Sustainable dating…?

Organising a sustainable date can be a tricky business

“Can I just check: do you have any organic food on your menu?”
“Uh, no, sorry.”
“Oh, OK. Any local produce?”
“No, not that I can think of, madam.”
“Fairtrade?”
“Just our coffee.”
“Hmm, right. OK. Perhaps I’ll have to cancel that table then…”

Trying to organise an environmentally friendly date is not the simple task it first seems. Doing a bit of research on the net, ideas for a ‘green date’ range from visiting a flea market, to going on a hike or bike ride. They seem like great ideas in principle, but on a first date I don’t want my romancer to see me struck down by bargain fever like the maniacs you see pillaging Primark on a Saturday afternoon. Nor do I want to be seen red-faced, sweaty-pitted and gasping for breath while slumped over my handlebars.

Call me old-fashioned if you will, but for a first date I’d like a little convention – say, dinner and drinks perhaps? And at the same time, I’d like to do as little harm to the environment as possible. Considering how many dates people go on each year, changing things to help the planet could have quite an impact.

I considered joining Greensingles.com, the online dating site for those becoming increasingly known as ‘ecosexuals’: people who select their mates based on their shared environmental concerns (to quote trusty Wikipedia). But I’m not sure I’m ready to be labelled an ecosexual just yet, so I decided to just try and ‘green up’ a date with a fellow regular-sexual.
After many a phonecall and many a response along the lines of “Organic food? I’m running a restaurant here, not a hippy market,” I finally found a viable eatery. Well, I actually found two, but one had stopped serving food… six months ago.

To keep the journey carbon-neutral I had to keep my sights local and within walking distance, but unfortunately I have trouble estimating distance and “a short stroll” was actually two miles of praying it didn’t rain.

“Our emphasis is on good, healthy food with a conscience,” say Mandy and Paul who run the forward-thinking Monkey Café. “It’s important to us that we support fair trade and organic causes.” To my glee, the food was not just Fairtrade and organic, it was also free range, locally sourced and bloody lovely. Whether you’re a vegan, veggie or carnivore; ecosexual, regular-sexual or just kind of sexual, this place catered for all.

Trying to find an environmentally conscious restaurant was hard work, but finding a pub or bar for some post-date drinks seemed to be impossible, and I had to resign myself to sampling from Monkey’s Fairtrade wine list before going to a very regular-sexual pub.

But, little did I know that, if you ask the right person behind the bar, you’ll find most pubs do stock some locally brewed alcohol. I say ask the right person because the first chap I tried to ask thought I was asking for a cocktail: “No love, sorry we don’t do orgasmic ale, sex on the beach instead?”

Do try to remain slightly calm, mind, when the bartender (eventually) produces said local ale. Excitement over its low-carbon status, if unexplained, can apparently come across as alcoholic behaviour – especially when coupled with an eagerness to get it down the hatch. In my defence, I was just really thirsty.

Unless you’re a budding lager lout, content with considerably strong cider or lucky enough to find local wine, it is slim pickings. But the fact that the option is there should be celebrated. Responsibly, of course.

And for those among us who, on first dates, tend to dive straight into the sexual relations side of things – it happens – I have one word for you: Mates. Made of natural rubber and just as safe as regular-sexual favourites.

Did I succeed in the quest for a sustainable date? Yes, in so far as I managed to hit all the green date targets: food, drink and travel. But in terms of convenience, I must concede, it was tricky!

Surfers Against Sewage tackle climate change

 

Climate change is affecting the oceans much loved by surders and paddlers alike

It’s true that in Point Break, Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves face a number of problems: not enough money to follow the big waves, a penchant for bank robbery, undercover cop issues and questionable shirts. But none are quite as dramatic as the problem surfers are now facing – climate change.

Yes, even the notoriously laid-back surfing community is getting irate about climate change consequences, as it’s far from just an urban problem.

Environmentally friendly dudes Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) have been campaigning for more pre-emptive action to fight the consequences of the climate crisis, and have organised a Sea-Grass Roots tour this May to help raise awareness of the need to protect our beaches and oceans. 

Alongside the usual consequences listed whenever we talk about the effects of global warming, surfers are worried about a few in particular.

Water Quality

More frequent and intense rain will cause a handful of problems alone. Sewerage systems will be at risk of overflowing due to more water, and may leak untreated sewage straight into rivers and seas. Swallowing this contamination could cause gastroenteritis,hepatitis A and ear, nose or throat infections. Nasty. More rain will also increase the amount of water that runs off land into water systems, water that could well have picked up pollutants from the ground such as oil, metal, pesticides and fertilisers (which is often manure, yuck).  

Rising water levels

 

Melting ice and the expansion of water as it heats up along with the planet will see sea levels rise considerably over the next few decades. It’s predicted that by 2080 global sea levels will have risen by anything between 9cm and 69cm depending on how emissions increase. Low-land areas could be flooded, obviously, but a change in the sea level will also affect the way waves and currents shape the land. So land erosion and a retreating shoreline could be a big worry – especially if you live on the seafront.

Changing wave climate

Hurricanes are fuelled by evaporated water being drawn into storms, which acts as energy for the stormy rampage. Global warming will mean warmer surface water and so more intense hurricanes becoming commonplace. Similarly, waves are created by winds sweeping across the ocean surface, and so their size is directly affected by the climate. Stronger winds could mean bigger and better surf, but it could also mean dangerous, confused seas with waves of different sizes all chopping against each other, which isn’t so great for surfing.

Ocean acidity

Oceans absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and so an increase in CO2 levels has a direct knock-on effect. More CO2 in the ocean increases its acidity, which won’t affect the surf here in the UK, but could do just that in places that rely on coral reefs. In popular places like Tahiti, the surf relies on waves that break over the coral reef below, but very acidic water could threaten the survival of many coral species. 

 

 

Get involved:

• Join SAS and donate, campaign or inspire people to get ready for climate change.
• Join Kent Surf School on March 29 at Viking Bay.
• Help to clean up the kent beaches.
• SAS report on how climate change will affect surf and seas.

Other information:

The Sea Grass-Roots tour is the perfect opportunity to learn more about Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) campaigns, raise the issues you most want to see addressed at your local surf spot, and find out about the solutions to help clean up our beaches and oceans. Times and venues are still to be confirmed but the tour will hit:

• Firth of Forth – May 10
• Scarborough – May 11
• Aberystwyth – May 12
• Isle of Wight – May 13
• Plymouth – May 14

Swansea-based SAS friends,Undercurrents, have beenblogging clips of their film On the Push:A Surfer’s Guide to Climate Change month by month to inspire action against climate change.

Recycling: once and for all!

Want to do your bit by recycling? Confused by all the rules and regulations? You’re not alone

Nearly everything we can use can be recycled, even the root cause of hangovers

Recycling is good. We know this. But still things so often get thrown away that could either be re-used or put in a recycling bin. I often see paper get thrown in the normal rubbish bin when it’s stood right next to the one especially for paper. I’m guilty too – only yesterday I caught myself throwing a milk carton in the bin rather than rinsing it out and putting it with the rest of the plastic which sits in a box less than a metre away. Did I fish it out? Ashamedly no, I was in a rush and just told myself I’d remember next time. So maybe that’s the problem we all have, perhaps we’re all too busy to check long lists of what can or cannot be recycled and try to remember which things go in which bin. Even when they’re different colours and labelled…? Hmm.

The guilt of that milk carton weighing heavy on my shoulders, I decided to solve the problem once and for all. I decided to create the definitive recycling list. What you can and cannot recycle while rushing around (or wasting time) making munchies in the kitchen.

The list

All food can be recycled, be it fruit, veg, meat or just mush – even raw meat. In most places it gets collected separately and is used in council compost, as fertilisers for growing bio-fuel, or to feed hungry prison inmates (joking).

Tea bags are a tricky one. For any gardeners they’re great to put on plants – my dad swears by them – but not so great in compost bins or food waste collection, as the bag itself often contains plastic fibres so won’t degrade very quickly.

Plastic is another weird one. It is very recyclable, but many councils don’t provide a collection service for it because there’s no real plastic market in the UK, so there’s nowhere to send all that’s collected. Randomly though, plastic bottles can be collected and made into fleece jumpers. It’d take two large Coke bottles to make an adult-sized fleece. 

Cans, both steel and aluminium, are all recyclable, whether they’ve housed Fanta or beans. It’s better to give them a quick rinse before you put them in the recycling bin, mainly because of the potential for mould. Cans are a good one to recycle because melting them down for reuse takes less heat and energy than making new metal. Plus, less ore and minerals need to be mined because we can re-use what’s already out.

Paper is one everybody knows about, but just to clarify: it includes any type of paper. Newspapers, magazines, printer paper, letters, cardboard, greetings cards, wrapping paper, bus tickets (but not train tickets with a magnetic strip).

Glass can also be recycled and most councils either collect it through kerbside boxes or from a glass bottle bank somewhere in the community. It’s good to try and keep the colours separate, especially clear glass, and giving it a swill would be nice too. The smell of a few thousand empty beer bottles must be quite powerful.

Tackling the ‘Primark Effect’

Cheap clothes are being rapidly bought and binned, adding to already brimming dumps. How can we fight it?

75% of binned clothing could still be worn with pride, if not recycled

I’ve been seriously pondering the way bargain buys have been slated this week for adding to the mountain of clothes we sling in the bin. They’re calling it the ‘Primark effect’ and it’s something I’ve never really considered before. To be honest, the only reason I read the news story was because it mentioned the bargain giant.

The term has been coined to describe the way we buy clothes at rock-bottom prices then chuck them out not long after. Reading it sitting near a bin containing a pair of my old ‘work-trousers’ just made the guilt even worse.

Whether it’s down to the quality of bargain frocks not being up to scratch, rapidly changing fashion racking up masses of out-of-date cast-offs, or simply because we can’t be bothered to do anything else with our old stuff, the amount of clothes sent to rubbish dumps has increased by 30% since the late 1990s.

UK-based recycling website Reuzesays we throw away one million tonnes of material every year, which will have taken 1.5 billion gallons of oil to make. In other words, the clothing business is one of the most unsustainable industries around and it’s kind of our fault. While we’re binning all our unwanted gladrags, charity shops are screaming out for new stock, Freecycling is booming, swap shops (or swishing parties )are the new house parties and clothing customisation is no longer just for HobbyCraft fanatics.There’s so much that can be done with the threads we no longer need that it seems ludicrous to throw them in with the rubbish.

Here are just a few of my own suggestions, but I’m sure there are plenty more ideas out there, so let me know what you’re doing with your old kit.

Donate them to a charity shop.

Whether it’s Cancer Research, British Red Cross, Oxfam, Save The Children or any other, charity shops are always looking for people to donate clothes for stock. Fear not if you don’t know of one near you: there’s an online database of all UK charity shops. The only hard part is remembering to do it.

Revamp your oldies

If there’s a T-shirt, dress, jumper etc. that’s a great print but no longer wearable, you could just give it a makeover and transform it into something else – a new vest, bag or cushion cover, perhaps? I know it’s a bit arts and crafts but hey, it’s all the rage now to customise your clothes and the possibilities are endless.

Car Boot Sale

This may be a recession but even if it wasn’t, when don’t you need an extra buck or two? Yes, you’d probably have to get up very early, and no, it’s not the best if it rains. But, weather permitting, car boot sales are actually more fun than you might think and all manner of people come searching for odds and ends that you may be about to bin. CarBootJunction  has listings of all the car boot pitches in the UK, along with pitch fees and contact details to help you to get yours organised.

Love the bees – they’re endangered!

It may be a strained relationship but if we don’t start showing the bees some love, we’re doomed

 

It’s time to call a truce with honey bees to save our homegrown food suppliers

The bee is a controversial fellow. On the one hand, I hate bees. They fly too close to your head, you can’t tell what they’re thinking and when they decide to sting you it bloody well hurts. But on the other, they’re seriously declining in numbers and, if you think about it, they’re kind of cute in a furry, bumbly way.

Of course warming to this point of view isn’t easy, since bees often seem like one of the worst features of summer. I’ve noticed that in the face of a bee people become one of three people:

The Flapper, who shrieks while running in any available direction, waving their arms in a bid to escape or fend off the bee (I put myself in this group).

The Freezer, who will become instantly rigid at the sight of airborne stripes because years ago someone, somewhere, told them that if you keep still bees won’t hurt you (does anyone know if this is actually true?).

And then there’s the Apparently Fearless, who will feign casual indifference and try to calmly sweep the bee away with a nearby newspaper, while secretly shitting their pants.

Top tips

It’s the potential sting of the creature we all fear, and at one time, before age instilled in me a sensitivity to all creatures and a desire to nurture the planet, I discovered a spray-and-swat system that defeated most bees and wasps. It was a combination of Flash With Bleach Power Spray, a rolled up Sugar magazine and the timing of a Jedi. I do not advise this now however: it’s very cruel and very messy.

But times have changed, and the bee that once wielded such power at the edge of paddling pools and near the ketchup bottle at barbecues now needs our help.

There are a number of theories behind the falling bee population, ranging from destruction of habitat to the spread of bee diseases.

A common theory is that a parasite called the Varroa Mite is attacking our humble bumblers before they even hatch. As the bees grow, so do the blood-suckers, making bees weak and ill.

I may have often wished there were fewer bees, but if that were to happen long-term, both us and the environment would suffer dire domino-effect consequences.

The downside

No bees means little pollination, which in turn means the amount of fruit, crops and farming yields across the nation would plummet, as well as all sources of local honey.

Farmers would face real financial problems, local food producers might struggle to stay afloat and, possibly worst of all, Haagen Dazs say there would be no ingredients for many of their ice creams. Tragedy in the making.While it’s true that we could import honey and fruit, that option is far from helpful in terms of reducing carbon emissions. Nor would it help the number of people working on farms and in local food production find new jobs. And to make matters worse, the bee is endangered in many other places around the globe too.

So what can we do about it? Simple: embrace the bee! Not literally, as their ability to sting hasn’t weakened, but do try your best not to kill them any more. We should sympathise with the furry fiends – they’re struggling for survival. Anything that makes pollen and nectar more available would also be a help… so you know what that means, don’t you? Cue some guerrilla gardening.

Bizarre go-green advice

 

Tired of the green wash? Here are a few more original tips for going green and loving the planet

Go green and pee outside – flushing the loo uses three gallons of water

 

I’m always on the lookout for eco-tips and snippets of info to help in my mission to green up my lifestyle. Whether it’s flicking through magazines, collecting random leaflets that look like they’re about ‘green stuff’, or trawling through obscure eco-blogs and websites for news and titbits, there’s tonnes of good stuff out there. But on my way around the green scene I have, now and again, come across some decidedly wacky advice. Read on and I’ll share all.

Weird tip number one is to wee outside. Simple as that, really; there isn’t much further direction with this one. I presume they mean in a bucket of some sort because, alongside other flush water and toilet paper savings, it seems urine will give garden compost a boost. Whether you go in a bucket then pour into your compost bin, or just urinate straight onto plants, is up to you. I guess it just depends how sheltered your backyard is. And maybe what equipment you have, if you get my drift.

“Saving water by taking shorter showers is a serious and effective tip to implement into our lives”Number two is namely some practical advice for the vegetable growers among us, if there are any, but still mildly entertaining for the rest. If you have ever wondered what to do with an old bra, one suggestion is to use them as “a support for ripening fruit and veg like tomatoes and grape fruit.”GirlGenius, advises on the How Can I Recycle This? forum, “Just hang them on the branches so they cradle the fruit in the cups.” DD cup tomatoes, anyone? Other suggestions were to make your old bap boosters into purses, slingshots, or hanging baskets.

With Easter fast approaching, bizarre tip number three is rather topical – what do you do with all the packaging you get from Easter eggs. It’s never just the pure chocolate, is it; there’s always at least three other layers of cardboard, then plastic, then foil to grapple with before the good stuff is loose. So rather than throwing it all out, or recycling it the regular way, why not use the plastic to protect things in the post? It’s a good idea in theory, but the thought of trying to find an envelope to fit, and then the bemused look on the recipient’s face when they opened their egg-shaped, chocolate scented, yet well protected parcel did amuse me. Suggestions for reusing the foil included employing it in the garden to scare away birds – in case you need to do that.

Saving water by taking shorter showers is a serious and effective tip to implement into our lives. But the way this Save Water campaign tries to get the message across is hilarious. Rather than a hard hitting clip of drought, this campaign video resembles an odd advert Chris Tarrant would have included in his funny ad breaks programme (I can’t remember what it was called now, but it wasn’t that great anyway).

I’m sure there are loads more bizarre tips for going green out there so let me know what you’ve come up with…?

Can we live without plastic bags?

Apparently, most of them are Chinese. They get made in big plastic bag factories in China that pump out huge levels of fossil fuel emissions. They’re then shipped to us in the UK and all over the world – wherever needed. We get given one (or more if you’re quite the shopper) when we buy stuff and then, well, then the story really begins.

What do you do with your plastic bags? Typically, the flimsy sacks get used to carry home your bread and milk from Tesco, or to safely carry some new clobber to the loving arms of a (probably already full) wardrobe. They are then used as make-shift bins, as portable umbrellas (maybe that’s just me) or…? I couldn’t think of any other uses. The other options seem to involve littering streets, floating in streams, sinking in oceans or tumbling around beaches. Animals try to eat them, sea life gets tangled in them, they kill over a 100,000 birds a year, and yet we insist on wasting already dwindling oil supplies on making them again, and again, and again.

So, I went this week trying not to use one single plastic bag. As I was already on my high horse about why we shouldn’t be wasting resources on these litter bugs, and being the owner of at least three bags-for-life, I thought it’d be a breeze.

A week later

The verdict? It wasn’t too tough, although I did encounter two major problems during the week.

One – I had no bin. The bin in my kitchen IS a plastic bag that hangs off the door handle. I put the rubbish in and when it’s full take it to the big black bin bag that sits outside. Which then made me wonder if that counts as a plastic bag too?

The Bin Company UK have created a solution to this problem, however, with their range of biodegradable bin bags. Carrier bags, bin liners, special bags for dog shit or food waste – you name the bin bag, and they’ve got a biodegradable version.

“… try refusing a plastic bag on the high street mid-Saturday… the shop assistants are like bag-giving machines”Problem two is that you haven’t always got a choice in whether you take or leave the plastic bag. Supermarkets are pretty open to the whole bag-for-life thing now, so they aren’t too bad, but try refusing a plastic bag on the high street mid-Saturday afternoon. As you know it’s usually carnage, and the shop assistants are like bag-giving machines. In the time it took me to say “I won’t be needing a bag thanks”, she’d scanned my dress, removed the security tag, processed my card and thrust the bagged item in my face. So, better luck next time, I guess. I had to shamefully stuff the plastic fiend into my bag-for-life. Hypocritical is not the word for how that feels.

So, can we live without plastic bags?

What’s the problem with a plastic bag levy?

The Welsh Assembly Government have the power to put a levy on all plastic bags given out by retailers, yet since the Sustainability Committee’s report on the levy proposal was published in November 2008 we’ve heard nothing more. Suspicion is that WAG are afraid of a compulsory levy being unpopular, but what is the problem people have with a plastic bag levy? Bring your own, I’m sure there’s a few lurking around everyone’s home, and its free again.

The levy, between 10 and 20 pence, would limit the number of bags going into circulation -currently an estimated 490 million plastic bags in Wales each year. Keep Wales Tidy say that plastic bags contribute between 0.1 – 1% of visible litter in the UK, and around 2% of litter on all UK beaches is plastic bags.  2% may not sound a huge proportion but considering that each plastic bag can take 1,000 years to degrade (and even then it only photo-degrades so plastic particles remain to contaminate the environment anyway) and there are over 1,000 beaches in the UK, that’s a lot of plastic bag litter.

The Marine Conservation Society said: “the impacts of plastic bags on wildlife are only starting to be documented, but it is estimated that annually around 100,000 seabirds and mammals are strangled or suffocated by plastic bags worldwide. The incidence and effects of marine wildlife ingesting plastic has also been seen to be increasing.”

For those who can handle the finer details, when small animals such as seabirds, turtles and fish swallow plastic bags, either by accident or mistaking them for food, two outcomes are most likely. Either, the plastic will become lodged in their throat stopping the animal from swallowing any food, meaning it will slowly starve to death. Or, the plastic will block their airway causing them to suffocate. That is of course, if a plastic bag hasn’t already wrapped itself around their throat and choked it to death, or tangled up their limbs/fins/wings stopping mobility, and causing it to drown.

If however, the pain and suffering of animals, or increasing plastic bag litter on streets, beaches and in parks and oceans doesn’t inspire you, perhaps the price of petrol will.

To make all the plastic bags needed for one year, it takes 0.2% of the world’s oil. That doesn’t sound too much initially, but what this actually means, is that 60million barrels of the globe’s dwindling resources every year, goes towards making the plastic carriers we horde in drawers before dumping in the bin. Three-billion pounds worth of oil resources is wasted on bags that aren’t even designer.

For those yet to ‘click’ – more plastic bags means less oil, less oil means petrol prices rise due to fuel shortages. Can you afford that?  Or, perhaps, does remembering to take a reusable bag shopping and a 10/20p one-off payment should you forget sound better?