Save the coffee cup!!

This is my thermos flask. I have been a home worker for quite a few years. For a lot of that time, I have broken up the day by walking up to the village bakery at lunchtime, and buying a roll and a coffee. The coffee always used to come in a disposable cup. About five years ago I bought this thermos, and the bakery now fill it with my coffee. Since starting to use it, I have saved well over a thousand coffee cups. Simple actions can make a big difference.

Wood free?

My eye was caught by this report on LibDem Voice about the first leaflet put out by the Conservatives in Henley. Interesting how "outraged of Crewe" has turned into "local of Henley". It linked to a piece in ThameNews about the (very local) Green candidate, Mark Stevenson.

At the bottom of that piece Mark is quoted as saying, "But we have to be charitable about this", Mark continued, "it could just be a stupid mistake made in a hurry. After all 'intouch' also declared itself to be printed on woodfree pulp sourced from sustainable forests. Just how sustainable are woodfree forests? I wonder."

Well, I wondered what "woodfree paper" is, so I googled it. And I discovered that it's made from, er, wood.

Wikipedia explains.

And Siemens illustrates with a very clear, and, I must say, beautifully constructed interactive diagram. Siemens are also honest about the energy use involved in the production.

So it's a case of vote blue, get unsubstantiated claims about not using wood. But, before anybody else says it, I shudder to think how many LibDem leaflets might say the same thing.

You can get actual woodfree paper. Elephant dung is of course the latest thing, though questions arise as to economies of scale. I do wonder about the economics of rearing large herds of elephants in order to employ vast armies of, probably, non-Europeans to go poop-scooping behind them as they crash their way through what's left of the world's savannah. (Elephantdung.co.uk is "down for restructuring" at the moment. I thought that only happened to government departments.)

You can get paper that's not made from wood, but is instead made from other carbon forms, such as cereals or bananas. As far as I can see, that doesn't really make any difference, unless trees take a lot more CO2 out of the atmosphere than cereals (must check that - but if I remember rightly trees respire, cereals don't or something like that). It's still giving a large chunk of the planet over to a massive and polluting form of capitalist production. But can you beat a leaflet for getting the message over at election time?

Is the government about to do A Good Thing?

It is according to the Independent. "The Independent on Sunday has learnt that, in an astonishing U-turn, the Secretary of State for Business, John Hutton, will announce that he is opening up the seas around Britain to wind farms in the biggest ever renewable energy initiative... enough wind farms to produce 25 gigawatts (GW) of electricity by 2020, in addition to the 8GW already planned – enough to meet the needs of all the country's homes."

Furthermore it was Brown himself wot dunnit, they say. "In a confidential memorandum, Gordon Brown was advised that the target was expensive and faced "severe practical difficulties". It went on to warn how it would reduce "the incentives to invest in other technologies like nuclear power". But the Prime Minister overruled Mr Hutton and insisted in his first green speech as PM last month that the target would be maintained and met."

Now clearly we detect a bit of spin here; how to refurbish the new PM's very tarnished reputation - give him a bit of green cred. But who cares, if he's made the right decision. I await tomorrow's news with bated breath.

The Tories' preferred method of transport

How does this sit with their green credentials?

Hat tip to Paul Walter. More details at the Guardian.

Picture copyright RMS: http://www.rms-spes.co.za/index.htm

Low Carbon Ringmer

Low Carbon Ringmer's environment fair was held on Saturday 13th, and was a great success. At least a lot of people turned up. Whether it was successful in starting a movement to lower carbon emissions from the village remains to be seen. There are a couple of pics on LCR's flickr site. More will follow.

Low Carbon Ringmer

Ringmer and Ouse Valley Liberal Democrats are launching Low Carbon Ringmer. The website for it is here. It tested my limited skills as a web designer to the, er, limit. I'm particularly limited on the back end, so I was pleased to discover that 1&1, the hosts, do a form builder with its own MySQL backing, and all I had to do was think of the questions. Formatting options are limited, but the colours blend quite well with the site colours. The price you pay is the appearance of a 1&1 advertising page when you send the form. I hope our users in Ringmer find that bearable.

In addition to the site, I hope to cultivate the idea of a web *presence* as opposed to just a web*site*. So I've created flickr, delicio.us and pb-wiki accounts for LCR and will be doing my best to encourage the good citizens of Ringmer, or at least the wired portion of them, to participate as much as possible.