Some smart chaps in the Netherlands have designed a new font, which can save ink when printed. As seen in the image above it does this by introducing 'holes' to the font which, when printed in standard document sizes in a laser printer, do not appear visibly to the naked eye.
Apparently research suggests a saving of 20% ink from use of the Ecofont, which is obviously only a good thing in terms of reducing wastage (money and resources). In terms of office based conservationism (a subject I'm keen on and am in the process of writing a post about) this could be a really neat little tool so well worth shouting about.
A worrying situation appears to be brewing in Asia at the moment. Burger King, the world's second largest burger retailer, is aiming to expand its stake in the Chinese market. The fast food market in China is estimated to be only a $29 million industry however people believe this is set to grow considerably.
One of the problems faced by Burger King when expanding in the Chinese market is that the Chinese consumer much prefers chicken. Whilst Burger King has adapted it's menus towards chicken products it hopes to piggy back the marketing McDonalds have already undertaken in China to promote beef. This has been carried out through adverts such as the 'Feel the Beef' campaign aiming to promote the sexy Western view of beef. Apparently this advertising has already had some success in changing the views of beef in China (see Economist article).
Where the worry arises is with the potential huge increase in methane (a well know greenhouse gas) from the cows needed to produce all the additional beef for the Whoppers and Big Macs pressed upon the giant population of China. Currently cows account for 40% of methane globally which when added to the fact that methane is 20 times worse for climate change that CO2 emissions, makes the potentially huge addition to the 1.5 billion cattle worldwide a very scary prospect.
Once again there is a massive short falling in the awareness of the impact of eating large quantities of beef. A recent survey by the consultancy firm, McKinsey, found that whilst 'eating less beef' was the third best way for people to reduce their emissions only 3% of the survey respondents ranked it as such (the top two methods are drive a more fuel-efficient car and improve home insulation).
As seen from the excerpt from the BBC's Bloom website in the previous post, eating less meat (and beef in particular) can have a profound difference on climate change. So there needs to be a significant drive towards this goal and clearly promoting beef to such a potentially massive market as China definitely does not seem like the right direction to move in and appears . However on our own small scale if people can change their eating habits the whole planet can benefit.
To finish here are some recommendations for changing your eating habits:
Eat less meat!
Eat more chicken and pork - meats with the lowest climate impact because they come from animals that don't burp methane, research suggests
Eat local meat if possible to avoid emissions from transport
This is an interesting excerpt from the BBC Bloom website about why eating less meat can be hugely beneficial for the environment. And this definitely something we can all do!
Visit here for the full article and have a play around on the rest of the Bloom website because it's very very enlightening.
"A vegan in a 4x4 can do the climate more good than a meat-eater driving a hybrid car. Food for thought?
Livestock produce more greenhouse gases than all the world's transport combined, with beef production singled out by a recent UN report as a particular enemy at the gate. Why? Because cattle belch. Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 20 times worse for climate change than CO2 emissions and cattle are full of it. There are 1.5 billion cattle and buffalo worldwide, each producing more greenhouse gas in a day than the average 4x4.
According to the World Health Organisation, the average Briton eats twice the amount of protein they need in a year. By halving the amount of beef you eat, you could save almost as much CO2 as recycling for a year. By going vegan, you can slice off almost as much CO2 in a year as skipping a single return flight to India.
And cows, sheep, pigs and chickens are responsible for more emissions than just their... well, emissions. So, should we be choosing our meats more carefully?
Together, belched methane from cows and sheep, plus methane from manure, account for about 40% of global methane emissions. But that's not the whole story.
Livestock production also plays a big part in deforestation for grazing and cultivating animal feeds such as soya. Deforestation is currently responsible for a staggering quarter of all global man-made CO2 emissions.
Add to that the fact that manure and fertilisers used to grow crops to feed livestock produce two-thirds of global human emissions of nitrous oxide (a gas almost 300 times as damaging to the climate as CO2 ) and you start to see the scale of the problem.
When you crunch those numbers, a single kilo of beef can be responsible for more greenhouse gas than driving for three hours while leaving all the lights on at home, according to 2007 Japanese research published in the journal Animal Science.
Cows can even offer vegetarians something to ruminate on - a veggie who scoffs a lot of dairy products can actually be as bad for the climate as a meat-eater. That's because the dairy industry accounts for about 23% of UK food emissions.
If the UK went the whole hog and stopped eating meat and dairy entirely, without increasing how much we eat of other foods, we would cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 8%. While this may be an unikely scenario, even eating a bit less could lower demand and reduce emissions significantly."
Are electric cars the way to go in terms of reducing humanity's impact on the environment?
An important point to consider when thinking about such things must be the break-even point i.e. the point at which the amount of carbon emissions you have saved by using electricity overtakes the amount of emissions produced in the manufacture of the vehicle.
Hopefully with an increase in green electricity production surely electric driven cars are going to be a much more sustainable solution to land travel in cars.
A car produced in my native South Wales, the Zecar, now claims to be able to run for 2p for a mile. This is substantially cheaper than that of a petrol car, especially given the current crisis in terms of rising fuel costs. The Zecar costs £15,000 and will go on sale in the UK later this year.
Another benefit of the company is that the cars are manufactured in the UK- thus cutting down on the emissions used on import.
With plans to expand into vans, taxis and limos this company could really help cut greenhouse gas emissions in the future!
It seems that evidence is now starting to be seen that maintaining no-fishing zones in British water has a significant impact on the underwater world.
The marine reserve set up by the Government off the coast of Lundy island has recently been investigated to see what effects have been seen on marine populations. Compared to the control zones it was found that lobsters are around seven times more abundant in the no-take zone. This lends great credence to the work and motivation of the Marine Conservation Society and the 'Marine Reserves Now' campaign, aimed at bringing big steps into the Marine Bill published by Defra.
For the BBC article on the results at Lundy follow this link and the Marine Bill from here.
One of the difficult things in making a difference to the climate change that our planet is experiencing is breaking things down into chunks that people can handle (hence the name of this blog!). Very often we have a picture of planetary despair painted for us with little or no hints as to how we can help.
This can also be the case with the effects of climate change, with very little physical evidence being given for the changes that are being observed around the planet.
However with more and more attention being paid to climate change this is changing. As this wonderful but distrurbing set of photos shows the dramatic effect of climate change on glaciers in Norway. The difference between the glacier's size in 2001 compared to 2006 is staggering, as seen from the pictures are the beginning and end of this post.
I feel quite pleased with myself this week since I've taken another step to forcing my housemates into using linen bags.
Every time one of them goes to the shops they come back with a plastic bag, no matter how few items they buy. It's an issue which thoroughly winds me up and in turn winds them up because of me harping on about it!
But at Camden Green Fair on the weekend, I picked up of a load of linen bags that were being handed out for free and have hung them on a hook on the back of the front door. Now I have given all my housemates the strict orders that when they go to the shops that they have to take one off the door to save on plastic bags.
Now all I've got is beast them enough that they continue taking them!
We all know the benefits of recycling in terms of making the most of the planet's resources and this is especially relevant for second hand clothes. There are loads of charity clothes shops on most major high streets which have benefit from both being a great means of recycling but also generating funds for various causes- both seem pretty sensible to me!
Oxfam have jsut announced this week the opening of a couple of "boutique" stores in London, which will offer a collection of donated fashion items, Fair Trade, organic, recycled and restyled clothes and accessories.
They appear to have teamed up with a load of students from the London School of Fashion to produce ranges of clothes from sustainable and recyclable means.
Hopefully more stores like this will start emerging soon and really promote greener clothes, hopefully ending up being a really good scheme. Plus you've got to admit that everyone loves a bit of vintage clothing!
It's scary to see reports like this and then read about how countries like Australia are trying to set up shark fin fisheries on the Great Barrier Reef:
When will people realise the damage they are causing by seemingly trying to exterminate these wonderful animals that play such an important impact on the underwater ecosystem.
Camden council are running the UK's largest free green event on 1st June in Regent's Park. Running from 12 noon to 7pm it will have speakers forums, science zones and a Mad Hatter's tea party to enjoy whilst delievering the message about how waste, transport, energy, procurement and water affect the environment.
It'll likely be a great way to learn about how we can tackle climate change, with small changes to our lifestyles.
One of the big problems when faced with such large issues as increased global warming, is being able to break the solutions into bite-size chunks so that the average person can actually begin to make a difference.
A recent study by WRAP - a business focused on reducing waste and boosting recycling, has shown that in the UK a third of all the food we buy ends up in the bin. This generates a total wastage of £10 billion a year.
This food waste obviously has serious consequences in terms of the amount of resources being ploughed into the growing, processing, packaging, transporting, and refrigerating of food, a huge proportion of which are apparently being thrown away.
When converted into a carbon dioxide equivalents it appears that if this waste could be totally eradicated then it would have the effect of taking 1 in 5 cars of the road- a staggering statistic!
It is studies like this that can highlight areas where the average person can make a conscious effort to reduce their waste and with enough people doing so, then we can begin to make a real difference to the climate change that our carbon emissions are causing.
For the WRAP press-release click here and the Love Food Hate Waster campaign can be found here.
Some positive news on the whaling front, where it appears that protesters (including the Sea Shepherds) have managed to hinder the Japanese whaling fleet to an extent that they have failed to hit their targets for "scientific whaling".
For the full series of these videos please visit the VBS.TV website.
Plastic filling up our oceans is a very major and real threat and it is an issue we must start to address. Reducing our dependency on plastic is a necessary step we need to take. And that can start with plastic bags.
Debate about the actual benefits of biofuels seems to have been running for a fair while now, with many studies indicating that the effects of clearing such vast swathes of land to produce these supposedly "green fuels" far outweigh the benefits in terms of greenhouse emissions (New York Times article).
There is much concern also on the escalating cost of food around the world, a situation that the production of biofuels does nothing to benefit; demand for ethanol already having caused the price of sugar to double (see BBC article)!
Targets set by the EU and the United States seem to have forced the situation of a rapid increase in biofuel production, without first considering the different techniques and setting standards in the quality of production on a global green scale. Consequently rainforests in Brazil and many other developing countries around the world are being cleared, leading to not only greenhouse emissions from their burning and ploughing but also reducing the amount of carbon sinks globally. A very worrying prospect given how these targets were predominantly set in an attempt to slow carbon emissions.
A technology that I recently heard about (see link) seems like an ingenious new way to use the carbon dioxide emissions from power stations to grow algae; the algae then being converted into biodiesel or ethanol. Testing has apparently been carried out by GreenFuel Technologies which have already demonstrated algae-based fuels powering diesel cars.
Perhaps algae will be a useful source of renewable fuel for the future or maybe not. But it certainly seems a lot more sensible that the apparently hasty shift towards biofuels, which are only serving to destroy the planet quicker in their current remit.
100,000 petition signings handed to Joan Ruddock, MP to bring about many more marine reserves within British waters to allow the marine wildlife to recover from the destruction caused by over-fishing.
It's based on data from the UN and populations as compiled on wikipedia.
This simulation gives us a very good visual guide to each country's contributions to global CO2 emissions. As many of studies are showing now, the emisisons from the USA and China are remarkable and extremely frightening, and this is clearly visible in this animation.
It seems that the government obviously note plastic bags as a serious waste of global resources since plans included in the recently published Budget for 2008.
Alistair Darling said when delievering the budget:
"Given the damage that single-use carrier bags inflict on the environment, we want to be able to take action. We will introduce legislation to impose a charge on them if we have not seen sufficient progress on a voluntary basis.
"Legislation would come into force in 2009 and based on other countries' experience, it could lead to a 90 per cent reduction, with around 12 billion fewer plastic bags in circulation. The money raised should go to environmental charities."
It seems that the responsibility still lies with the supermarkets and other shops, very few of which have done anything up til now about. It seems that enforced reduction of single use plastic bags is the only way to solve the problem, as we have a stunning example of in Ireland.
Yesterday the BBC ran a really interesting 'cost of food' section exploring why the price of food is increasing.
One of the most interesting things for me were the shear numbers involved with the world's growing intake of meat products. The figure below (taken from the BBC) shows the increase of food intake in China per capita (a rise from 20kg to 50kg over the last 17 years) and the respective increase in resources that are needed to fund this increase; which obviously have a serious impact on the planet.
One interesting point that comes out of this diagram is the fact that we don't even have to look back as far back as the hunter-gathering neanderthals to see that our meat intake has far outgrown our requirements!
The implications of the increased food production for climate change are of course vast but only briefly touched upon in the BBC articles. As they mention, desertification is already accelerating in China and sub-Saharan Africa whilst the disruption of the water cycle causes considerable changes in other regions. This is not to mention the extra strain the production methods place on natural resources.
These BBC articles are definitely well worth a read especially as they help confirm my opinion that the quantities of meat that people eat, needs to be addressed. Hopefully, for the sake of the environment, this shift in thought will be made long before economic issues demand us to address the situation.
Cyclists in London can think themselves lucky. Why is this, apart from the obvious benefits of cycling (healthy, fewer emissions, expense etc...)?
Well it's because they manage to avoid the armies of free newspaper "pushers" found on virtually every street corner, desperately thrusting poorly-written celebrity-ridden advertising packages into people's hands. But the luck doesn't stop there because cyclists are also spared the sight of the gratuitous waste of paper created when all of these free newspapers are discarded on buses and trains.
On three of the tube lines alone, 9.5 tonnes of free newspapers are discarded every day, with maybe four times this over the whole underground network. I'm pretty sure that the stacks of papers that inevitably pile up towards the ends of lines are simply jettisoned into non-recyclable waste bins. Seems a terrible waste of resources to me!
The Metro seems to pride itself on using recycled paper and encouraging their readers to dispose of their papers in recycle bins around London. However a vast fraction of these free papers must simply be thrown in to ordinary waste bins (plus we must also take into account the lack of bins around train stations due to the threat of terrorism).
Surely its time there is some provision made, preferably by the newspaper companies who are creaming off a profit from this irresponsible publication, for recycling facilities on trains and helping facilitate the tube and train companies to separate ordinary waste from the recyclable newspaper.
I'm obviously not the first person to become frustrated by this situation and a much fuller discussion of this point can be found at this ecolocal blog. However despite comments on this quoted blog about the stand that several councils are taking against the publishers, I fail to have seen any progress on this issue.
It seems that there are campaigns to help the situation in London now (see Project Freesheet) and to start raising awareness on the waste of free newspapers.
I'll finish by urging people not to take a copy of a free newspaper from the street touts..... there'll be a spare copy (or twenty) on the tube for you anyway! And when you've done with that copy, please take it home and recycle it.
http://climateprediction.net/ is a cool experiment akin to the Seti@home project. Making use of the processor of all of its member's computers when they are not being used to their full capacity, simulation models of climate change are run and analysed.
Hopefully this experiment (with the help of many people) will be able to allow us to model how global warming will affect the planet in the future.
Seems like a very worthwhile project and the success seen in the amount of data digested by Seti@home shows that, with similar subscription, could produce some really interesting results.
With some wonderfully shot footage, Shark Water brings us a very emotional but highly depressing view of the damage caused by the shark finning industry.
Rob Stewart, the director, appears to have devoted his life to following sharks and about spreading the story about their plight. Over 100 million sharks are butchered every year for their fins. The shear act of killing the sharks is not simply the worst part- but very often they are simply finned and tossed back into the water- what a disrespectful end for such wonderful creatures.
In this film, Rob Stewart begins by trying to dispel some of the myths that exist about sharks. He points out that there are more deaths from drinks vending machines every year than from sharks with a staggering ratio of 800:5!
A brilliant point he puts across is that this majestic creatures are an ultimate predator, which have out-survived the dinosaurs, honing their hunting skills for millions of years. If sharks really were the blood thirsty "man eaters" that people believe them to be, then there would surely be many more incidents involving sharks. Films such as Jaws and sensationalist media hype paint an ill-educated and daemonising view of them; shaking people's fear of sharks is a prime objective in getting people to stand up and begin to save them.
Rob Stewart joins up with one of the crews from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (earlier post) to tackle illegal shark fishing in Costa Rica and the Galapagos. This proves to be a highly dangerous manoeuvre, both politically and physically. Whilst breaking house arrest Stewart manages to film shark finning in Costa Rica from the Taiwanese market and uncovers the enormous power that the wealthy market exerts on the Costa Rican government. Unfortunately (and this is of course sadly true for many of the world's problems) it appears that pure human greed and vanity puts shark fins on people's plates and drives this shocking situation.
The intimate story that Stewart draws you into the film with makes you feel his pain and burning desire to simply protect sharks. Some of the images that are shown will shock and appal the viewer but the message behind them will spark many many thoughts, which hopefully will provoke people to make a difference to the benefit of sharks.
Towards the end of the film a very simplistic picture is drawn about the effect that destroying shark populations has on the environment. However I think it is an argument that really brings home the message of how a matter that appears so low on the agenda for many people and countries can have a profound effect on the largest scale.
The argument runs as follows: that if we take away sharks, then smaller fish lower down the food chain thrive and populations increase without their regular predators, therefore consuming more phytoplankton. Phytoplankton is one of the largest sinks of CO2 in the world, using atmospheric CO2 in their photosynthesis to grow. So if you reduce the amount of phytoplankton then you reduce the amount of CO2 being sucked out of the atmosphere. THe greenhouse gas effects of CO2 are fairly well known and so we see how Stewart brings us to see that killing sharks could make a significant contribution to global warming.
His argument might be a little too naive for some people but the main point one could take away from this is that even "small measures" such as shark finning have serious escalating problems further along the line.
This is something I have long worried about in terms of marine life since I think it is too difficult to survey the ecological effects on populations underwater. The protection of terrestrial based species is often brought to people's attention because we can see the problems directly however the plight of subaqua species is often neglected by the public possibly because visualising the pillaging of the seas is a lot less tangible. Films like Shark Water raise people's awareness to these issues and for this reason I think everyone should
You will come out of this film feeling totally shocked and probably, like me, sick to the stomach with the devastation being reeked by the shark finning fisheries but it is without doubt a brilliant film with a story that will hopefully help bring about an end to the ridiculous act of shark finning.
There are a number of different organisations set up to stop the plight of shark
UK seas are home to a huge variety of wildlife, yet less than a thousandth of one percent of our sea area is fully protected.
The Marine Conservation Society is campaigning for a network of vital Marine Reserves – where our precious marine heritage and wildlife will be safe from harm, giving nature room to breathe and recover from decades of exploitation.
The Facts:
* Scientists recommend that 20- 30% of our seas should be fully protected to ensure their survival.
* Over 60% of UK fisheries are unsustainable,and delicate long-lived species continue to be damaged by destructive fishing techniques.
* Case studies abroad have shown that Marine Reserves can benefit divers, anglers, fishermen and biodiversity alike. New Zealand has 28 Marine Reserves, and 33% of the Great Barrier Reef is highly protected – many reserves have resulted in increased fish and shellfish populations, whilst biodiversity is protected from destruction.
Together we can make a real difference. Register now at www.marinereservesnow.org.uk to help convince the Government that marine conservation must be at the core of the Marine Bill.
It's our job to look after the seas for future generations, so demand Marine Reserves Now!
A little while ago I wondered about where the state of debate would lead between Fair Trade foods and the so-called 'Food Miles' measure. Having seen lots of shops campaigning for Fair Trade goods and many individuals campaigning for locally produced goods, I was intrigued to see which direction the debate would turn. It seemed to me that there was a real dilemma of humanitarian well-being versus climate change.
On further inspection however, it appears that the odds are stacked considerably towards one camp.
Food miles are a measure for calculating how much CO2 is produced by transporting food from production to shops. In the UK 95% of fruit and over half of the veg eaten comes from abroad. However the 'food miles' are purely based on the distance travelled to get onto our shelves and take no consideration of the energy expended and greenhouse gases released during the production of the food. If one bares in mind the energy-hungry lights needed in northern Europe to grow crops, then the issue of the emissions produced during the transportation of goods from overseas seems flawed. We clearly need to think more in terms of a total food emission than simply transport.
The point also comes to an economic one since that is what Fair Trade is all about- helping self-sufficiency of the developing world. Forcing a movement towards locally produced goods would mean taking money away from these developing nations, who in general are the ones causing least the damage to the environment. The revenue generated though Fair Trade goods hopefully goes towards educating and treating disease in these countries, which I would argue would have a much more constructive long term benefit for the planet and climate change.
So having set out to raise a possible conflict that consumers might feel towards their food shopping, I now feel that perhaps the issue of Food Miles is fairly redundant until a method of accounting for the greenhouse gas emissions during production can developed.
It seems now that whenever you buy something from a shop you are automatically given a plastic bag to put it in, even if you are buying only one item. if you try to persuade the cashier that you are fine and have a rucksack, you're often given a look that says either 'how on earth will you carry that?' or that they haven't done their job well enough!
Customer service seems to have taken much higher worth in the minds of the cashiers than the gratuitous waste that accompanies purchase. When reading so much about the enormous environmental issues associated with the vast amount of plastic that is starting to litter the world, it is odd to see that such a negligent attitude is taken to shopping bags- hundreds of thousands of which surely are discarded into a larger bin bag when the shopper gets home.
However rather than the cashiers being to blame it is beyond the store managers and up to the regional managers. It appears that some of the supermarkets (Marks & Spencer and Budgens) have already returned to charging a fee for plastic bags and it seems that the Government seems to be taking heed of this problem. This is especially good news given the amazing success a similar scheme has had in Ireland (with a drop in plastic bag usage of a whopping 90%). Lets hope that the Government move on this and if they operate it as a taxation scheme that the tax actually goes into other green schemes.
As with many things it's more of a shift in attitude that is needed rather than individual actions like this. However it takes people in responsibility to pass that change down. Charging for plastic bags is a start but there is still far too much plastic packaging on most products from shops, which also needs to start being tackled and this is something that would be great to see.
