Archive for November, 2009
Newsflash: UK Goes Electric
Awesome news! Treehugger has announced that the UK government is funding new Electric Vehicle (EV) charging stations across the country. This is a fantastic step forward! I hope we get these in Australia soon, but of course the Europeans are first.
The UK government are funding EV charging stations around the country.
It makes so much sense to introduce EV charging stations in this way. Electric cars rock – check out my review of the movie ‘Who Killed the Electric Car‘ to find out more about why they’re superior to cars powered by other fuels (including biofuel). However, I’m wary about getting one because I wouldn’t be able to travel too far – there’d be nowhere to charge it except my own house. Considering how large Australia is and the kinds of distances you have to travel if you want to go somewhere, charging stations are important.
As the Treehugger article says, it’s kind of like the chicken and the egg – which comes first? People want to buy electric cars, but won’t because there’s nowhere to charge them. Conversely, no-one will build charging stations because no-one owns electric cars. But no-one will buy electric cars because there are no charging stations. No-one will build… yeah, I think you get my point. The only way around this is for the government to step up and fund either or both of these options, to sort of kick start the industry. Kudos to the UK government for figuring that out and taking that big step forward.
Sometimes I think it would be cool to live in Europe and benefit from all these cool kinds of laws and politics. Then I remember how cold it is… nah. I like living in a place where, when it’s not even summer yet, there’s more of my skin exposed than covered. Sunshiny warm goodness. Perfect for the solar energy I would buy to charge my electric car with. If I had one.
Spotlight: Bathroom Cleaners
What’s in your bathroom cleaners? This lady is in for a surprise…
Funny though this clip is, the message is serious. We need to choose our bathroom cleaners wisely so we aren’t hanging out in nasty chemicals just when we’re trying to get clean.
I use Earth Choice cleaners throughout my house. I know some people make their own cleaners, or just use some bi-carb and vinegar, but honestly, I don’t have the time. I need something I can grab and spray. Earth Choice cleaners are made without nasty chemicals and are packaged in small containers using a minimum of plastic. The plastic used is recycled and recyclable. The cleaners are concentrated so you don’t need to use as much, thus minimising waste and the need to buy more bottles. There are all kinds of cleaners, for all parts of your house.
No nasty suds-men in my bathroom!!
Jimmy Fallon and NBC’s Green Week
Ecorazzi does it again with their green news. I like this site, I’m glad I found them. (NBC, on the other hand, won’t let me embed their video into my blog for some reason, so I’m mad at them. Alternatively, it could be WordPress playing tricks.)
Check out this frickin’ hilarious video of Jimmy Fallon performing as part of NBC’s Green Week.
Pure entertainment!
Spotlight: Population Growth
Population growth is such a dilemma for me… I know that if I have more kids I want to have more than one. I have had the experience of raising an only child and wouldn’t want to do it again – siblings are so important to a child’s social growth. But is it worth giving a kid a sibling if doing so could damage the planet they will have to live on after I’m gone? This is especially relevant if everyone thinks the same way and wants lots of kids too. I’m so unsure about how to move forward with that.
I found the most awesome simulation of population growth/decline, relative to CO2 emissions. Check it out at breathingearth.net.
Screenshot of the Breathing Earth simulation.
Basically, it shows how many people are dying and being born, and how much CO2 is being emitted – by country, as you watch. You can hover your mouse pointer over different countries to get statistics at the bottom left. The key at the bottom is pretty easy to follow, and there’s an explanation of where the data came from below the simulator.
This is a stupendous way to really see the impact of population growth and CO2 emissions and how they’re linked. I was surprised to find that even small, apparently eco-friendly countries (like New Zealand, for example) often have something like a birth rate double that of their death rate. And I really thought Australia was at Zero Population Growth (ZPG), but maybe stupid Costello’s 2006 census speech, imploring Australians to have more children – ‘one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country’ – has reversed that. What a twit. Alternatively, maybe I confused ZPG with a downward trending birth rate percentage – it’s still higher than the death rate, but not by as much as it was some years ago.
In fact though, I’ve been hovering over lots of countries in the simulation and Sweden is the only one I’ve found with a ZPG. I’ve found none with a negative growth. It doesn’t seem to matter if the country is rich, poor, at peace or experiencing war, which continent it’s on…
CO2 emissions are consistently high across the board as well, but of course they are higher for larger countries, and particularly larger countries in the west. Although Australia’s seems quite low, when you compare it to the population, it’s actually pretty significant.
This brings me back to the question of what to do about having more children.
- Do greenies (and ultimately everyone) have to be altruistic and give up their dreams of multi-child families? We’ve seen how that works in China, with the One-child policy. Now there are significantly more boys than girls and impacts such as decreased marriage prospects, increased crime and social difficulties are becoming obvious. I don’t think this is the best choice.
- Perhaps international adoption needs to be made easier and more socially acceptable. For example, I would love to adopt, but in Queensland, you need to have been married for at least two years to even be eligible, and since gay marriage is illegal, that’s not going to happen for me. Plus, Australia has limited adoption arrangements with other countries, and many of the countries with an abundance of orphans (such as war-torn countries) are also very conservative and against sending children home with same-sex parents. Even so, in an ideal world there would be no war, no illness and thus much fewer orphans, so ideally, this wouldn’t be a long-term solution.
- Do we need to revisit the idea of a kibbutz, so children get to grow up with ‘siblings’ without the corresponding population increase? I’m not the biggest fan of the way the ‘Children’s Societies’ were managed, but some kind of communal living and financial/social equality appeals to me. A lot of eco-villages work similarly, but based on the experiences of similar living situations in the past, it seems that many of these places work well in theory but not so well in practice.
It’s not an urgent issue for me, but dudes, if you have any ideas, I’m open to suggestions.
The Angry Mermaid
Check out this video (all the action is visual, so there’s no language barrier).
Go to Sustainablog to learn more about The Angry Mermaid awards!
In Vitro Meat
In Vitro Meat (IVM): bring it on.
Check out this article from H+ magazine (ok, number 6 is gross and sensationalist, but otherwise…).
It’s cheaper, healthier, better for the animals, better for the planet… I think we should go for it. I also think governments of nations highly dependent on agriculture (like Australia) need to start diversifying, stat. Build an IVM factory, start farming hemp, build some solar or wind farms, something… cos those huge cattle stations are going to dry up with the drought.
Yikes. Creepy but cool.
Audi Ad Ticks Greenies Off
Check out this Audi ad for their new diesel-powered car (thanks to ecorazzi for posting and bringing this to my attention!).
30% fewer emissions than what… a bike? The bus? The vege oil car? Even the annoying guy on the footpath? (He really shouldn’t be riding there, and I would get serious pedestrian rage if he was telling me to get out of the way, but that’s beside the point.)
The point? I don’t think the new Audi has 30% fewer emissions than any of those. Maybe it has 30% fewer emissions than a regular petrol car.
Audi, is your target audience the greenies, or just the light-green greenies who wanna look like they’re doing the right thing without having to actually go to any effort?* Or maybe it’s the people who are sick of paying huge petrol prices. What are you really going for?
Cos I think you just pissed a lot of people off.
*I probably just pissed a bunch of people off too, cos that was pretty cynical. Oops, I’m sick, my brain-mouth/typing fingers filter is gone.
Reduce: Paper
I hate paper.
Ok, I don’t really. Actually, sometimes I love paper – like when I want to read a book (that I already own or have borrowed from the library – I try to avoid buying new ones). But I do like to avoid using paper unless I really have to. I’m especially conscious of it when I’m at work – reading on-screen and using notepads made from old company letterhead.
This article outlines some tips you can follow to help you reduce your reliance on paper. I don’t think digitising your existing paper is necessary for any reason other than personal preference though – you already have the paper anyway.
The other thing I would suggest is to consider other sources of paper that you can also reduce:
- Paper cups and other disposable ‘crockery’
- Tissues and toilet paper
- Paper towels
- Paper and cardboard food packaging (buy in bulk to reduce the amount of packaging).
Of course, that’s just reducing. There’s an awful lot of reusing and recycling that could occur – but reducing should come first.
Reduce: Tool Replacement. Grr.
Ok, I’m a bit ticked off.
We have a push mower – my parents gave it to Yankee Elv and I as a Christmas present in 2007. We were really happy to have it. Our yard is quite small, so it was great to have an eco-friendly (no fuel required!) way of keeping it in shape. It’s very achievable to mow it by hand and it’s a good work-out. I prefer it – I’m always paranoid that pebbles will fly from under a regular mower and hit me in the leg.
Ozito push mower, with blades no-one will sharpen or replace.
Anyway, the blades on the push mower are dull. We have been trying for more than 6 months to find someone to sharpen or replace the blades and no-one will do it. Bunnings used to (that’s where my parents bought it originally), but apparently it’s too cost-prohibitive for them to continue anymore. Everyone else has the same excuse. We’ve called mower places, hardware stores and tool shops. We even reached out on Freecycle and had someone agree to do it for us, but then he backed out. I emailed the mower company and got no reply. I’m very frustrated!
The mower is not usable, and we can’t continue whipper snipping the lawn, small though it may be. The day before yesterday, Yankee Elv went to Bunnings – one of those shops that won’t sharpen my current mower’s blades! – and bought a new mower. The fact that she needed to do that really pisses me off!! We got an electric mower, so at least we can use green power rather than gasoline… but that’s really not the point. The push mower we have is just fine.
It annoys me that people feel it’s not worth keeping up a perfectly good product because of their impact on their bank account. What about the impact on the environment? It’s not like the damned mower is recyclable even.
Grr.
Friday Feast: Natural Immunity Booster
I am sick. It’s nasty. I’m really not feeling good. My colleague at work (let’s call her J-Mo, not to be confused with J-Ho) has been telling me for ages about this remedy drink she makes to stave off colds and boost immunity. I’ve even seen her make it at work when she was feeling really poorly. I’ve been shying away from trying it though, because it sounds like a gross thing to drink, but I felt so crappy yesterday that I figured I’d give it a shot.
This morning I woke up feeling a bit better (really just a lesser degree of crap). I’m not sure whether the two drinks I had yesterday helped or whether I would have felt marginally better today anyway, but I’m willing to give the drink some credit! I’m keeping in mind that the drink works best at the first sign of a cold. I’ll be drinking more today.
Natural Immunity Booster Drink
Natural Immunity Booster Drink - ingredients.
Ingredients
- 1 to 2 cloves of fresh garlic
- 1cm fresh ginger, peeled
- Juice of half a fresh lemon
- A couple of teaspoons of honey
- Hot water
Method
- Chop the garlic up enough that the water can get to it, but not too fine or it the drink will be too strong.
- Slice the ginger.
- Add the garlic, ginger and lemon juice to a cup.
- Pour hot water on top of the garlic, ginger and lemon juice and stir to combine.
- Add however much honey you need to sweeten the drink (aka, cover up the taste).
I feel like I’m drinking a surprisingly tasty stir-fry sauce. Seriously. The lemon comes through very strongly.
Remedy Drink discards - compostable!
I would like to note that even in the midst of my sickness, I am pleased this remedy uses all natural ingredients. The waste can be composted and there are no nasty antibiotics getting out into the environment to wreak havoc. Yay natural living!
[Edit]: Now that I’m vegan, I often use agave nectar instead of honey. It tastes good, although not as strong or sweet. I kind of like that though. (That aside, I am not pedantic about honey in things. I think it can be sustainably and kindly produced, I just don’t think it often is in commercial honey operations, but that’s a long and involved discussion for another day!)
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