Posts tagged ‘transport’
Reduce: The Impact of Aeroplanes
You know how birds fly in formation?
Geese flying in formation.
Imagine planes flying in formation.
Planes flying in formation.
It would reduce the amount of fuel required bit quite a significant margin. The planes at the back could coast, to a degree, in the first plane’s ‘updraft’. As someone who flies a couple of times a year for work, this is pretty cool news! I hope the airlines start implementing this soon.
Cycling: The Way of the Future?
The Netherlands is the land of dikes dykes bikes. The land is flat, and huge numbers of the population use bikes to get around. Check out this article, written by someone in Amsterdam at the moment. There are just bikes everywhere. The author wonders if this is the way of the future. It looks like an incredible future to me. Huge, free bike parking lots, filled to bursting.
Bikes in Amsterdam (photo by Annalee Newitz).
We have a bike station in Brisbane, in the city, but I don’t know how well used it is. The website says 420 cyclists use it daily. I do see plenty of cyclists taking their chances amongst the cars and buses, and zipping along the bikeway by the river. Not like in The Netherlands though. (Incidentally, lots of the commenters on the original article talk about how in some places it’s too hot to cycle everywhere. That’s why you have showers in the bike stations, like we do in Brisbane. Duh.)
I really like the idea of a city full of bikes… if only I could ride one without falling off.
I can only go in a straight line on flat ground. If I’m having a good day, I can make a really wide turn. That’s pretty much the limit of my ability. I think part of it is the type of bike I’ve been riding. I used to do ok on the bike I had when I was 12. It was an old, classic kind of bike. No cross-bar (a lady’s bike for the dyke, thanks!), upright handlebars so I didn’t have to lean so far over to ride it. Sitting up works better for me. I notice that lots of the bikes in the picture in the Amsterdam article have handlebars like that too. My bike woes really started when I got too tall for my classic bike and Dad bought be one that was on sale… it was a pink (!!) cross-trainer with the skinniest tyres in the history of the modern Earth. The falling began. Yankee Elv’s mountain bike isn’t much better, it’s one of the ‘bend yourself in half to reach the handlebars’ type.
I can’t scooter, skateboard, roller skate, roller blade or ice skate either. Balance is not my forte.
So far, I’ve stuck to walking… but as the bikes zip past me on the bikeway, I wonder if I should give it a try again. They all make it look so easy and fast. I could try a classic bike, like these ones. Or maybe an adult trike?
Does anyone else cycle regularly? How do you find it?
Reuse: Meat for Heat
Tesco, a UK grocery chain, is not producing any waste. They’re recycling or reusing any excess stuff they use, don’t sell or otherwise produce. That’s pretty super awesome, especially since they’re not even required to do this by law.
Potentially overshadowing this very cool fact, howerver, is the fact that one way they’re achieving this is by turning meat that is too old to sell into electricity. Apparently enough electricity is produced per year to heat about 600 homes – from about 5000 tonnes of manky meat.
Gross.
Tesco - the UK supermarket that reuses or recycles all waste.
Veg*ns across the UK (and angry sympathisers worldwide) are all up in arms, and I can’t say I totally blame them. It would be pretty nasty to find out that, as a vegan, your good deeds were essentially cancelled out by the fuel used to light and heat your home. Of course, one would hope you’d be purchasing green energy… but who knows how this meat-power is marketed? Technically, some people might call it green – it’s not oil- or coal-based.
I do think it’s good the meat isn’t just going to the dump. That would be worse than using it for electricity, in my opinion. At least it’s getting used – waste is the worst thing. I gotta ask though… why is so much meat being produced (aka, animals being raised, slaughtered and transported in an environmentally unfriendly manner) that there’s such a large amount of leftovers that don’t sell? 5000 tonnes of meat per year is a lot of animals. It’s a lot of pain and suffering for them. It’s a lot of crops used to feed these animals, that could have been used to feed humans. Alternatively, the land used to grow the crops and house the animals could have been left wild. It’s a lot of methane produced. It’s a lot of carbon emitted to transport the animals (both alive and dead). It’s a lot of antibiotics and hormones and offal and waste and pollution and manure. Ew.
I don’t eat meat, but I don’t automatically write off all people who do. I do have a lot more respect for people who eat meat ethically and consciously though; really knowing where their meat comes from and how it got to their plate. Typically these people tend to eat organic meat. Folks who just mindlessly grab the mass-produced stuff off a shelf in the supermarket are not making an informed choice. This ‘meat for heat’ practice is encouraging that – basically suggesting that there’s no impact. There is an impact, a big one, and people ought to be encouraged to think about that.
So good on you Tesco, for going so far with your environmental efforts. I’m not even being sarcastic. However – take it a step further. Ask the energy companies to clearly identify who is buying electricity sourced from meat. Reduce the amount of meat you purchase, since not all of it is selling. Help the environment just that little bit more.
Cos seriously Tesco. Meat as electricty = gross symptom of climate change. Really gross.
The Elves in Melbourne!
I had to go to Melbourne for work on Monday, so I booked a flight for Yankee Elv and we went down a day early to take in the city. It was a good way to amalgamate travel costs and reduce emissions. We flew carbon neutral, which was surprisingly cheap, only $3.08 per flight, which is about a third of a tonne of emissions. It’s the first time Yankee Elv has been there, so it was fun!
So what kind of ELV-esque stuff did we see?
The Queen Victoria markets have a really big open-air section for fruit and veg, and one whole big aisle of it is for organic food. It was huge and pretty cool. If we lived in Melbourne we’d definitely shop there. In contrast, the West End markets up here have only a few organic stalls and they all cost a fortune. The ones in the Queen Victoria markets were fairly reasonably priced. Yankee Elv bought an orange for breakfast the next day.
The organics aisle at the Queen Victoria markets.
Melbourne is known for it’s cafe culture, so we tried out a place I’d never seen before – Hudsons Coffee. It looked like a one-off sort of place, but once I got inside and started ordering, I realised it was some kind of franchise, not dissimilar to Starbucks (with better atmosphere), which was a bit disappointing. It was cosy and warm in there though, and we’d already paid for drinks, so we stayed. I couldn’t figure out why they served our drinks in paper cups and our food in paper bags, rather than using crockery since we were eating in the cafe. Weird – and wasteful.
Disposable junk at Hudsons.
Speaking of cosy and warm, Melbourne is cold, and apparently even the locals agree. Why else would you see restaurants with signs advertising heated couches? I wonder how much energy that wastes…
Heated couches!
Public transport is pretty good in Melbourne, and a fair number of people ride bikes… probably about the same as Brisbane.
Trams and cycling and horses, oh my!
I’m not sure how I feel about the use of electric trams. I think they’re better than diesel or even natural gas buses (are they? fossil fuels still go towards the production of electricity), but the wires look ugly and they make the road rules weird! Plus, they scare the horses.
The trams scared the poor horses. Horses shouldn't be in the city anyway!
When I was working on Monday, Yankee Elv checked out this little veg*n fast food place called Lord of the Fries, right on the corner of Flinders St and Elizabeth St. She loved it – apparently the nuggets were particularly awesome. I like that there’s a veg*n food venue in such a populated place. It always seemed to have plenty of customers. I wonder if that’s because they don’t seem to advertise too much that they’re veg. When I was first in Melbourne and looking for a place to eat, I didn’t realise they were veg and I asked if they had any vege burgers. Needless to say, they looked at me a bit weirdly. At the time I felt like Indian though, so I didn’t get anything from there. I will next time though!
Veg*n fast food, Lord of the Fries.
And of course, no trip to Melbourne is complete with a stop at Taco Bill for dinner. Be warned though – although they make the most awesome chocolate mousse ever in the entire universe (that I’ve tasted), it’s not vegan (just vegetarian). I’m not an official convert yet.
Taco Bill and me.
Tell me about your favourite ELV-ish place in Melbourne!
Newsflash: Nissan’s electric car
Great news about Nissan’s new electric car, Leaf!
Nissan's CEO with the new car, Leaf. Photo courtesy of AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye via HuffPo.
Due out in 2010, it’s affordable and looks enough like a ‘regular’ car that people shouldn’t be afraid to buy it. Electricity is cheaper than petrol too, which will be another added bonus. Imagine fueling your car on electricity sourced from sustainable resources like solar and wind!
Read more about the history of electric cars in my review of the doco Who Killed the Electric Car?.
My only surprise is that with a name like Leaf, the car isn’t green, but I guess that would be pretty cliche.
Spotlight: Urban Farming
- Photos like these inspire me.
- Blogs like this intrigue me.
- Sites like this help me.
- Stories like this help me realise urban farming is a bona fide movement now! (Yankee Elv, clearly less obsessed than me, saw this post and commented that she liked the woman’s sleeve [tattoo], although she claims it looks better from a distance.)
In my own forays into urban farming (or urban homesteading):
My spinach has all sprouted except for one seed, and most of my experimental onions sprouts are just poking their tips out of the soil. Mr Teeny-bop helped me plant them, and I was hoping he’d take an interest in their development, but he seems to have gone back to the land of emo-teen again. Maybe next time? I can keep the soil nice and damp now, because Yankee Elv got me a watering can and duct-taped the hose so it won’t spurt on me or the clothesline anymore. These veges are the first things I’ve grown from seed since I was seven, and I’m very proud of myself. Modest too, as you can tell. Now I have to see if I can keep them going! (Sorry no pics, it’s dark outside – I’ll take some later).
I can't wait until I'm eating spinach I grew my very own self! (As opposed to this spinach, which I bought from the grocery shop.)
Next on the list: carrots and snow peas. I have to get the garden bed sorted and work out a trellis. I’ve done nothing with the compost bin since last week’s big clean. Also, I need; herbs for the front verandah, something (what? ideas anyone? maybe nasturtium?) for the hanging baskets, a succulent for Yankee Elv’s bedroom dresser and some water and steam-loving green something for the bathroom.
Not all at once, clearly. I still have a day job.
Reduce: Reliance on Transport
Lately I’ve been making a point of leaving work by about 5pm (sound normal? not for me) so that I can walk from work to the city (Brisbane CBD), where I catch another bus home. I really like it!
Normally I have been catching a bus, or occasionally taking the train, into the city. Since they’ve closed down my original bus stop due to road work though, I’ve been increasingly irritated by the need to schlep ages down the street in the wrong direction just to get to the bus. The only thing that made it worthwhile was that at the time I normally leave, it’s too dark for me to feel comfortable walking, and the traffic has thinned out enough that it’s much quicker. Last week though, I had an early mark and the traffic was so bad and it was still light, so I thought – hey, you haven’t walked into the city for ages, why not do it?’ So I did.
It was really pleasant; a nice time for me to stop multi-tasking and just think. It’s good exercise, and I liked watching the sun set over the river. So this week I’ve walked every day except today. I like it much better than my frenzied morning dash to the bus, I don’t hurry, it’s just nice and relaxed (although I do walk fast, I can’t help it). I like that the footpaths are typically quite wide and not crowded where I’m walking, so I don’t get pedestrian rage (kinda like road rage for walkers). I like that even just in the week I’ve been walking, I’ve started noticing the sun is setting slightly later as time goes by – the season is turning back to spring… eventually.
I’m very much enjoying trying different routes and discovering little quirks about this awesome place I’ve lived in for ten years. I love that this city never runs out of new things to see and explore. Yesterday when I was walking, I was looking at all the viewing nooks as I crossed the William Jolly bridge (another new route). I was also noting all the different kinds of manholes (yeah, weird, but I’ve been editing some work on manholes lately and it was actually kind of interesting to see what I’ve been reading about).
The William Jolly, or Grey St, Bridge. (Yoinked from stephenk1977's flickr photostream, full credit to him).
I like that it’s one less fuel-driven trip I’m taking. Even though it’s public transport, which I totally support, even reducing my use of that (and subsequently increasing my use of footpaths) is a good thing, I think. Tomorrow I’m going to try going along the boardwalk past North Quay.
Today I had to work late and I found myself ticked off that I didn’t get my daily walk. Looking out the window into the growing dark and seeing the silhouettes of trees, and then having to turn back to my laptop, was fairly frustrating.
I think I’ll keep it up.
Note:
Access stephenk1977′s flickr photostream here.
Recycle: Glass vs Plastic
Question. Is it better to buy a smaller glass container or a larger plastic container?
Answer? I don’t bloody know! I can’t decide. Help!
We buy Bertolli olive oil (extra virgin, fruity taste) and we go through it quite quickly. The Elves like a good EVOO, yes we do. Bertolli sells it in either a 1 litre glass bottle, or a 2 litre plastic bottle. So far we’ve been buying the glass one, but which one is more environmentally friendly?
We are currently buying the 1 litre glass bottle of Bertolli EVOO.
Glass is better for the environment, I think – it’s made of sand, silica and limestone and while it doesn’t biodegrade easily, it can be recycled over and over again, forever. I’ve also seen pieces of glass at the beach, all smooth and no longer resembling whatever they originally were. It takes way less energy to produce (especially if it’s recycled) and if it gets dumped, you know it’s not going to leach toxins or hurt an animal (unless it’s broken and they get cut). The eco-downside is that because it’s heavier, it takes more energy to ship, and it can break more easily during shipping, causing greater waste. Apparently it takes more energy to recycle than plastic too, but I think maybe that’s not considering fancy glass recycling plants like the Visy plant in Melbourne.
Plastic is made from petrochemicals and doesn’t biodegrade. It’s made of all kinds of nasty toxic stuff and hangs around killing animals for ages. Production almost always includes nurdles as a by-product, and let’s not even talk about the floating plastic continent of doom. It’s lighter and more durable and consumes less energy when shipping though.
I’m inclined to go for glass, but if we buy glass, it comes in a smaller package, which means more packaging to get the same amount of oil. I think they sell it in a 5 litre tin too, but our tiny house is not made for storing significant bulk food purchases, as much as I like the idea, so that won’t work for us.
Which one should we buy?
(Re)Use: Resources
While not an environmental concern per se, today I was flat out doing some work stemming from my trip last week. I was pretty frustrated and very tired and it got me thinking… I wouldn’t have to be doing this bloody work if someone from Melbourne had attended instead of me! I went on a trip to Perth the week before already and there were people at work who could have gone instead of me! Whinge whinge whinge bitch bitch bitch. Hello everyone, you can call me Groucho Marx, emphasis on the Groucho. I’ll also answer to Oscar.
Did I mention I was/am very tired? My eyes are seriously drooping as I type this even now. I’m not that much of a whinger normally, and I generally actually like work trips as I get to explore the country on the company dollar. I had one day’s notice this time though, so it was a bit much, really. I had to miss my workmate’s going-away party.
Me overlooking the Indian Ocean in Perth on my last work trip
Anyway, I thought about it some more and then I felt a bit crap, because in this instance, the Melbourne staff member who was supposed to attend was unable to due to stuff with the bushfires, which is why it was a bit of an emergency (read very short notice) that I go. But still – pain in the arse, although fair enough.
Throughout all my mental ranting and bitching though, I thought of these key – and environmentally friendly – points that made me feel a little bit better.
- My attendance (Brisbane to Melbourne) was better than flying the most appropriate person over from India. At least the travel was domestic.
- It was better to fly little old me to Melbourne than it would have been to fly 26 other people north to Brisbane. One versus the many.
- There was really no way to run this event via telecommuting or the company would have done it.
So for all my complaining, maybe my company did use their resources wisely, albeit mostly from a financial perspective (cheaper travel). The environmental impact is there nonetheless, but at least it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
I still wish I hadn’t been at work until 6:45pm today. That’s so not cool. Bah environmentally-friendly humbug.
And I was so busy I forgot to empty the work recycling bin. Oops. The director will give me a gentle reminder if I don’t do it first thing tomorrow. The things we do…
Reuse: Green Bags
Ok guys – this post is kind of a continuation of yesterday’s post on reducing plastic bag use. Yes, I know it’s lame and unoriginal, but when this post appears on the blog, I’ll be in Perth for work so I’ve had to write some posts ahead of time. This is the last one left, it’s nearly midnight at my flight leaves in less than 8 hours.
So seriously… let’s reuse our green bags.
Reusable green bag from HEB in Texas (we used to shop there... cos there was nowhere else to shop)
Why? Cos it’s, you know, the right thing to do. See yesterday’s post for more detail on the why. Today, I’m more interested in the how. That is, how do you remember to bring them to the shop!?
The grocery stores have taken to putting up signs reminding us that green bags only work if you remember to bring them. The only thing that does is make me feel guilty that I’ve forgotten. A sign at the shop is a bit too little, too late, you know what I mean? As I mentioned yesterday though, before we switched to a mini-rubbish bin, I used to use way fewer plastic bags, and thus used green shopping bags all the time. I had some secret ways of remembering to bring them.
- Have quite a lot of bags so you can have bags in different places.
- Keep a bag in your work bag/backpack for emergency shopping on the way home from work. You only need one, as you don’t normally buy much on the way home from work when you have to carry things on the bus.
- Keep some bags in your car boot – we normally take the car when we’re going shopping for lots of stuff.
- Keep some bags inside the house in case you want to walk to the shops. Keep them out of reach of naughty cats who pee on things. Trust me on this one. Don’t think the top of the fridge is safe, either.
- Have spare bags so you can keep on using them while you’re mending the older bags that start ripping.
- Have at least one insulated bag so your cold stuff stays cold while you’re walking home from the shops – this is most important in hotter climates like Queensland. Yes, I know we’re not the ones having a heatwave this summer (sorry Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney), but normally it’s hotter up here. We also have an insulated backpack, which works better if you’re cycling, scootering or skating to the shop.
- Put your bags back where they go as part of your grocery-putting-away routine. For example, after a big shop, gather the bags up and put them back in the boot of the car. Otherwise, you’ll get to the shop next time and realise you left them on the kitchen bench. That sucks. Once it’s part of your routine it will seem normal.
- It’s ok to buy the odd new green bag, but don’t go crazy. That’s emergency times only, and only if you’re a bit low on green bags at home.
- You can use any old bag, not just a green bag, if your groceries will fit. I’ve carried lots of stuff home in my laptop backpack before. It also makes it easier to carry on the bus.
- Enlist other people to help you remember and help you put the bags away as part of your routine. If you’re too lazy tired old busy doing incredibly important things, you can always have the kids do it.
How do you remember your green bags?
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