The car "scrappage scheme" (vehicle discount scheme) was introduced in the UK some months back to encourage people to trade in old cars for new.  Anyone owning a car aged 10 years or older can get a good discount, around £2000 or so, off a new vehicle.

Friends, Britons, countrymen... lend me your ears.

Today, Friday 10th July 2009, is supposedly Green Britain Day. The concept has been thought up by French nuclear energy giants EDF.

However, as has been said , this whole concept is a complete sham because:

National Grid is taking an energy and climate change leadership role in the UK and calling for a national Masterplan to be developed to determine the route-map for a low-carbon economy.

The company is seeking greater Government, industry and consumer collaboration in order to meet the Government targets of 80% emissions reduction by 2050, and 15% renewable energy sources by 2020.

National Grid Chief Executive, Steve Holliday, said;

Because of the recession (yes we're allowed to say that now) firms are apparently using less water according to the BBC news business story Recession hits Severn Trent sales.

It's quite incredible that the recycling industry seems to have collapsed.

A story on the UK TV news brought the matter to my attention with a company in the North East of the country having to rent vast warehouse space to store the unused and unwanted paper & cardboard they collected for recycling.

I then stumbled across another story in The Guardian saying pretty much the same thing but half a world away.

It's that time of year again folks, it's Buy Nothing Day.

Unless of course you're in North America where it was Buy Nothing Day yesterday, to coincide with Black Friday, that day of retail mayhem where shoppers become so rabid with the hunger for cheap deals that this year a man was trampled to death by the consuming hordes!

We've been thinking about the things a business can do to "go green" and that won't cost them a penny and it was a pretty easy list to drum up. The simplicity of going green is that a business will not only become environmentally friendly and help towards sustainability but will actually cut costs; any business that cuts costs is saving money - saving money equates to more profit. So it's what they call a win-win situation.

1. Switch off the Lights.

In my day job I've just signed a deal to have a web server to be hosted by rackspace here in the UK. The decision to go with this hosting company was purely a technical & commercial one but upon signing the contract I asked my account manager over at rackspace just where our server was physically located.

Whilst my girlfriend is back in the USA news comes in that the Americans are suffering gas, or rather $4 a gallon gas I should say. Some of them are praying for gas!

Protesters from Greenpeace, some dressed in ape suits, have demonstrated at the premises of Unilever in both London and the North West of England.

Unilever, the global Anglo-Dutch company with interests in food, drink, cleaning products and personal care items, is a major user of palm oil in many of its products. Formed back in 1930 as a merger between the British soap makers, Lever Brothers, and Dutch firm Margarine Unie, the company amalgamated to pool its resources as both products (soap & margarine) relied heavily in the use of palm oil.