Me? sustainable?

I try my hardest to do my part and be as sustainable as possible. I recycle tins, glass, paper and i try to never waste my food. I recycle so much paper and tinned items that my recycling boxes get filled up incredibly quickly, and then i find that its not collected quick enough and so i have it accumulating everywhere. This does not make me happy, it makes me feel like live in a mess and that i should just throw things away normally as it will be tidier in my house. However, i can't have that on my conscience, so i continue to recyle, its good in the long run, so who really cares about a bit of mess?

But somehow that isnt enough for people. I have a hectic lifstyle like a lot of people. I try to fit everything in and on top of that do what i can for the environment, but for people like greenpeacce that isnt enough. I could be more sustainable and unplug my chargers are night time or when i dont have appliances plugged in, but as im constanly using my phone, ipod and laptop, i dont think twice about taking the plugs out.

So ok theres another step i can take to be more environmentallly frendly. But i already take the bus to distant places, if the place i need to be is not far, then i'll walk. I'm not polluting the atmosphere as much as some people, i hardly ever drive even though i love too. It saves me money not too and helps with fuel emissions.

My improved arguement (as i did write this first time round on the first friday after is was due) is fairly late i admit, however, i always find that i write better when under pressure. Maybe if more pressure were put on the public to recycle, then more people would do it?

peace out

When first given the assignment brief of having to do a presentation on the sustainable deveolpment strategies o a country, i paniced. When i found out my country to research was Bulgaria, i paniced even more. I honestly had no idea what to do to begin with, thank goodness we were given starter websites to help us all out. however, after learning just how small a country Bulgaira is....i realsied how tuff it would be to find relevant information linking sustainable development and bulgaria together. And you know what? It was.

However, I did find this exercise quite enjoyable and interesting. The major things i learnt from this exercise are the different sustainable strategies carried out across all nations and not just our own, though ours hard very little in any plans for sustainability. Its so small! With such a tiny population, its hard to be surprisd tht they would make to much of an effort, apart from protecing their mountain ranges. Not being able to find much didnt really surprise me, however i was disappointed, especially after being in the debate and hearing all the strategies presented by other countries, i felt that our efforts, well our countries efforts were pretty pointless. I thought that Hannah and Sam did a fantastic presentation on Denmark, they really went into depth on how their countries efforts for sustainable development are far superior to most other countries researched by other groups.

I thought mine and Tristans' presentation went fairly well, we presented the best information we could find on Bulgaria's policies. By the end of the speech i was at a loss for words as i couldn't think of anything else to say...stutter central. The handout given to us was useful as a base for us to build our research on, but personnally i didn't really use it. What would i do differently if i were to do this exercise again? Pick a more ineresting country to research about, it would have been far more interesting to actaully LEARN about a countries sustainable plans then just to learn how Bulgaria wants to keep its landscape clean.

But as i said earlier, i did find this exercise enjoyable, especailly the debate part. I like listening to people and their views, though i wish i had contributed more in the discussion between countries, oh well, theres always room for improvement for next time.

I learnt about Agenda 21! A plan laid down by the UN in which to unite countries and help develop ways to sustain our world for future generations, whether that be for tomorrows generation or one in 50 years time. I also learnt a lot about wind farms and other eco friendly ways in which Denmark are becoming incredibly resourceful. errr...whether i actually learnt anything else about sustainable development from this exercise is not seeming likely at this present moment in time.

I feel that i have learnt how to communicate better with my team memebers so that we could produce a relevant talk to the debate. We found that when research into something very specific about a country, you need to read in depth at a large variety of sources to find useful information. Bullet pointing our work made us actually read our notes, as we had to understand them to present them and therefore were able to focus on the audience.

Too busy to recycle?

Sooo recycling, not the most interesting topic to discuss, everyone tries to avoid it, but it is in fact a major issue that needs to be taken head on. After reading the article, i found that the targets set by the Northamptonshire authorities recycling strategy in 2002 are already being reached. i saw that at the beginning when the scheme was first introduced, the rate of recycling was very low but has dramatically increased as the community became more aware of different recycling methods.

Rates can vary for all sorts of reasons:

• depending on the time of year
• if there are celebrations
• communities being introduced to the strategies gradually, not all quite at the same time
• people having to adjust

• some people may not have wanted to help contribute, may have seen it as too much effort

.....though what is so bad about putting one piece of recyclable rubbish in a different bin? some people i'll never quite understand, surely no ones lifestyle is really THAT busy? Or are we really so busy nowadays that helping our planet isn't important anymore. Granted, some people may be...preoccupied, but we can all do our smnall bit to help out.

I know that i don't do half as much recycling that i should, and i really wish i did more, doen't mean that i'm not trying though.
What i think can be done to improve recycling rates:

• provide households with better storage facilities for recycling
• provide enough boxes
• collect the recyclable waste more often so that it doesn'tcollect in households, making them untidy and therefore making the owner unhappy/uncomfortable in their own home, and therefore not recycle as they want the waste gone as soon as possible.

Some may say being paid to recycle would help, and yes it would provoke people to do it, but it's not really helping if you're being paid to do it, plus, where wouild the money come from? The council does not have enough in their budget to pay everyone in the country to recycle...unless you want to raise taxes

Aplogies for such a late blog, and for it not being very long/any good, hopefully i'll improve and make them more interesting again soon.

Anyone else a bit chilly?

Climate change, not a topic people take lightly. With many sides to the story its hard to decide who to believe, and to know what is really happening...and papers are not helping in informing the public just what is happening in their world.

I went out yesterday and bought 4 newspapers; 'The Sun' 'The Times' 'The Daily Express' and 'The Independent'. From these 4 I found...no articles that are focus on climate change...big disappointment on my behalf. However, one article which I read in 'The Daily Express' was titled "Welcome to Artic Britain". Now, everyone in Northampton (should) know that it snowed on Tuesday (28th October 08), I certainly did, I walked home in it! It made me think, it has been many years since I last saw snow in October. So the climate must be changing. The article itself does not focus on climate change, just that it snowed and it shall continue to snow.

Now this may be an assumption, but I personally think that the papers are trying their best to not focus on the way our planet is changing, unless a natural disaster ensues, then they all flood to get the story first, to panic the public and tell them how bad weather is caused by climate change and we must do something to stop it from happening!...No, just, no. Climate change is happening, but tabloids and broadsheets are not taking it as seriously as they should.
After finding no article in 'The Sun' on climate change, I instead searched for any articles which relate to climate change on their website. Luckily one had actually been posted yesterday

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/special_events/green_week/article1871745.ece

This article talks about how scientists are trying to find new ways of combating climate change, with such methods as 'Giant mirrors' and 'covering the sea with algae' (for absorption of CO2). As it is a newspaper article, I’m very skeptical on the information presented to me, I need more scientific proof then what I read from a journalist, who probably knows less about science, and could care less about it, as long as they sell enough papers. I sound very bitter here, however, it is only due to the fact that it concerns me that the public are not being presented with all the facts and both sides of the story of climate change. How it not only affects our environment, but also our economy.

What seriously concerns me is that the facts behind each article are the same and are published over and over again, just with different scary head lines to shock people into buying news papers and feeling sorry for their actions. This is not a sustainable course of action to take; it is essentially just a scare tactic. I have read articles whereby the underlining story is how to increase sustainability, but have only read these in specific geographical magazines (such as the one my last blog was based on)

The public may find sustainable development a boring topic, as they are just being told on how to live more sustainably, and who really likes to be told what to do? Newspapers give a good portrayal of what is happening now with climate change, but so far do not seem to be emphasizing just how important sustainable development is to save the future, even if it is just to help save tomorrow from ourselves.

"Why are there 6 pedals when there are only 4 directions?!"

Right, being as this is the first blog I have EVER written, I left it to the day before it’s due to write it, my bad.

However, this has actually worked out in my favor! On my travels to town and then park campus today (Wednesday 15th Oct) I stopped in WH Smiths to see if I could find a new scientist magazine to give me inspiration, instead I found this: http://www.geographical.co.uk/Home/index.html

I found a few articles which relate to the topic of private cars, as covered in the UK Sustainable Development Strategy. http://www.defra.gov.uk/sustainable/government/progress/data-resources/sdiyp.htm

I read the (short) article in this Strategy and observed the graph. It kind of surprised me a little, as you can see in the graph that the CO2 emissions dropped before rising again, and even now the levels haven’t reached what they were in 1990.

Sat here pondering, I try to anaylse why this could be. Well as household income has increased over the years, people appear to earn more money, not taking for granted that the price of everyday living essentials has also gone up. But with this increase in wealth, peoples spending habits sky rocketed, which means that people can afford to buy their own car, or maybe even perhaps a second or third car (depending on how lucky they are with their increased pay checks)

This inevitably means that there are more cars on the road, and as most cars are a major source of emitting CO2, the CO2 emissions have increased, but not to the same high levels as in 1990. Don't get me wrong, I’m all for saving the planet and I believe something must be done to prevent any major climate changes, but I do not see the results observed to be too unnerving. With modern technology these days, scientist have been able to find ways of making fuel cleaner and making fuel consumption more sustainable, so that we can keep this valuable harmful product for future generations to come. Cars have been developed whereby they can run on "gasohol", as quoted by my A level chemistry teacher, which is a mixture of hydrocarbons and ethanol to make a fuel that produces lower CO2 emission. And let’s not forget hybrid cars either, specially developed so that you will only use half the fuel consumption of that of a normal gas guzzler.

But what I find more interesting is how incredibly adaptable our planet is. This is where the "geographical" magazine comes in.

On page 11 under a page heading of "climate watch" there is an in brief article about "Pristine Forests Are Better Storehouses"

the opening line quotes "the carbon storage capacity of untouched forests has been underestimated by the worlds climate change experts, according to scientist at the Australian National University (ANU)"

This proving that we still know very little about our world. But the article then goes on to say that

“pristine forests can store 3 times as much CO2 as a plantation forest”

This is basically saying that naturally growing forests are able to store a lot more CO2 from the atmosphere then forests that we humans have planted ourselves to help combat the high levels in the atmosphere. Ironic don’t you think? Not only that but these clean forests store the CO2 for longer as well…so as we put more into the atmosphere, and then continue deforestation, we just make it worse for ourselves. After all, these untouched forests would be more than happy to hold all this extra CO2 we are producing, well not so much producing but releasing back into the atmosphere.

Right, to summaries, CO2 emissions have increased, a bit…after a 9% decrease...due to more households using more energy. However, cutting the number of cars on the road would not ultimately reduce the emissions by a lot; though it would help (use buses people!)

But to finish this blog, I will leave a quote from this article which says “untouched forests are more resilient to climate change and disturbances than plantation forests”

Maybe we should stop blaming cars so much, and focus on saving these forests first, after all, they are rather pretty as well you know, which "direction" will you take?

Anyone wanting to read this magazine, just ask, your welcome to it