bemoreeco

If you love The Mupperts then you will love this advert they did in the 80’s. Kermit, Fozzie and even Miss Piggy lend a hand to help the earth in this NWF short film from the 1980s.

Article by Tracey Smith, Writer/Broadcaster Sustainable Living

When I was writing The Book of Rubbish Ideas, my head was positively swimming with figures, stats and percentages.  The great guys at WRAP helped me UNwrap all the hype and eco-humbug so I could get to the heart of the news.   Here’s a little more, so hot off the press it’s still steaming, for you to chew on…

New figures released today by their Recycle Now team show that the value of materials that we’ve sent for recycling has reached £1.1 billion since 2003 as we continue to recycle more – an average annual growth of 30 per cent. 

The amount of rubbish being sent for recycling has almost doubled over the last five years, which has contributed to this marked increase in value.  Latest statistics for England show that we sent around 33.8 million tonnes of our waste for recycling since 2003. Had we not recycled these materials, the total volume of waste would have covered an area the size of the City of London one metre deep 40 times over, and the cost of sending them to the tip would have been approximately £1.8 billion.

Laura Underwood from Recycle Now said: “Recycling is a success story and it’s having a major impact. We’ve saved 30 million tonnes of CO2 which is the same as taking a third of our cars off UK roads for a year. 

Research proves recycling is the best case scenario for both the environment, and our pockets, so there’s every reason to keep a good thing going.”

In the past year alone, our household recycling amounted to 8.7 million tonnes. This included quantities of aluminium, steel, glass and paper equivalent to:

• 3.3 billion aluminium cans, enough to stretch around the world ten times;
• 8 billion steel food tins, seven times the amount of steel used to build Wembley Stadium;
• 2.1 billion 75cl glass wine bottles;
• 6.6 billion newspapers, nine out of every ten sold in the UK in 2008 

While current global demand for recycled materials has been affected by the economic downturn, latest survey results indicate that UK recycling markets are stabilising, with prices rising for higher quality materials. 

Laura Underwood added: “Despite a dip in prices for recycled materials, more than 95 per cent of material put out for recycling is being recycled, helping make the best use of ever scarcer resources. The feedback we’re getting from recycling businesses on the ground is that markets are open and recycling is still worth a considerable amount to the UK economy at today’s prices.”

Oliver Heath, eco-designer and supporter of the Recycle Now campaign, said: “Two-thirds of us are now recycling as a way of life and it’s good to know that doing our bit has made a real difference. But there’s always more we can do, so I’d encourage families to think about extra measures we can all take to recycle, reduce or reuse in our daily lives”.

For practical tips on recycling and a postcode facility to find out detailed information on recycling in your area, visit www.recyclenow.com.

Recycling Facts:

• Across the UK, recycling rates increased from 17% to 34% over the last five years
• Between 2003 – 2008, the 33.8 million tonnes of household waste sent for recycling would fill the Royal Albert Hall over 1,000 times
• The 30 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent saved is equivalent to taking 9.4 million cars – or one-third of all cars on the road in Britain – off the road for one year. Last year our household recycling alone saved 6.5 million tonnes of CO2 which is the same as avoiding over 1 million return flights from London to Sydney
• In total, for the period 2003/04 – 2007/08, the quantity of cans, glass, paper, plastic and textiles recycled was equivalent to the following:
  • 10.1 billion aluminium cans – that’s the comparable to saving 1.6 million tonnes of raw materials and, if laid end-to-end, the cans would stretch to the moon three times
  • 24.2 billion steel food cans – that’s 21 times the amount of steel used in the construction of Wembley stadium
  • 9.5 billion 75cl glass wine bottles – that’s equal to saving 5.4 million tonnes of raw materials including silica sand, limestone and dolomite, soda ash and other minerals
  • 26.1 billion newspapers – that’s equivalent to supplying all men and women in the UK over the age of 15 with one newspaper per day for over two years
  • 13.5 billion 500ml plastic bottles – like the world’s population recycling two plastic bottles each over the five year period
  • 2.8 billion square metres of cotton fabric – which if laid out flat would amount to enough material to cover an area the size of London two time 
• The recycling industry has an annual turnover of approximately £17 billion and contributes around £5.5 billion to the UK economy, while directly and indirectly supporting around 100,000 jobs.

When Good Housekeeping magazine interviewed the very good looking Brooke Shields, mother of Rowan, 5, and Grier, 2, she said;

“When you make choices to live better, greener, and more organic, it’s not always so clear-cut; that is, you want to do the right thing, but you also have to do what works for you and your lifestyle,” Shields wrote recently. “Sometimes that means choosing the lesser of two evils.

“When you become a parent, you would think the choices become more obvious, and they do — you always know who comes first — but then there are still trade-offs; there always are. I’ve changed all our products to eco-friendly ones, but sometimes I have to bring in something less eco-friendly as a supplement. I use all recycled paper products except toilet paper.

“I realize that just because I can’t go all the way and in every area, I still can make a sizable difference. In my mind, I may still lament that I haven’t gone even farther…. In my actions, though, I try always to be forward-moving, to focus on the change I am making.”

In an interview with Good Housekeeping Sheryl Growe,  mother of Wyatt, 1, said;

“When my son was 3 months old, I took him to the zoo. At the polar bear exhibit, Wyatt’s face lit up when he saw the baby polar bear. It was amazing for me to watch them connect — these living beings who share a planet. But I also felt panic and overwhelming sadness knowing the impact our environment is having on polar bears and on us.

“Yet I see something very hopeful in kids — the birth of new activists. Kids don’t just feel helplessness and panic but a sense of injustice, too. I sometimes think the thing that keeps adults from acting is cynicism, a belief that we can’t really change things. Kids aren’t like that. They’re awake to what’s around them, so they can actually do something about it. We teach our kids all these ideals: Let’s leave the Earth a better place than we found it. Kids are motivated not just by what’s in their heads but by what they actually see, like a baby polar bear. They can be the ones to motivate us, their parents, to change.”

When interviewed by Good Housekeeping magazine Kate Hudson, mother of Ryder, 4, said

“When it comes to living a healthier life, I really feel you have to call your own shots. I’ll make things myself, partly because it’s fun, partly because I’ve been doing it since I was little, mostly because it gives me a sense of control. I’ve made homeopathic treatments and aromatherapy treatments. I’m constantly looking for the best products out there, and I helped my hairdresser launch a line of organic hair-care products, free of animal products as well as parabens and sulfates [chemicals thought by some experts to have a negative impact on health and the environment] called David Babii for WildAid. Ten percent of the money goes toward protecting endangered species.”

“Food is another area where I try to exert control. Cooking is one of my favorite things to do; when I’m away on a set and can’t cook for Ryder, it drives me crazy. I like to get as inventive as possible. He doesn’t like veggies, so I boil them, puree them, then hide them in his food so he doesn’t say, ‘Mommy, I see something green….’ Often I put them in lasagna or other kinds of pasta. I’ll also put flaxseed oil or a flavored omega-3 oil in peanut butter. It’s all about taking charge. You can’t stop your child from doing what they’re going to do outside the home. But I can do something — quite a lot, actually — about the products in my home. That requires my being as conscious about things as possible, what I put in and on my body. Plus, I believe in constantly finding new ways to do things — myself.”

The team at The Green Baby Spot discovered this interview with Gwyneth Paltrow, mother of 5 year old Apple and 3 year old Moses, who knows the benefits of green living. In an interview with Good Housekeeping, she said that she grew up eating food bought from the local farmers market, and watching her mother develop a recycling program in Santa Monica.

Once Gwyneth became aware of the harmful effects of pesticides and other chemicals in food, she started to eat organically grown foods. Becoming a parent further reinforced her decision to choose organic foods. She said “When I’d read about what pesticides do to small animals, I thought, Why would I expose my child to that? ” 

Gwyneth revealed some more green living tips that she and her family implement: 

“Now, we also do other things to protect our family’s health, from installing a water-filtration system to using nontoxic shampoos. I try to open the windows in the day — an old-fashioned airing out — even in winter, because the air inside the house is often more polluted than the air outside.

Finally she said, “I just want my kids to be as healthy as they possibly can. And I feel like eating well is the best start for living well.”