Eco Friendly House And Garden

Finally, London has put some focus on a bicycle hire scheme in the City!

Rather than focusing on trying to stop heavy traffic - they have decided to focus on promoting and supporting a cycling scheme for commuters, locals and tourists alike!

Hopefully this is the first step towards changing the way we look at cities and transport for the future - and the more of us that support the scheme - the more likely further improvements are!

Tower Bridge - London

Why Bikes?
Well, the idea behind the current scheme is to allow people to cycle around London without having the initial worry and cost of buying a new bike - and then reducing the worry of securely storing these bikes in flats and on the street.

By offering the use of secure bicycles that you can hire for a small fee - these 2 worries are eliminated - and at the same time making the streets cleaner and safer and reducing the need for increasing other resources.

Over 12,000 people have already signed up for the scheme - so that’s 12,000 bikes that haven’t had to be made!  They will all be sharing the same bikes in the scheme making great environmental sense!

And of course, it is better for the environment to have 500 bikes trundling around the streets than 50 half-empty buses.  And it’s better for the 12,000 people to be cycling themselves from A to B than to have them just sitting on a bus or tube.

Added to this - bicycles are made for 1 - whereas car hire schemes will usually leave 3 empty seats!

How It Works:
At the moment you need to sign up online to join the scheme - then you receive your ‘key’ which allows you to ride any of the bikes around the city.

There are 2 separate charges for the scheme and they are explained below.  Once you understand the difference between these, it is so simple to use.

Charge 1) Access To A Bike:
You will pay a small fee to actually free a bike up from it’s docking station, which can be as little as 12p a day if you buy an annual pass, or up to £1 a day if you pay daily.  This Access lasts a full 24 hours from release of the bike from the docking point.

Charge 2) Time-Based Hire:
You will pay a set fee for the length of time you have a bike out of a docking station.  Fees range from £1 for an hour up to £50 for the whole day (a day = a 24 hour period).  If the bike is not returned to a docking station before the 24 hour period elapses there will be a steep fine to pay!

However, less than 30 minutes on a bike (ie - from leaving 1 docking station to being secured in another docking station) if totally free!  So you only pay the Access Fee - which could be as little as 12 pence!

Needless to say that the more you use it the more cost effective it is, and using it for short distances is the key to good value.

Using it for longer bike rides might not be as cost effective as using a standard bicycle hire store - but could be more convenient.

Either way - make sure that you support the scheme in any way you can, so that the Government can see that people want less traffic on the roads, we want better pedestrian and cycling facilities and associated safety improvements - and we want greener travel improvements across the country.

If you help make London a success - it could roll out to other large cities!  Imagine all that green energy being used up on pedal-power rather than petrol!

Can working in your local bakers be just as eco friendly as saving whales in the Pacific?

Yes, of course it can!  Just because you aren’t out there on the front line fighting deforestation and humanitarian crimes - doesn’t mean you aren’t making the best choices for your environment.

Don’t get ‘ethical’ issues confused with ‘environmental’ issues - the latter being active for the planet - and the people and communities benefiting from the ethical side of things.

How Can You Help?
Well, working closer to home is an easy one for starters.  Why travel miles to work if you can get a job within walking distance of your front door.  I mean, there will be people driving past you as they work in the offices or stores near your home, and you spend the day working close to their home!

It’s not always working for an eco friendly business that makes your individual job more eco friendly either.  I mean travelling 20 or more miles a day in your car to get to an eco friendly workplace by no means compares to someone who walks 5 minutes to work in a local bakers - even if the baker doesn’t use the most eco friendly equipment! Over a year the difference is more obvious.

And if you are eco minded - then you could help to implement changes to your workplace to make them more eco-friendly in themselves.  I mean if you could work locally to promote eco friendly practices in a locally run family business in your own community - what could be more eco friendly!

Look At Yourself Now:
Even if you aren’t planning on changing jobs - there are plenty of things you could look at in your current role and help to change.  And with the shortage of truly ‘green’ jobs about - you are probably better to become a mini activist in your current role!

However, it’s not all the same green!  Just because the charity you work for helps wildlife conservation - it doesn’t mean that everything else is a given.  For example, if you are working in a retail outlet on behalf or the many charities out there - is that really green at all?

Retail stores are a massive polluter and creator of waste - I mean you only need to look out the back of a store to see the tonnes of waste cardboard and other packaging being used.  All the pricing, stock holding and transportation add up to something huge - so can you really call this an ‘eco friendly’ job?

Ideas For The Future:
Start to think about everyday things in your job as well - rather than the large sweeping achievements of the great big companies.

I like to think that the people who are working for their community are making as much of a difference as those campaigners on the other side of the world.  It’s the people who just plod along day after day thinking of all the things they could do - but not doing them!

I know now isn’t the time to be giving up your job on a whim - but you could start to work through all those little things that have been nagging you.  Find out about local funding for certain projects that might apply to your business.  Promote communication methods that save energy and canteen options that can reduce food miles.

And, trying to find an eco friendly business improvement that can save your company money will always go down well with the boss - so try to find an cost effective eco friendly angle for everything!

An eco friendly business doesn’t just talk about it - it acts on it!

Depending on the type of business that you run, or the company that you work for, there could be a certain amount of long-distance travel involved.  And long-haul means wasted time, staff not working and carbon emissions!

So Climate Care Day is asking: ‘Why not consider a ‘travel free’ day as part of your current business plan?’  This initiative supported by the WWF is trying to give you the opportunity to look at the alternatives, and make businesses more eco-friendly.

By asking you not to travel as part of your working day, they are trying to get businesses and individuals to think about the impact that their decisions can have on not only their business itself, but also on the wider environment.

What Are They Asking?
Basically, the idea of Climate Care Day is to get businesses to not arrange any long distance travel for that 24 hours.

So, on the 26th of March 2010, they are hoping that corporations will communicate via other means rather than face-to-face.

Whether this means individuals will communicate verbally by telephone, digitally via the internet or virtually with live video conferencing - it doesn’t matter.  As long as they haven’t flown or driven hundreds or thousands of miles to do it in person!

There are plenty of technological alternatives available to businesses today that can eliminate or reduce the need for business travel - and can save a lot of money in the process!

However, a lot of people are not thinking of these alternatives as they plod along doing everything as they have always done it.  Added to this is the problem of the changing market, where something that wasn’t really a viable option a few years ago is now readily and very often cheaply available.

Sometimes things that have always happened a certain way are seen as static - with no real reason to change it - well, if it has always worked like that - why change it?

But we have seen with the impressive speed with which cell phones have morphed into a huge array of handheld mobile technology gadgets that make phone calls, give you directions, display whole journals, film events, take pictures, search the internet and even play games.  Why would you still want to do all these things separately and as slowly as we used to do it?

Would you rather go to a library and scan through the paper index and individual paper journals to find a certain fact, when you could use the internet instead?  And why would you want to carry a camera, your cell and a laptop to review new products for your company, when a smart phone could do all 3 jobs in 1?

The same could be true for your business if you worked smarter - and it makes economic sense.  Save time, save money and reduce carbon emissions - but also create a better work environment and help society change for the better.

Why Do It?
Climate change is said to be the biggest threat to nature and humanity in the 21st century, and has now become a serious business issue.  Ignoring this could have detrimental effects on not only your own business itself, but on the way we work as a planet at the moment.

Coastal cities are having to make 25-year plans to move whole industries away from threatened coastlines.  You can’t just change the country’s infrastructure overnight!

And supplies and raw materials are changing - for example landfill sites are being raided for their raw ingredients which were buried in the past decades, and old computer parts are being harvested for the precious metals they contain.

We also know that in general things that stay the same are left behind.  I mean if you ran a business today that was based on using only dial-up internet- you would not be able to compete with others in the same market.

You don’t always need the newest inventions, or the most expensive - but you need a viable alternative that suits your business needs.

So, even if you can’t take part in this event, consider looking again at some business improvements - and become more eco friendly along the way.

Planning to lose weight and give up smoking - 2 perfect eco friendly resolutions!

Every New Year there are thousands of people vowing to give up smoking and lose weight for the new year - so why not do it for real this time rather than just putting in a little bit of effort in front of the friends!

We know the reason we manage to eat a bit healthier in January is because we have eaten so much junk over the winter that we would rather not face another strawberry trifle or fried leftovers! 

And the symbolic start of the new year makes us decide that it’s a good time to be a bit healthier - but when you go back to work and the month end bills start to come through after the longest month of the year - it virtually always has 5 Fridays - you are stressed enough to just keep on smoking!

So why not make these 2 count seriously towards your new eco friendly lifestyle for 2010.

Losing Weight:
This has 2 sides to it’s eco benefit; eating less and exercising more, so lets look at these in detail.

Eating Less - we all know that we buy, cook and eat much more food than we need - and much of the food isn’t nutritious enough to make a difference.  So by restricting your meal size and number of meals, you can reduce the pressure on farmers and local stores to grow so much in the first place.

The food has to be grown and transported to the stores too which uses valuable energy and petrol or gas as well.  In a larger scale example the advantages become clear: if the average person buys 20 sprouts from the store, and a lorry from the farm can only fit in 1000 sprouts in it’s hopper - that means one journey feeds 50 families. 

But what if each of your 3 dinner guests only really eats 5 sprouts each and you throw the leftover 5 away?  That means that that lorry carried 250 sprouts for nothing.  And if people only brought what they actually ate - that original lorry could have fed nearly 67 families (17 more than before).

And who says we should be eating until we are stuffed anyway?  Buy less, eat less, waste less.

Exercising More- Clearly, if you are exercising more then you may well be walking or cycling a lot more than before - both of which have massive eco benefits.

By spending more time out of your car, you are saving on fuel and emissions - but you are also making your local area richer.  If you visit local parks and other amenities you are making them worth keeping and maintaining - and you could become involved in local projects.

And by taking a bit longer to get somewhere or exploring somewhere in closer detail you could become a bit more knowledgeable of local species and habitats - and even see places, buildings or wildlife that you haven’t seen before (as you fly at 50 mph down the link road!).

Also, more exercise will make you a healthier person, delaying the signs of aging and reducing your need for routine medications and treatments - all saving you and the community money and energy.  Which leads us on to the other resolution….

Stop Smoking:
Not only is smoking bad for your health on it’s own, it is also bad for your health in terms of the reduction in exercise your may well be having due to being so out of breath.  It has been scientifically proved that smoking causes lung damage - and your lungs are what helps you to be active and exercise more.

However, buying you cigarettes is a never-ending job.  Unless you are a very light smoker or stretch out your roll-ups beyond the meanest student - you will be having to visit a store several times a week.  Smokers never seem to buy them in bulk, they go back and forth all the time, just buying another 20. and I bet the don’t always walk there?

The packaging, the transport, the ingredients - all bad for the environment and your body.  So make an appointment with a hypnotist and get over it!

There are many other ways to help improve your eco friendly lifestyle - so maybe instead of New Year resolutions - have New Month resolutions where you can improve your lifestyle throughout the year!

With the recent bad weather across most of the northern hemisphere - should we stay home?

I haven’t left my place apart from to go for a great walk through the woods and a walk to the local store - so what did you do - and could it have caused problems for others?

There is an argument for both sides really, but which is more eco friendly?

The Case For Staying Home:
For a start, you will be one less car on the road in the way of other important people or vehicles that need to use the roads.  Many people like doctors, vets, firemen, police, grit lorry drivers, petrol tankers, grocery vans and ambulances that need to use the roads all day and at any time. 

So what would you do if you had got stuck on ice on a slip road and were now holding up one or more of the above people?  Stopping valuable staff from doing their job when you were only off out to do a bit of shopping or to visit a friend?

You would also be one more person that local services would have to worry about.  For example on 1 road in the UK earlier this week, there was a reported 25 mile tailback in the snow.  All those people were stranded in the freezing cold and the emergency services, local hotels and recovery drivers were now having to work overtime and through the night to help them all - and I bet all 25 miles wasn’t filled with doctors and food supplies?

And talking of medical care - if you went out and injured yourself on ice or through a car accident - you are adding to the pressures that emergency services are already facing.  If you can’t get to town in the bad conditions - what makes you think that nurses can either?  So more injuries and less nurses is really only going to mean longer waits and over-worked staff. 

The same goes for any other business as well.  Just because you managed to get yourself to a store, it doesn’t mean they will be able to offer you their best service, as they may also be short-staffed or have deliveries that cannot make it to the store due to accidents etc.

The Case For Going Out:
If you are one of the services that keep everyone else going then yes, you should try to get to work.  Hopefully all the non-essential journeys have ceased and so the roads should be clearer and safer for people like yourself to get through.

Also, many small businesses couldn’t function without their staff, and so struggling in to work could be the only option for some people. 

Imagine if everyone stopped going to work on the same day - countries would come to a standstill as no energy would be available, no need food would arrive in stores - and if it did, there would be noone there to sell it.  No gas, no gritters, no ambulances……….

People need to go to work in these terrible conditions - but think about who you are before deciding, as it’s not about how important you think your journey is, it’s about how important you know your job is.

Many eco friendly people will live near to where they work anyway - so a walk to work in the cold is going to be a million times better than a drive anywhere - and less of a drain on society during these hard times!

The Answer:
Stretched resources or reduced services? Neither is better than the other if you have to get to work - but there is a clear winner if you are not needed anywhere.

People not working, on a day off or who can work from home are the ones that can make a real difference in this whole thing.  By limiting their impact on the outside world during this stressful and very cold time, they can make all the difference to those who don’t have a choice.

So wrap up warm and go visit your elderly neighbours today - or snuggle up in front of the TV and watch a good movie instead.

Watch this short video - and it will jolt you into reality!

Where do you think all your stuff comes from?  What happens when you get that new phone?  How can we get our stuff so cheap?  What is the real cost of our spending?

All these are answered in this lively, well animated and well written short video by a well traveled, very experienced environmental investigator specialising in health and justice issues across the globe.

It is filled with some scary facts about what we are doing to our planet - or in reality what we are not doing to help our planet.

It highlights - with a fact-packed dialogue - what we are allowing to happen or are being coerced into thinking is ‘OK’.

Annie quotes that the US represents just “5% of the world’s population but uses 30% of the resources and makes 30% of the waste”  Is that right?  Or is that just how it ended up because no-one has really ever thought it was wrong?

Think about it!
She certainly makes you think about everything you are going to buy - or anything you have recently brought.  And it should certainly make you think about anything you are planning to throw away!

The cost of something shouldn’t be the value that the store attributes to it.  For example the $4.99 radio she talks about in her video could not possibly have only cost $4.99 to make. 

Firstly, the store has to make a profit and it needs to be packaged up and shipped across the world from where ever it was made.  So none of that is what it actually cost to make either - so we are down to about maybe $3.00 or less to make?

And how long would you think 1 single radio takes to make from it’s basic parts? About 30 minutes?  No, that would be stupid, right?  But would you work for less than $6.00 an hour? I don’t think so.

So, how much money do the people that build these get paid?  And we haven’t even started on the people it took to mine the raw materials and the time it took to shape them into the component parts.  And what about driving and shipping costs?

And we haven’t even started on the cost to the environment…… 

Yet to some people, throwing out an un-needed $5 radio is not a worry to them - it’s only $5. They don’t even think about what was destroyed or who was exploited to make it in the first place.

And you can be sure that many people do not think about what happens to it after they throw it out!

Well, Annie explains all in her hard-hitting fact-filled docu-video - but keeps it fun and a bit funny even.

And you can help out by showing people, schools, social clubs or anyone else this video to help change that!  Check out the resources on the site for more information.

That quick drive to the store before dinner could cost you your open spaces!

I’m not talking about the cost of car pollution on the environment - although that is becoming a major problem. And I’m not talking about the amount of front yards and gardens being concreted over for parking spaces - although this is seriously affecting natural water cycles and causing localised flooding.

What I’m talking about is your single little car on your ‘quick drive to the stores’ being one of 30 other little cars on a quick drive to the store.

How Can 1 Little Car Cause A Problem?
Well, imagine only the people that 100% need to be on the roads at rush hour were on the roads.  People going to work, emergency services and buses are who I mean here - and they all know where they are going.  As a result of their A - B actions, they may well run smoothly with no snarl-ups - I mean traffic lights and roundabouts are designed to keep traffic flowing to avoid congestion.

Now, add dithering drivers to the mix.  They either drive too slow, can’t decide which lane they should be in, are too busy fiddling with something on the passenger seat to watch the lights or are not in a hurry at all so make bad driving choices.

All these people are responsible for causing traffic delays - and these traffic delays get noticed by the residents and they want the traffic sorted out.  This can involve a whole host of changes.

Who Decides?
If residents get annoyed about traffic issues, councils want to implement more traffic regulations and traffic lights to control the flow.  They want to ‘improve’ the roundabouts and dual carriageways - which all make it more difficult for pedestrians to get around - what with all the railings and extra lanes to navigate.

The worst case scenario here is unfortunately the best alternative to traffic in towns - and that is to build a by-pass!  Heavy machinery is used here to plough out fields and woodlands to make way for a super-fast easy-to-drive-on dual carriageway!

I know that this won’t happen overnight - but it could already be happening.  Has your town got any roadworks going on?  Any ‘highway’ improvements at the moment?  Do you already have speeding cars and multiple junctions?

If you keep driving in rush hour or when you really don’t need to - you are causing some of these problems.  And there is a simple way to slow this development down - and it involves forward planning, buses, trains, bikes and your very own little feet!