June 2009 Archives

Moseley Festival starts this evening. I spent some time this week preparing a flyer about SusMo, to spread the word about the group and to give "top tips" about lightening our footprints.

This information has a wider message than just for the community in our neighbourhood in Moseley - the general message is:

Building a more sustainable community needs both personal action, to cut our household CO2 emissions, and community initiatives.

Spread the word! Encourage your friends and neighbours, local businesses and local groups to join an existing campaign, or start to plan one in your area. Only 15% of waste comes from households so reducing the other 85% of waste from businesses should be a priority.

Be part of the success story:
Birmingham met last year's target of saving 100,000 tonnes of CO2 - and more. Help Birmingham exceed this year's target of saving 120,000 tonnes of CO2. Contact the Energy Savings Trust for advice and information about grants.

TOP TIPS

Turn off standby: the average house has 12 gadgets on standby - switch off at the wall or remove the plug.

Insulate your home: most heat is lost through the roof and walls of a house.

Travel greener: only use your car if you have to and use alternatives such as public transport, walking & cycling.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - in that order: use kerbside collections and use a 'bag for life' when shopping.

Light your home efficiently with low energy light bulbs and turn off lights when you leave the room.

Heat your home efficiently by upgrading to an energy efficient boiler and only heat rooms when in use.

Use renewable energy by signing up to a 'green' electricity supplier, fitting a solar panel to heat your water and dry your washing on a washing line.

Buy local and seasonal from local suppliers and at the Moseley Farmers' Market

Save hot water: have a shower instead of a bath.

We have three adult offspring and only one of the five of us has a car. Only our oldest, who has young children, has a car, as we did until five years ago.

Although I recommend alternative forms of transport, when and where they are available, there are times when a car is the best option for your desired, or required, destination.

Before we stopped owning a car we had never calculated how much it was costing us. We had a fair idea of the weekly fuel and maintenance costs, but we didn't add on a proportion of the insurance, road tax and depreciation. We did calculate the average weekly cost in 2004, for the six years we owned a second hand, Ford Mondeo Estate car. The weekly cost averaged £57 for our annual mileage of about 3,000 miles and this did not include parking costs. I'm not sure what percentage one should add to that for 2009 prices, but this is clearly a real luxury for households on a restricted budget.

People have all sorts of reasons for their dependence on a car, some are justified but others are not. In Birmingham, in addition to a good public transport network, we have a choice of opportunities to rent a car, to share car journeys or to share use of a private car.

Car share Birmingham is a scheme for approved employers in Birmingham and is managed by Birmingham City Council.

Liftshare is a free, web based organisation that is useful for people who have some flexibility about dates and wish to travel along popular routes.

Whizzgo is a pay-by-the-hour, private car hire company, with cars based in Birmingham and ten other cities in England. This enables you to combine the use of a car with trains and coaches for long journeys.

You can also make private arrangements with friends to extend your, or their, car insurance to share car use on an agreed basis.

Please use the comments column to tell us about your experiences with any of these opportunities.

How often do you drink bottled water? Do you accept the environmental damage that this causes, or is this a habit that you would like to change?

In case you are not aware of the facts:

• For each bottle that you drink, three to five times as much freshwater is used up during manufacturing and transportation;
• For each bottle that you drink, you are using about a half a bottle of crude oil;
• Recycling is only feasible in limited circumstances because only PET bottles can be recycled. You may feel good about putting water bottles in your recycling bin, but they may still end up in land fill or being incinerated;
• Bottles used to package water take over 1,000 years to bio-degrade and, if incinerated, they produce toxic fumes.

Do you drink bottled water because you think that it is better for you? The UK has safe healthy water and Birmingham has some of the best drinking water in the world, piped from the Elan Valley in Wales. Not all bottled water is safe. I think that the sale of bottled water in Birmingham should be banned, would you support a campaign?

We are unlikely to get effective political support. In spite of a government minister, Phil Woolas, attacking the wastefulness of the bottled water industry, only a quarter of government departments have stopped using bottled water in their offices. The House of Commons alone got through around 155,000 litres of bottled water in 2006-07 costing the tax payer £64,599.

Do you think that bottled water tastes better? In a blind test, conducted by Which? magazine, about half could not identify tap water.

There is a vast range of water available: Claridges restaurant in London offers more than 30 bottled waters from around the world, including Mount Pearl 'Berg' water at £30 a litre. Claridges also offers tap water which is free. Never be too shy to ask for tap water in a restaurant.

Is giving up bottled water an easy change that you could make to your lifestyle? It would give you lighter footprints and make a real difference to tackling climate change. From now on, use tap water at home, ask for tap water when dining out and, when on the move, take a reusable bottle full of tap water with you.

Sources: which? ; The Water Project ; Waste Watch and the Chicago Sun Times

This week's blog moves to a bigger picture, the effect of our lifestyle in the UK on the lives of communities in Colombia.

My daughter travelled to Colombia on a banana boat last year, where she worked (volunteered) for several months. Now back in the UK she has helped to produce a leaflet about the social-impact-of-agrofuels in Colombia, and about the impact of oil & human rights.

She writes:
"Agrofuels or 'biofuels' are fuels made primarily from crops grown in large-scale monocultures. Since April 2008, all fuel at UK petrol stations is required by law to be mixed with 2.5% 'biofuels'.

Agrofuels, far from being climate friendly, accelerate climate change because of deforestation and other ecosystem destruction and because they rely on agrichemicals linked to high greenhouse gas emissions. They also lead to hunger, and to farmers being forced off their land.

Colombia is one of the countries increasing its production of oil palm and sugar cane to meet agrofuel demand. As part of this expansion, trade unionists have been murdered and communities forced off their land at gunpoint by paramilitaries (illegal groups linked to the state)."

You can read the text of the leaflet (and ask for copies - and read about her experiences in Colombia) on her blog, and can see the leaflet on "flickr".

The leaflet suggests what you can do, as an activist, to prevent the damage to the environment and to communities in Colombia. You can also help quietly, by gradually changing your lifestyle to one that reduces your dependence on a motor car.