill rates combined, despite these places having twice the population of the UK.
Britain’s failure to invest in the more sustainable waste management practices based on the three Rs – re-use, recycle and recovery – has lead to an excessive dependence on landfill.
But these days are fast disappearing.
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The Irish Government has published new codes of practice setting out the powers available to local authorities to tackle fly tipping and contaminated land.
The code, which is aimed at environmental regulators, sets out the requirements for an effective enforcement system to tackle unauthorised waste activities.
It was published last week by the Irish Environmental Protection Agency who have now called on local authorities to get ‘robust’ on their actions.
It sets out details of the detection of offences, policies on clean-up and remediation, regularisation and powers of penalties and sanctions.
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A school in Stoke has recycled a commercial airplane to give wings to its expansion plans.
Pupils at the Kingsland Primary School were given the chance to choose what they wanted as an extra classroom.
One child suggested an airplane and the school, this week, opened the new classroom with ‘first class’ facilities.
The class room is a decommissioned S-360 which the school was able to buy for £11,000.
The scheme, called the Kings Wings, aims to not only provide more learning space but also teaches the pupils about recycling.
Head teacher, David Lawrence, said: “The children have been involved in the design and project management of the King’s Wings and will regularly use the aeroplane to help them learn.
“The children’s imagination has been fired up by the idea and they are enthused and motivated and we are sure that this will lead to improved attendance, give us better and more opportunities for speaking and listening and will raise attainment.
“The project has certainly raised aspirations and has caught the wider community’s interest, our aim is to use the aeroplane as a community learning resource too.”
Stop by our recycled products store for some amazing gift ideas that help save our planet.
Source: Edit.net
The UK’s largest anaerobic digestion plant capable of treating 165,000 tonnes of food waste a year and powering 10,800 homes has been given planning permission.
The building, which will generate enough power to run the town of Selby where it’s being built, will have a state of the art pre treatment hall to treat all packaged food waste.
Above: An artists impression of the proposed digestion plant.
The £20m project will also create 120 new jobs for the town 40 directly and an additional 80 jobs indirectly.
Construction is due to get underway in September and, as long as there are no delays, the plant, built by the Selby Renewable Energy Park, will become operational in 2010.
The plant will be built on eight acres of the former Tate & Lyle Citric Acid Plant in the south of Selby
Business Development Manager for the Selby Renewable Energy Park, Shaun Flynn, said: “Anaerobic Digestion is widely recognised by the government, DEFRA and Friends of the Earth as one of the best solutions for disposing of food waste.
“Everyone wins as the waste is treated in a sealed process reducing the generation of greenhouse gases and carbon emissions; a clean, renewable fuel is produced which can be used to create electricity and heat; and we are returning a green, sustainable fertiliser to the land which will in turn grow our crops for food.
“This project will provide a significant boost to the local economy by creating jobs and will also make available a cheap non fossil fuel heat source that will attract businesses to the area.”
Check out our healthy living store for more information
Source: Edit.net
The UK generates rubbish fast enough to fill London’s Albert Hall every two hours, and landfill sites are filling up fast. As rubbish decays in landfill sites, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas with climate change effects over 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
The good news is that recycling has doubled over the last four years. Some examples of how waste could be cut further include:
• producing, transporting and consuming food and drink causes a third of greenhouse gas emissions; but large amounts go in the bin – UK households spend an average of £424 a year on food that gets thrown away
• the average household wastes a tenth of their electricity bills by leaving appliances on standby – across the UK this is equivalent to the annual output of two power stations, wasting fossil fuels and causing climate change
• 5bn aluminium cans are sold in the UK every year, and many still go into landfill; although this metal is plentiful, it needs a great deal of electricity to produce – the same energy is needed to produce a new can as is needed to produce 20 cans from recycled materials
• the UK produces 3m tonnes of plastic waste each year, most of which is put in landfill – recycling just one plastic bottle saves enough energy to power a 60W light bulb for six hours
Do your part and start using recycled products in place of your normal wasteful products. Click here for products that can save energy by reducing your electricity usage.
Human activity has led to many natural resources being depleted and created some major environmental problems:
Fossil fuels
Increasing amounts of fossil fuels are burned to produce electricity and for transport – this produces carbon dioxide, which causes climate change:
• the use of coal has risen by more than half over the last 20 years and will continue to go up
• the use of oil is predicted to rise by the same amount by 2030
Water
Food and other products put huge demands on water supplies at home and abroad. For example:
• it takes around 4,000 litres of water to make a cotton T-shirt – some lakes in cotton-producing areas are drying up, causing the collapse of fish stocks
• world populations of freshwater fish have nearly halved since 1970 due to increased demand for water in producing food, fibre and energy
Grazing land
Demand for animal products is rising rapidly. It’s estimated that the impact of grazing has doubled globally over the last 30 years. More land is being converted to grassland, reducing other wildlife habitats, while over-grazing reduces the number of species that can be supported.
Forests
Wood can be a great renewable resource, but the world’s ancient forests are shrinking because of the way people currently use it. The spread of urban development, illegal logging, agriculture and industry are causing trees to be lost at about an average of 36 football fields a minute.
Fish
Over-fishing is a threat to ocean-life and to the food and livelihoods of over a billion people. As many as 90 per cent of all the oceans’ large fish have been fished out. Responsible fisheries management is needed to help protect marine life and conserve habitats for future generations.
Help to reduce and conserve energy by using recyclable products. These not only save you money in the long term but cut out the amount of waste in your bins each week. Click here to browse through useful recycled products which really can make a difference.
The latest figures from Defra and The Environment Agency show that the UK recycled almost two-thirds of packaging produced in 2008.
Last year UK businesses contributed to the recovery of more than seven million tonnes of packaging waste of which 6.6 million tonnes were recycled, the equivalent of saving roughly 8.9 million tonnes of CO2.
