Green news & views

My wife found this on facebook this morning. Doesn't this just hit the mark? Here's a transcript of the image text:

 [Image of spoon]

It's pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to

• Extract oil from the ground
• Ship it to a refinery
• Turn it into plastic
• Shape it appropriately
• Truck it to a store
• Buy it, and bring it home

...is considered to be less effort than what it takes to just wash the spoon when you're done with it.

I brought a car at the beginning of July. After going 21 months without driving, I decided it was time to get back on the road. (You can see how I previously fared after 9 months without a car)

The number one reason for getting a car was that my family are back in the country. We need to get littl'un to school, do the shopping and have a life where we don't have to worry that everything takes so much longer than normal.

We were watching the TV the other night, struggling for something interesting and informative to watch, when we just chanced upon back-to-back episodes of Channel 4's Grand Designs.

Infographics seem to be all the rage at the moment and here's one we've been sent about power consumption facts for the US.

America consumes more electricity than any other country in the world but China is fast catching up!

However, the surprise fact is that Canadians reportedly consume more electricity per capita than any other nation. I didn't know that!

Anyway, here's the infographic, power consumption facts for the US...

...at least that's what I think it said...

Many years ago there was an editorial piece in the catalogue of howies, the ethical activewear company.

Underneath a typical photo of a scene in China where hundreds of people were on bicycles, the caption read;
"One day they'll all want cars"
Or something like that.

In the years since that was said, the prophecy came true. China industrialised on a massive scale and people wanted cars.

It's been reported today that the cycling industry is worth some 3 billion pounds to the UK economy.

With cycle-manufacturing, cycle accessory manufacturing, retail and other cycle-related employment all thrown into the mix, that's a healthy figure and a good sign of the state of the cycling industry in this country.

As many as 23,000 people are employed in these UK cycle and cycle-related industries and they contribute some £600 million to our economy in wages and taxes.

...but see tax and red tape as barriers to environmentalism

(This press release sourced from is4profit) Small businesses believe going green can boost their bottom line – but see tax and red tape as major barriers to becoming more environmentally friendly, according to Forum of Private Business research.

Bottled Water. A multi million (billion?) pound industry where businesses put water in bottles, market it heavily and make big fat profits.

And all you need to do is turn on the tap and out it comes. You already pay your water rates/have a water meter, so why on earth are you paying someone else to make big profits on something you're already paying for?

And then there's the whole industry of making the plastic bottles to fill up and throw on the streets or in the trash - What a waste of resources, just take a reusable bottle out with you, fill it up at home.

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We've had an interesting email from the Make Wood Work campaign.

In essence, the UK Government's Renewables Obligation (RO) policy encourages the use of bio-mass burners for electricity generation with financial subsidies. Whilst, from an environmentally-friendly point of view, biomass burning creates energy from waste materials, the forest products industry is concerned that using wood for bio-mass burners will damage their industry.

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In an article that kicks off by cramming in a dizzying glut-fest of as many marketing buzzwords as possible, Ethical Corporation have written an interesting piece about how social media appears to be driving sustainability in big business these days.