bemoreeco

In the first-ever green think tank for children in the UK, manufacturers and retailers have been urged to do away with unnecessary packaging on games and toys.

The message came the youngsters attending the summit sponsored by British Gas, called Our Planet, Our Say. The event saw the launch of a new schoolchildren’s eco-group that represents more than 9,500 schools.

The think tank, made up of 20 of the schoolchildren chosen as the “greenest”, spent a day at Closed Loop Recycling plant in East London. Members discussed recycling issues and the part recycling plays in climate change and energy usage.

By the time the group concluded its discussions, it identified three policies to tackle energy wastage that it felt should be supported by the UK government.

All of the children involved agreed that new games and toys should be sold either with no packaging materials or have packaging significantly reduced. In addition, they urged soft drink companies to begin using only clear plastic bottles, which would reduce the energy required in bottle manufacturing and recycling.

The government was also advised to introduce more recycling bins and facilities in city centre, parks and other public spaces.

For more information on this article please visit www.clickgreen.org.uk.

Campaigns have done little to reduce the dirt and litter on our streets. So Flemmich Webb of the Guardian ask’s what will it take for people put their rubbish in a bin?

It has happened to most of us at one time or another. You’re strolling along the pavement, when suddenly one shoe gets stuck to the ground. With a sinking feeling, you realise you’ve stepped in chewing gum - or worse.

Walking through British towns and cities, it’s often hard to avoid the litter strewn across the pavements, roads and green spaces - anything from food wrappers, cigarette butts and dog mess to bottles, cans and plastic bags. A staggering 30m tonnes of litter are removed from our streets every day.

Despite numerous anti-litter campaigns over the last decade, the amount of litter being dropped is not decreasing. The latest data, from the Encams (Keep Britain Tidy) local environmental quality survey of England for 2007/08, shows that while there has been a modest reduction of 3% in the amount of litter compared to the previous year, levels have risen since 2004/05.

Since the 1960s, littering has increased by 500%, according to Litterbugs, a recent Policy Exchange and Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) report. It is an unwelcome consequence of the increasingly throwaway society we now live in.

The problem is not just an aesthetic one. Litter is expensive - it costs local authorities in the UK about pounds 500m a year to clean up our rubbish, money that could be better spent on more critical services.

Applying the law can be a problem, too. Councils don’t have the resources to fine everyone who commits an offence. And dishing out fixed penalty notices can backfire, with local people seeing it as yet another ruse by officious councils to squeeze more money out of them.

“Enforcement is important as it helps people understand that littering is illegal but it could never in a million years solve the problem on its own,” says Peter Ramage, the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s director for waste management, culture and leisure.

Source & Full Article - The Guardian 

The team at MoreEco have decided to support a student at London Metropolitan University with their dissertation on ethical consumers. Their research is focussed on a new bottled water product from Iceland called Icelandic Glacial which is carbon neutral. This is, they say, the first bottled water in the world to be given a carbon neutral label. 

For each completed questionnaire we will add 100 FREE MoreEco points to your account. If you wish to receive this please send an email to ’support  at moreeco.com’ or download a copy from here.

All responses need to be sent to ’support at moreeco.com’ by Friday 24th April. 

When a word becomes so popular you begin hearing it everywhere, in all sorts of marginally related or even unrelated contexts, it means one of two things. Either the word has devolved into a meaningless cliché, or it has real conceptual heft. “Green” (or, even worse, “going green”) falls squarely into the first category. But “sustainable,” which at first conjures up a similarly vague sense of environmental virtue, actually belongs in the second. True, you hear it applied to everything from cars to agriculture to economics. But that’s because the concept of sustainability is at its heart so simple that it legitimately applies to all these areas and more.

Despite its simplicity, however, sustainability is a concept people have a hard time wrapping their minds around. To help, Scientific American Earth 3.0has consulted with several experts on the topic to find out what kinds of misconceptions they most often encounter. The result is this take on the top 10 myths about sustainability. And after this introduction, it’s clear which myth has to come first….

• Myth 1: Nobody knows what sustainability really means.
• Myth 2: Sustainability is all about the environment.
• Myth 3: “Sustainable” is a synonym for “green.”
• Myth 4: It’s all about recycling.
• Myth 5: Sustainability is too expensive.
• Myth 6: Sustainability means lowering our standard of living.
• Myth 7: Consumer choices and grassroots activism, not government intervention, offer the fastest, most efficient routes to sustainability.
• Myth 8: New technology is always the answer.
• Myth 9: Sustainability is ultimately a population problem.
• Myth 10: Once you understand the concept, living sustainably is a breeze to figure out.

Source & Full Article: Scientific American

You should this foodie quiz at Planet Green to see if you are an “Eco eater’. 

How green are you when it comes to your food? Don’t worry, it won’t taste bad!

Finally you be surprised to find out what a ‘locavore’ is.

At denialism blog we have identified five routine tactics that should set your pseudo-science alarm bells ringing. Spotting them doesn’t guarantee an argument is incorrect – you can argue for true things badly – but when these are the arguments you hear, be on your guard.

• First is the assertion of a conspiracy to suppress the truth. This conspiracy invariably fails to address or explain the data or observation but only generates more unexplained questions.
• The second tactic is selectivity, or cherry-picking the data. Creationists classically would quote scientists out of context to suggest they disagreed with evolution. Global warming denialists similarly engage in this tactic, harping on about long discredited theories and the medieval warming period ad nauseum. But these instances are too numerous and tedious to go into in depth.
• Instead, let’s talk about the third tactic, the use of fake experts, where both creationists and global warming denialists truly shine. Creationists have their Dissent from Darwin list of questionable provenance. Similarly, global warming denialist extraordinaire has his list of climate scientists who disagree with global warming.
• The fourth tactic – moving goalposts or impossible expectations – is the tendency to refuse to accept when denialists’ challenges to the science have been addressed. Instead, they just come up with new challenges for you to prove before they say they’ll believe the theory. Worse, they just repeat their challenges over and over again ad nauseum.
• Finally, the fifth tactic is the catch-all of logical fallacies. You know you’ve heard them. Al Gore is fat! His house uses lots of energy! Evolutionary biologists are mean! God of the gaps, reasoning by analogy, ad hominem, you name it, these arguments, while emotionally appealing, have no impact on the validity of the science.

Source & full article ; The Guardian

Founded in 2006, Sustained is a printed magazine and online community. It’s an independent, upbeat, fun, cool-but-not-trendy, light-hearted and non-pretentious group, covering all the topics that surround sustainability - and what’s more it’s FREE! 

The printed magazine is distributed via local networks of organic vegetable boxes and shops, farmers markets, libraries, venues and events across the UK.

The latest issue of Sustained is out now. In Issue 8 you will find features on sustainable design for the future, community food growing, how to make a quilt, ‘Lisa Loves’ a GM debate, how to manage without money, the water trade, things to do and places to go, Trevor Baylis, Satish Kumar, do-it-yourself fashion and more.

They’re always on the lookout for new stockists so if you know an independent vegetable box scheme, organic shop or market trader, they can send FREE copies of the publication for all of their customers!

All you need to do is ask your local wholefood shop to order copies of Sustained for you from their suppliers with their next food order (they are delivered free of charge and come in bundles of 50).  National wholefood suppliers that distribute Sustained are the Suma, Essential and the Rainbow Wholefood co-operatives. If your local shop chooses to order from Suma there’s a catalogue code they can use – BK820.

Then just return a few days later and collect you copies. And if you have an event where you’d like to give them out just get in touch.

To view the magazine online and have a quick read before you order go to http://issuu.com/sustained

Sustained: small change - big difference…

“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.” 

-Rachel Carson

As a society we are becoming aware of the benefits of unstructured play in nature to a child’s social and emotional development. Instead of being told—as I was—to “go outside and play,” children are spending more time indoors and at scheduled social events.

Here is a list of some organisations which provide insight and ideas and rescources for greening our children:

• Children & Nature Network (C&NN)
• GREENHOUR.ORG, 
• KaBOOM! i
• The Sierra Club’s Building Bridges to the Outdoors Project 
• Take A Child Outside Week i

For the full detailed breakdown of these excellent organisations read the full article at SuperEco

Source; Super Eco

Massive investments in clean energy promise to keep farmers, urban planners, and green-tech entrepreneurs in business for the next decade. This guide to sustainability focused career paths will help solar-charge your work life.

“It’s time to bail out the people and the planet,” says Van Jones, author of The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. We agree, and this guide to to sustainability-focused career paths will help retrofit and solar-charge your work life.

Farmer - America has only two million farmers, and their average age is 55. Since sustainable agriculture requires small-scale, local, organic methods rather than petroleum-based machines and fertilizers, there is a huge need for more farmers — up to tens of millions of them, according to food guru Michael Pollan. Modern farmers are small businesspeople who must be as skilled in heirloom genetics as marketing.

Related careers: urban gardener; farmers market and CSA coordinator; artisanal cheesemakers; and other food producers.

Forester - Modern forestry is a complex combination of international project finance, conservation and development. According to the World Bank, a staggering 1.6 billion people depend on the forest for their livelihoods. Foresters help local people transition from slash-and-burn to silviculture–teaching cultivation of higher-value, faster-growing species for fruit, medicine or timber, for example while carefully documenting the impact on the environment. Deforestation, which causes around a quarter of all global warming, is also likely to be a leading source of carbon credits worth tens of billions of dollars.

Solar Power Installer- Making and installing solar power systems already accounts for some 770,000 jobs globally. Installing solar-thermal water heaters and rooftop photovoltaic cells is a relatively high-paying job–$15 to $35 an hour–for those with construction skills. And opportunities are available all over the United States, wherever the sun shines. Currently over 3,400 companies in the solar energy sector employ 25,000 to 35,000 workers. The Solar Energy Industries Association predicts an increase to over 110,000 jobs by 2016 — even more if anticipated tax credits are accelerated.

Energy Efficiency Builder - Buildings account for up to 48 percent of US energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. LEED, the major green building certification, has over 43,000 accredited professionals. But the cutting edge in efficient buildings goes far beyond LEED. Buildings constructed according to Passivhaus and MINERGIE-P standards in Germany and Switzerland, respectively, use between 75% and 95% less heat energy than a similar building constructed to the latest codes in the US. Greening the US building stock will take not only skilled architects and engineers, but a workforce of retrofitters who can use spray foam insulation and storm windows to massively improve the R-value (thermal resistance) of the draftiest old houses. A study by the Apollo Alliance recommended an $89.9 billion investment in financing to create 827,260 jobs in green buildings — an initiative supported by the Obama stimulus package, which specifically mentions energy retrofits.

Wind Turbine Fabricator - Wind is the leading and fastest-growing source of alternative energy with over 300,000 jobs worldwide. Turbines are 90% metal by weight, creating an opportunity for autoworkers and other manufacturers to repurpose their skills. According to the American Wind Energy Association, the industry currently employs some 50,000 Americans and added 10,000 new jobs in 2007. Their job board is an excellent place to start looking for opportunities.

Conservation Biologist - The granddaddy of diversity, E.O. Wilson, famously called conservation biology — a discipline with a deadline. The urgent quest to preserve the integrity of ecosystems around the world — and to quantify the value of — ecosystems services — leads to opportunities in teaching, research and fieldwork for government, nonprofits, and private companies. The forthcoming economic stimulus package from the Obama administration offers the prospect of increased federal support for science and research.

Green MBA and Entrepreneur - The concept of the triple bottom line has migrated from the margins to the mainstream of the business world. A recent report by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Mayors Climate Protection Center found that business services like legal, research and consulting account for the majority of all green jobs — over 400,000. This includes everything from marketing to the LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) segment, to serving as a VP of sustainability within a large company, to piloting a green startup like Method or Recyclebank.

Recycler - The total number of recycling jobs in the United States is at more than 1 million, according to recent reports (PDF, right click to save). Although the market for paper and plastic has slowed down recently due to the economic downturn, demand for steel is still strong — 42 percent of output came from scrap in 2006 — and recycling remains the economical alternative to high disposal fees. Worldwide more than 200,000 people work in secondary steel production, and the US is a major center of production. New laws and regulations are also creating a need for specialized companies that can close the loop by recycling and repurposing e-waste, clothing, plastic bags, construction waste, and other materials.

Sustainability Systems Developer - The green economy needs a cadre of specialized software developers and engineers who design, build, and maintain the networks of sensors and stochastic modeling that underpin wind farms, smart energy grids, congestion pricing and other systems substituting intelligence for natural resources. Coders with experience using large scale enterprise resource planning have an edge here, as well as developers familiar with open source and web 2.0applications.

Urban Planner - Urban and regional planning is a linchpin of the quest to lower America’s carbon footprint. Strengthening mass transit systems, limiting sprawl, encouraging use of bicycles and deemphasizing cars is only part of the job. Equally important is contingency planning, as floods, heat waves and garbage creep become increasingly common problems for metropolises. Employment in this sector is projected to grow 15 percent by 2016, and the jobs are mainly in local governments, which make them a slightly safer bet for the downturn.

Source; Fast Company

In the December 1900 issue of Ladies Home Journal, John Elfreth Watkins put together a collection of predictions for the future of the United States and the world by the end of the 20th century. In “What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years”, Watkins surveyed a group of “the wisest and most careful men in our greatest institutions of science and learning” about “will have been wrought in his own field of investigation before the dawn of 2001.

Some of the predictions are uncannily accurate, yet others are more than a little wide of the mark. We’ve cherry-picked 14 enviro-related predictions and coupled them with a brief analysis of what actually happened. Enjoy.     

1. Prediction: “Automobiles will be cheaper than horses are today. Farmers will own automobile hay-wagons, automobile truck-wagons, plows, harrows and hay-rakes. A one-pound motor in one of these vehicles will do the work of a pair of horses or more. Children will ride in automobile sleighs in winter. Automobiles will have been substituted for every horse vehicle now known. There will be, as already exist today, automobile hearses, automobile police patrols, automobile ambulances, automobile street sweepers. The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today.”

What happened: Partially true. Generally speaking, horses cost less than new cars, excepting show and race horses. However, the gist of the prediction rings true. Cars, trucks, and buses have all-but replaced the horse in American society as a means of transportation and performing work.

2. Prediction: “There Will Be No Street Cars in Our Large Cities. All hurry traffic will be below or high above ground when brought within city limits. In most cities it will be confined to broad subways or tunnels, well lighted and well ventilated, or to high trestles with “moving-sidewalk” stairways leading to the top. These underground or overhead streets will teem with capacious automobile passenger coaches and freight with cushioned wheels. Subways or trestles will be reserved for express trains. Cities, therefore, will be free from all noises.”

What happened: Most cities in the U.S. dismantled their street car networks or converted the tracks to light rail in the middle of the 20th century. New Orleans and Toronto still run their streetcars networks along essentially the same principle and layout as they did 100 years ago, while cities like Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have rebuilt their streetcars into light rail networks.

3. Prediction: “Trains will run two miles a minute, normally; express trains one hundred and fifty miles an hour. To go from New York to San Francisco will take a day and a night by fast express. There will be cigar-shaped electric locomotives hauling long trains of cars. Cars will, like houses, be artificially cooled. Along the railroads there will be no smoke, no cinders, because coal will neither be carried nor burned. There will be no stops for water. Passengers will travel through hot or dusty country regions with windows down.”

What happened: The top operating speed on France’s renowned high-speed TGV is 186 miles per hour. Which is actually closer to three miles a minute. Under special test conditions a TGV trainset has reached 320 mph. High-speed rail systems have proliferated in Europe and parts of Asia, but the U.S. has lagged. The only high speed train in the U.S., The Acela Express, which runs from Boston to Washington D.C. and points between runs at speeds up to 150 mph. Unfortunately, there is no “fast express” from New York To San francisco. In stead of taking “a day and a night” as suggested by Watkins, the trip would take you somewhere between 70 and 80 hours. Assuming a likely layover in D.C. or Chicago, we’re talking closer to three and half days. But they are cooled and they don’t run on coal. The trains do not need to stop for water, but they will often need to stop and give priority to a passing freight train one of the big four railroads who still own the vast majority of the tracks in the U.S.

4. Prediction: “There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods. Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the earth.”

What happened: Actually, “Air-ships” compete quite well with surface cars and water vessels for passenger and freight traffic. High-volume passenger air travel is often only competitive because of generous government subsidies, as airlines in the U.S. and elsewhere are well-known for going bankrupt because of the tenuousness of the industry. Air travel has still made very little mark on the short and medium length trips that automobiles and rail have dominated in. Air-ships, however, are indeed maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. And as the events of September 11, 2001 indicate, air-ships are also used as deadly war-vessels by non-military actors, too.

5. Prediction: “No Mosquitoes nor Flies. Insect screens will be unnecessary. Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated. Boards of health will have destroyed all mosquito haunts and breeding-grounds, drained all stagnant pools, filled in all swamp-lands, and chemically treated all still-water streams. The extermination of the horse and its stable will reduce the house-fly.”

What happened: Umm, no. An estimated 1.5 million people die every year from Malaria, a disease transmitted to humans exclusively by mosquitoes.

6. Prediction: “Black, Blue and Green Roses. Roses will be as large as cabbage heads. Violets will grow to the size of orchids. A pansy will be as large in diameter as a sunflower. A century ago the pansy measured but half an inch across its face. There will be black, blue and green roses. It will be possible to grow any flower in any color and to transfer the perfume of a scented flower to another which is odorless. Then may the pansy be given the perfume of the violet.”

What happened: The hybridization of flowers can produce virtually any flower in any color. As Michael Pollan so eloquently wrote in Second Nature, “Not that the modern rose lacks for novelty—indeed, novelty is a big part of their problem. Twentieth-century capitalism discovered the rose and decided what it needed after several millennia of successful cultivation was a full-tilt program of R&D, innovation, market research, positioning, and advertising. As gardeners are fond of pointing out, the modern rose industry appears to have modeled itself after Detroit. Each year it introduces a handful of ‘exciting’ new models, many of them in improbable neon and metallic shades better suited to a four-door than a flower…”

7. Prediction: “No Foods will be Exposed. Storekeepers who expose food to air breathed out by patrons or to the atmosphere of the busy streets will be arrested with those who sell stale or adulterated produce. Liquid-air refrigerators will keep great quantities of food fresh for long intervals.”

What happened: Refrigeration along all points of the food distribution chain is now ubiquitous in the U.S.  Ironically, however, many foods that are refrigerated are still exposed to open air as they are displayed in your grocer’s food-case. While not an unhealthy practice, per se, because the foods are largely over-wrapped in layers of virtually impenetrable plastic, saying it is energy inefficient would be an understatement.

8. Prediction: “Coal will not be used for heating or cooking. It will be scarce, but not entirely exhausted. The earth’s hard coal will last until the year 2050 or 2100; its soft-coal mines until 2200 or 2300. Meanwhile both kinds of coal will have become more and more expensive. Man will have found electricity manufactured by waterpower to be much cheaper. Every river or creek with any suitable fall will be equipped with water-motors, turning dynamos, making electricity. Along the seacoast will be numerous reservoirs continually filled by waves and tides washing in. Out of these the water will be constantly falling over revolving wheels. All of our restless waters, fresh and salt, will thus be harnessed to do the work which Niagara is doing today: making electricity for heat, light and fuel.”

What happened: Coal is (by and large) not directly used for heating and cooking any more in the U.S. Indirectly, however, coal is still used for heating and cooking in about half of the nation’s homes via the electric grid. As part of the total energy mix, coal provides about 22% of our energy needs, but that includes transportation fuels as well. In terms of the U.S. electricity mix, coal provides about half of the country’s capacity, though that number reaches as high as three quarters in some areas.

9. Prediction: “Vegetables Grown by Electricity. Winter will be turned into summer and night into day by the farmer. In cold weather he will place heat-conducting electric wires under the soil of his garden and thus warm his growing plants. He will also grow large gardens under glass. At night his vegetables will be bathed in powerful electric light, serving, like sunlight, to hasten their growth. Electric currents applied to the soil will make valuable plants grow larger and faster, and will kill troublesome weeds. Rays of colored light will hasten the growth of many plants. Electricity applied to garden seeds will make them sprout and develop unusually early.”

What happened: Growing plants indoors under electric lights has become commonplace in the United States and elsewhere. But exactly what is being grown under lights may not have been what Watkins had in mind.

10. Prediction: “Strawberries as large as apples will be eaten by our great great grandchildren for their Christmas dinners a hundred years hence. Raspberries and blackberries will be as large. One will suffice for the fruit course of each person. Strawberries and cranberries will be grown upon tall bushes. Cranberries, gooseberries and currants will be as large as oranges. One cantaloupe will supply an entire family. Melons, cherries, grapes, plums, apples, pears, peaches and all berries will be seedless. Figs will be cultivated over the entire United States.”

What happened: There is no question that fruits and vegetables are bigger than they used to be. One trip into the modern supermarket one will see not only huge strawberries, but also enormous apples, giant bananas, and so on. But what we have gained in size, we have lost in taste, as the larger fruits and vegetables are bred for commercial success and to survive long journeys from farm to table.

11. Prediction: “There will be no wild animals except in menageries. Rats and mice will have been exterminated. The horse will have become practically extinct. A few of high breed will be kept by the rich for racing, hunting and exercise. The automobile will have driven out the horse. Cattle and sheep will have no horns. They will be unable to run faster than the fattened hog of today. A century ago the wild hog could outrun a horse. Food animals will be bred to expend practically all of their life energy in producing meat, milk, wool and other by-products. Horns, bones, muscles and lungs will have been neglected.”

What happened: This prediction starts off weak and finishes with a flurry. There are plenty of rats and mice; horses are not nearly extinct, but they are used mostly for recreational purposes, as Watkins suggested.

12. Prediction: “To England in Two Days. Fast electric ships, crossing the ocean at more than a mile a minute, will go from New York to Liverpool in two days. The bodies of these ships will be built above the waves. They will be supported upon runners, somewhat like those of the sleigh. These runners will be very buoyant. Upon their under sides will be apertures expelling jets of air. In this way a film of air will be kept between them and the water’s surface. This film, together with the small surface of the runners, will reduce friction against the waves to the smallest possible degree. Propellers turned by electricity will screw themselves through both the water beneath and the air above. Ships with cabins artificially cooled will be entirely fireproof. In storm they will dive below the water and there await fair weather.”

What happened: Design-wise, Watkins was pretty spot-on with this one. But the ocean-going vessels he wrote of are used more often for short-run ferry trips (i.e London-Amsterdam).

13. Prediction: “There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America and its possessions by the lapse of another century. Nicaragua will ask for admission to our Union after the completion of the great canal. Mexico will be next. Europe, seeking more territory to the south of us, will cause many of the South and Central American republics to be voted into the Union by their own people.”

What happened: As I write, the Census Bureau reports the U.S. population to be 305,740,570. The number falls short of what Watkins predicted, but not by much. Watkins’ prediction would have been closer if: A) The rate of population growth not slowed substantially, and; B) Had we not been involved in several long wars/conflicts/occupations/etc., taking the lives of close to a million Americans.

14. Prediction: Hot and Cold Air from Spigots. Hot or cold air will be turned on from spigots to regulate the temperature of a house as we now turn on hot or cold water from spigots to regulate the temperature of the bath. Central plants will supply this cool air and heat to city houses in the same way as now our gas or electricity is furnished. Rising early to build the furnace fire will be a task of the olden times. Homes will have no chimneys, because no smoke will be created within their walls.

What happened: Yes and no. We usually only have one ’spigot’ that delivers both hot and cold air. Central heating and cooling is something that has not caught on in the U.S. as it has elsewhere. Iceland, for example, has an excellent geothermal network that meets the heating and hot water requirements for around 87% of the nations’ housing.

All images except © Jan Cerovsky (coal-fired power plant) are via flickr under a Creative Commons License; wjarretc (high-speed train); Geral Yuvallo (mosquito); foilman (horse & carriage); redjar (grocery refrigeration); markus hoppe (black rose); fihliwe (gridlock); tigerzeye(fighter jets); wot nxt (greenhouse); jeredb (strawberry); phillipC (ferry).