Last week Joann and I went on an expedition to collect willow switches with which to plant a living willow fence at the bottom of our land. It became a bit of a mission when we had to clamber through soft snow of more than a foot deep… carrying our bundles of sticks with our lively pup either pulling on the rope tying the willow together, or wrapping me up very effectively with her lead. But – it was a rare day of winter sunshine and it was beautiful to be outside nonetheless. The area we were gathering from is now completely flooded with melt water.

It was the Spring equinox on Sunday – meaning that we have twelve hours of dark and twelve hours of light, and at last a couple of patches of snow had melted enough for us to start preparing the garden. Joann is our specialist gardener volunteer so it’s been a frustrating wait for the sight of soil – and believe me – you don’t want to be digging in frozen ground – it might as well be concrete. She is only now with us for another week so I hope we manage to get the beds dug and planted before she leaves us.
Our other late winter visitors were both brave and hardy – the temperature inside and out has been particularly low, and with no central heating, simply keeping our living spaces warm turned out to be their main task. We have worked our way through nearly all of the wood from the fallen barns. Though the winter wonderland looked so pretty, life was harsh. Our (extensive) hallways hovered around freezing point, and we became very accustomed to indoors dressed for outdoors – woolly hats are fine things, but balaclavas are better as bed wear as they don’t come off. We should not know that. I never knew I would be so glad to see the back of winter.
Today the sun is shining and the temperatures are mild. We are finally able to get on with tasks in the garden. Our permaculture specialist spent a lot of time planning, and now at last we’re able to get our hands dirty in this worm rich soil.

The lesson – don’t paint when it’s below zero. Stupid.

Climate change in one paragraph: In short, if we carry on putting so much CO2 into the atmosphere, and if China & India increase their output to the same levels as the west, we will cook the planet – I admit this may not be the scientific term, but the scientific debates are well covered elsewhere* . If we carry on at the rate we’re going, there will certainly be life on planet Earth in 500 years time – insect life. Cockroaches are very robust.

And now the good news. As well as being stunningly stupid, the human race is also amazingly intelligent. Every single day, someone, somewhere thinks up another brilliant planet saving solution.

Green grumblers make excuses for their own lack of action – why should we (in the west) do anything, when China and India aren’t. But why assume that the engines behind the growing economies of China and India cannot be powered by renewable energy sources? If we can make it cost effective, it will be used.

So, you’re no yoghurt knitter, but as an intelligent human being, you have realised that the time to do nothing has ended. So, I’d like to offer you an easy option: what if you, personally, could impact on climate change. You could be the green superhero who saves the planet (and we’re not talking about the Incredible Hulk here). It’s completely, totally possible!

Anyone can make a positive impact on our custodianship of the creation (as some Christians call it), from registering your support for a mandate to combat climate change (totally free) to making every possible lifestyle adaptation considered helpful, but here are ten simple steps towards that goal.

For convenience I’ll now divide you into one of two personality types by means of a personality test. Answer the following.

Do you prefer to a) save money, or b) spend money?

Advice for A’s:

• Energy saving light bulbs will pay for themselves
• Shower quickly
• Sort waste (compost, reuse, recycle) .
• How about a cycling holiday?
• Use Ebay, Amazon & Freecycle to find new homes for your old stuff.
• Make sure you reuse your plastic bags
• Food miles: Drink cheap French wine (in the UK, Californian in the US and Australian in Australia).
• Use local markets.
• Hot drinks – fill your kettle only as far as you need to. The tap isn’t going to go away.
• Get on your bike & cycle to work (or find one on Freecycle)
• Switch over to rechargeable batteries (they’re getting cheaper now, too!)
• Remember to switch off your TV & computer equipment when not in use.
• Make your own cleaning products (1 part white vinegar, 3 parts water, few drops of lavendar) and put it in a nice spray bottle
• Insulate your house
• Travel in twos (always scrounge lifts from your friends with cars). Run your second hand diesel car on biodiesel.
• Generate your own electricity by building your own water or wind turbine.
• Recycle your bath water for the garden
• Defrost your freezer (make use of minus temperatures outside in Winter months)
• Use your washing line – it doesn’t rain that often!
• Use your milk man – it may cost more, but the less you go to the shops – the less you’ll spend

Advice for B’s:

• A cutting edge solar panel to provide you with hot water or electricity, and kudos.
• Invest in an aerating shower head which will cut the amount of water you use.
• Buy a wormery & buy lovely new recycle friendly bins for your kitchen.
• Make sure you buy carbon credits when you jet off on holiday, or hire an eco cottage for a break in your own country.
• Remember to donate your old stuff to charity to make space for the new.
• Buy a set of Onya bags for grocery shopping
• Drink expensive French wine (in the UK, Californian in the US and Australian in Australia).
• Buy local products.
• Buy an Eco kettle – which holds a reservoir of water.
• How about a lovely new bike, complete with magnet powered lights and dynamo light up pedals?
• Have you seen the new, super fast battery chargers?
• Buy a socket adaptor which will switch things off for you when not in use. How clever is that!
• Buy eco friendly washing and cleaning products
• Buy a new ‘a’ rated, energy saving house.
• Travel in two’s. Always offer lifts to your poor friends without cars. Now how about one of those hybrids?
• Subscribe to a green energy tariff and let someone else do the hard work.
• Buy a reed bed filtration system to provide ‘green’ water – such as GROW
• Buy new ‘a’ rated kitchen appliances
• Use your ‘a’ rated dryer if you really have to.
• Use your milk man. They’re convenient, deliver a range of fresh products, and each milk bottle is reused 10 times.

If you’re already doing all of the above, I hereby grant you permission to indulge in a spot of personal smugness. Send me an email & I’ll give you a certificate confirming your green superhero status.

On a serious note, one really synergistic development is use of carbon offsetting schemes which purchase Eco Clever technology and donate it to people who would not be able to afford to buy it – such as 3^rd world projects and schemes run by Western Not for Profit organisations. And the great news is that the more we use new Eco Clever technology, the less it will cost for everybody.

All we need now is someone to invent CO2 free flights and we’re sorted. Any ideas anyone?

* Read publications such as New Scientist – (search for ‘IPCC report’ on the newscientist.com web site)

]]> http://500yearvision.com/2007/03/be-eco-clever/feed/ 0 http://500yearvision.com/2007/03/look-no-footprint-inspiring-stuff-from-new-scientist/ http://500yearvision.com/2007/03/look-no-footprint-inspiring-stuff-from-new-scientist/#comments Wed, 21 Mar 2007 10:32:10 +0000 nicola http://www.bogblog.org/2007/03/21/look-no-footprint-inspiring-stuff-from-new-scientist/ My first day back working in Birmingham. I am sharing my office with a parrot. He is called Sid and is 25 years old. We’re not sure about each other yet.

Yesterday I caught the train to London for a meeting with the Water Works UK, based in Wood Green. I left my laptop at home as it doesn’t travel well & spent the journey reading the New Scientist. There was a thorough article on carbon offsetting called ‘Look, no footprint’ – raising concerns about the efficacy of tree planting as a method of carbon offsetting.

One strong concern was that it may only postpone the problem – when the natural life of the tree is over , carbon will be released back into the atmosphere. I think this will only be a problem if we have not a) developed cleaner energy or b)developed better CO2 capture in the mean time. Therefore, I think that planting trees is fine, and as long as they are not then chopped down to use as firewood, will give humanity time to develop other solutions.

I had recently decided to add carbon offsetting to the list of eco solutions on www.500yearvision.com – and was in fact looking for a suitable supplier. The article gave some info about existing schemes – and makes the point that different companies measure emissions from flights and calculate costs very differently. For example, a flight to Australia could be responsible for 1.8 tonnes, 5.4 tonnes or 12.5 tonnes of CO2 – there are many influencing variables of which to take account, including seat occupancy. The going rate was between £165 down to £13.30.

The article listed six questions to ask of a company providing carbon offsetting:

• Do your offsets result from specific projects, and what are they?

• How long will it take for the project to offset my carbon emissions?

• Can I follow the progress of the offsets I invest in and read reports of independent verifiers

• Do your projects meet the Gold Standards

• Can you prove that the projects in your portfolio would not have happened without you?

• Can you show you are not subsidising others to meet legal obligations.

As planting trees and ensuring their welfare for the next 100 years would be a slight divergence for 500 year vision (though was the idea between the -as yet unrealised- Vermenathon forest – my very first eco business plan) – I’ll not be rushing off to do this myself, though the article did give me an idea about an alternative.

Before I left for London this morning, I had a long and lovely conversation with the chair of one of the voluntary groups that I have supported in the past in Birmingham (this one a committee made of parents of children with specific needs). They need office premises and are looking at rentals for this.

The article in New Scientist and earlier conversation with Saeeda gave me a new idea. I could very simply give products to established voluntary groups which would reduce their energy consumption. This would have to give significant added value to a group in broad terms, so that it was an attractive proposition for them to take part. It could be tracked by fairly low cost means (pictures of equipment in use on a website, for example). Provision of a digital camera for this purpose would be idea for added value. We could design in low barriers to entry – such as asking only for a copy of a constitution as financials would be quite unimportant if items are being delivered rather than money. The scheme would have to also have very low administration costs. In many schemes, only 50% of funds get to the user organisation because of the costs incurred giving the money out.

Eco credentials could be built into the scheme, such as only email or pdf applications being accepted. The funding application could be very simple – incorporating a tick list of what energy efficiency the group already has access to, will have access to and need access to. We can then use the carbon credits which have been purchased to meet as many of these needs as possible.

Would it be ethical to sell carbon credit to fund the provision of energy efficient products to not for profit organisations? How much should be charged per mile for a flight?

What kind of products could they use? Things that tie up with opening a new office would be great.

The alternative route would be to offer people buying carbon credit the opportunity to be investors in the development of clean energy sources which could be utilised by such groups. One idea which has been preying on my mind in previous months is capturing the energy in falling water. If people invest in the carbon credits, this money could be used as a prize for a competition to develop a microgenerator which would operate in down pipes and provide either heat, light or battery recharging any time it rained. Which is a lot in the UK.

I think that it would probably be sensible to do some market research and find out which option people would prefer. It wouldn’t take much to put both of the products on www.500yearvision.com and see what happened.

So, I have a meeting with the guys from Water Works UK ltd this afternoon. They produce a brilliant grey water filtration system which will also act as a green roof for bog. I want to see if they would like to develop a version of their product which is suitable for the more extreme temperatures of Central Europe. There is a great market there because currently many people do not have mains connected water in their more remote homes. The cost of putting in a contemporary sewage system is vast & such things also need to be pumped out every six months. Allowing things to simply leach into the ground, which has been the more traditional way, is now illegal. If we can find a suitable flushing composting toilet manufacturer to co-operate on the project – perhaps Sun Mar, then we can build a safe and (importantly) EU approved solution for many different environments.

The drawback and advantage of working in the Czech Republic are the current low costs of labour. This means that manufacturing can be cost effective, however goods produced must also be similarly cost effective. If you can sell a product there, then selling it in the rest of Europe will be far easier.

Anyway, now I need to go catch a train to London.