bemoreeco

Many of us this Christmas will give and receive new gadgets. Some of these with be eco and some not. The question we discussed in the BeMoreEco office was what is the best process of buying gadgets this year. What should our green eco gadget shopping tips be.

Well after some searching we found these Green Gadget tips posted by Plant Green.

If you delve deeper into the world of tress and shrubs around us, then you will find more reasons as to why we need to protect the existent forest cover in the world and why we need more trees to make the planet a better place.

Till recently scientists believed that trees countered the phenomenon of global warming by just absorbing the carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. In effect, reduction of carbon emissions was their only contribution towards cooling the planet.

But a new study indicates that there is a lot more going on than meets the eye!

Trees release a chemical called Terpenes which helps form aerosols by reacting with particles in the atmosphere. These aerosols ensure that the clouds form thicker than normal.

Dominick Spracklen, of the Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science at Leeds University, the brain behind the research, says that his team found this effect prevalent in boreal forests across northern regions such as Canada, Scandinavia and Russia. The release of Terpenes ensured clouds doubled in thickness some 1,000m above the forests, and could reflect an extra 5% sunlight back into space.

In fact, it is these Terpenes that give pine forests their unique aroma and scientists now believe that this effect would surely go a long way in slowing down the effects of global warming. A 5% of additional sunlight being reflected back into space is actually a huge difference and this can cause a cooling effect that can effectively combat global warming.

Any other conclusion than being good stewards to the planet and not steal its forest? We need to plant more trees. It’s a fact!

Source : The Guardian

The team at BBCGreen have carried out some investigation on the myths surrounding Green cars.  My wife is pushing me to replace our current car with a more Eco-Friendly one, but I am not to sure what is the best path to take. Hopefully this 5 part series we have put togther about the myths of buying a Green Car will help. Below is green car myth number 3.

Biofuel is perfect - Biofuels certainly sound great - after all, they’re a renewable solar energy store made from plants. The problem is that much bioethanol (the petrol substitute) is grown using land that might otherwise be feeding people and is refined in energy-inefficient factories. So far, it is also available in very few parts of the country - no fuel is green if you have to drive miles to buy it.

As for biodiesel, a high proportion is derived from palm oil, often in damaging monoculture on slashed-and-burned ex-rainforest land.

In a decade or so, it’s likely we will have biofuels produced with efficient processes from waste organic matter, or made by bacteria. The field is wide open and hopeful, but we’re talking mid-term for a solid answer.

BeMoreEco will be publishing a new myths each Monday over the 4 week so come back .

What do we mean by hoofprint? Well anyone concerned about climate change would do well to limit their beef intake, argues Duncan Clark at BBCGreen. I like beef and as all ways as a family we buy Organic Beef. However, when we start talking about Organic / Eco living and our carbon footprint, is a conflict with what we eat. For example producing a single kilogram of the beef can result in a whopping 36.4kg of CO2 – the same as driving a gas-guzzling SUV for 50 miles. What are we meant to do eat less meat or become vegitarians.

Many of beef’s emissions come from growing cattle feed. It can take 10kg of beans or grains to produce just one kilogram of beef. Growing all this feed requires a great deal of energy – for making fertiliser and pesticides, powering farm vehicles and transporting the final crop to market.

So is it possible to get a pound of flesh without a tonne of guilt? In the case of beef perhaps not, although if it’s grass-fed it is a bit greener, since it reduces the demand for feed. But even the most overtly “ethical” beef available – organic, free-range, grass-fed, locally sourced – produces large quantities of methane.

So what are you going to go. I feel that if you are worried about your carbon footprint, buy local, organic and grass fed beef.

To read the full article at BBCGreen <click here>

I saw this article in the Telegraph on Thursday 2nd October and found it very interesting that the Government are making us  improve our homes, but still need to get their house in order as well. They should practice what they prescribe.

About 18,000 public buildings are being tested for energy efficiency after a new law was passed dictating that their carbon dioxide emissions must be measured.

The measure ranks buildings’ efficiency on a scale where A is best and G is worst. Both the Palace of Westminster, which houses Parliament, and the Bank of England received a G. Between them, they use enough electricity and gas each year to emit 21,356 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

However it was not only older buildings that were found to be energy inefficient. Despite opening only six years ago, London’s City Hall received an E grade. City Hall was described by Foster & Partners, which designed it, as a “virtually non-polluting public building”.

It is now a legal requirement that every public building with an area greater than 1,000 square metres show a Display Energy Certificate (DEC) - similar to the colour-coded charts which come on refrigerators. The Government has promised to make all new public buildings have zero carbon emissions within ten years.

Emissions from Britain’s public buildings

(The grade reflects the building’s type and size, as well as its emissions)

• Houses of Parliament - G grade - 11,983 tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted each year
• Bank of England - G - 9,373
• Imperial War Museum London - G 3,664
• Imperial War Museum North - G - 1,396
• Natural History Museum - E - 10,026
• HM Treasury - E - 4,122
• City Hall, London - E - 2,255
• Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - E - 1,322
• 10 Downing Street - D - 675
• Job Centre Plus, Goole - B - 67

[Source: Display Energy Certificate]

To read the full article published at  www.telegraph.co.uk <click here> 

This is a great article we saw in the Guardian this week about keeping track of your carbon footprint could become as simple as slipping a mobile phone in your pocket: a London-based start-up company has developed software for mobile phones that uses global positioning satellites to work out automatically whether you are walking, driving or flying and then calculate your impact on the environment.

Carbon Diem’s inventors claim that, by using GPS to measure the speed and pattern of movement, their algorithm can identify the mode of transport being used. It can therefore calculate the amount of carbon dioxide that a journey has emitted into the atmosphere – without any need for input from the traveller.

The system’s inventor, Andreas Zachariah, a graduate student of the Royal College of Art in London and chief executive of the Carbon Hero company, said that Carbon Diem is the world’s first automated carbon calculator.

Because it keeps a constantly updated diary of a person’s carbon emissions, Zachariah said that a user can easily track their environmental impact and, if they choose, modify their behaviour to lower-carbon alternatives.

“We’re facilitating people to make little changes and allow those changes to be noted and registered and possibly shared,” he said. “If lots of people realise we’re in this marathon [in tackling climate change] and we’re not running alone, then we actually think people will be motivated to stick to changes.”

He has tested the software in Nokia and Blackberry phones, using computer algorithms to predict the kind of transport a person is taking. He claims that in tests over the past year, the software was almost 100% accurate in working out when people were on airplanes or trains; it was between 65-75% accurate at guessing when people travelled on buses.

To read the full article <click here>