"innocent" (those with the ethical smoothies) have just announced that they sold a 10-20% stake to the Coca Cola company. I think they sold their soul. Keep this in mind on your next shopping tour. Unfortunately, "Tropicana" is not much better, they are owned by Pepsi... But there are still a few alternatives around.
Hanno
Monday 13 April 2009
Sunday 8 February 2009
Sunday 25 January 2009
recycling - where it goes
Just saw some info from the local borough concerning recycling that I found interesting:
About 33% of the waste in the borough is recycled.
- Mixed paper and cardboard: is taken to transfer station at Taplow before being shipped to one of Severnside's mills in the south east. There it is primarily turned into fluting (wavy layer of a piece of cardboard) for the packaging industry.
- Tetra paks: transported to a recycling mill and turned into a range of different products – from plasterboard liner to high-strength paper bags and envelopes.
- Glass: is sorted from cans and plastic at the recovery facility in Rainham. It goes to the aggregate market and is used mainly for road surfacing.
- Steel cans: go to Hartlepool, where they are turned into girders for the construction industry.
- Aluminium: goes to Warrington and is used to make car engine castings.
- Plastic bottles: go to Dagenham, where they are used for the production of various items ranging from recycling boxes to computers or fleece jackets.
And for every ton of aluminium cans or foil collected the non-profit recycling organisation Alupro grows a fruit tree in Malawi. That's 48,000 fruit trees per year donated by recyclers from across the UK.
(source: "Around the Royal Borough 1, 2009).
About 33% of the waste in the borough is recycled.
- Mixed paper and cardboard: is taken to transfer station at Taplow before being shipped to one of Severnside's mills in the south east. There it is primarily turned into fluting (wavy layer of a piece of cardboard) for the packaging industry.
- Tetra paks: transported to a recycling mill and turned into a range of different products – from plasterboard liner to high-strength paper bags and envelopes.
- Glass: is sorted from cans and plastic at the recovery facility in Rainham. It goes to the aggregate market and is used mainly for road surfacing.
- Steel cans: go to Hartlepool, where they are turned into girders for the construction industry.
- Aluminium: goes to Warrington and is used to make car engine castings.
- Plastic bottles: go to Dagenham, where they are used for the production of various items ranging from recycling boxes to computers or fleece jackets.
And for every ton of aluminium cans or foil collected the non-profit recycling organisation Alupro grows a fruit tree in Malawi. That's 48,000 fruit trees per year donated by recyclers from across the UK.
(source: "Around the Royal Borough 1, 2009).
Sunday 11 January 2009
2008 carbon survey results and prize draw
Hi everybody,
Last December, we launched the environmental attitudes survey focussing on transport. Here's a short summary of the results. We received 136 completed questionnaires (78 students, 52 staff), which should be a representative portion of the "Silwood population".
First, we wanted to know, how people travel to work: those who live less than 5 miles away get to work mostly on foot and by bike, those who live 5-30 miles away mostly by car, and only those who have to travel more than 30 miles come mostly by train. This clearly shows that local public transport (busses) is ineffective and we will have to work on this problem.
Since it's difficult to reduce the number of cars in the near future, we asked if car users would be willing to pay into a carbon-offset fund for their journeys: almost 50 % of them would agree to pay.
In the second part of the survey, we wanted to know, how many business-related flights the Silwoodians take per year: in 2008, there were 169 short-distance flights (up to 3 hours), 91 flights for 3-8 hours, and 81 long-distance flights (> 8 hours). Again, we asked if people would be willing to offset their flights: 78% would agree to pay into a carbon-offset fund.
These results show that a carbon-offset fund for Silwwod could work but should probably start on a voluntary basis.
And, finally the prize draw: the lucky winners of a "User's guide to the 21st century" are: Andrea Wallace, Gwendolen Hitchcock, and Paul Rymer. The first prize (bottle of British organic sparkling wine + the user's guide) goes to Meirion Hopkins!
Congratulations to the winners and thanks to everybody who filled in the questionnaire!
Cheers,
Hanno
Monday 8 December 2008
No New Coal for the UK! stop Eon Kingsnorth . . .
First, read more about reasons to oppose new coal fired power plants: http://www.nonewcoal.org.uk/
Then, consider making a small online action:
The noble art of Google bombing - of making a website rise up the search results by encouraging other websites to link to them in a particular way - is being harnessed by blogs campaigning against new coal-fired power stations, especially Kingsnorth. The idea is to make the No New Coal website appear at the top of the list anytime a search is done for 'Eon' (which is, of course, the company so intent on building a plant at Kingsnorth).
Anyone with a website, blog or profile on the likes of MySpace or Facebook can help out, so if you'd like to help here are instructions purloined from Climate Change Action, via Greenpeace, via Lizzie:
The more links to a site, the higher it climbs in Google rankings. So, if enough people make the word 'Eon' link to the No New Coal site, pretty soon it'll top the list of anyone searching for Eon. (This tactic was succesfully used a few years ago to make 'swivel-eyed loons' link to UKIP).
Two weeks ago www.nonewcoal.org.uk wasn't in the top 50 sites when searching for Eon. I just searched and it was at number 5! cool!
So a simple online action can help us get our electronic placards in their face without getting out on the cold winter streets.
If you have a website, blog, myspace, bebo, forum account, etc. then please place a link to http://www.nonewcoal.org.uk.
Ideally you write 'Eon' and place a hyperlink to http://www.nonewcoal.org.uk from that text. Anyone can do this! Blog comments/forums are easiest. Good websites are most effective.
If you're wondering what else to write, you could copy this whole piece.
To pip eon to the top will require a lot of effort so tell your friends, consider putting this simple action in your newsletters, spread the word online...
Notes:
* 1. It works best if you mention Eon several times in an article.
* 2. If you are posting the link in a blog post then put Eon in the title and the tags.
* 3.The more important the site the more kick nonewcoal.org.uk gets from the link.
* 4. If you are really determined then consider setting up a fake site like the EON CSR blog that way you can link loads of times to nonewcoal.org.uk from a site that is very relevent!
* http://eon-csr.blogspot.com/
* 5. Why not take this is seriously as a real world action and forward it to people with green blogs/campaign groups etc.
To see this post on the Greenpeace website visit http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/google-bomb-eon-20081208
Then, consider making a small online action:
The noble art of Google bombing - of making a website rise up the search results by encouraging other websites to link to them in a particular way - is being harnessed by blogs campaigning against new coal-fired power stations, especially Kingsnorth. The idea is to make the No New Coal website appear at the top of the list anytime a search is done for 'Eon' (which is, of course, the company so intent on building a plant at Kingsnorth).
Anyone with a website, blog or profile on the likes of MySpace or Facebook can help out, so if you'd like to help here are instructions purloined from Climate Change Action, via Greenpeace, via Lizzie:
The more links to a site, the higher it climbs in Google rankings. So, if enough people make the word 'Eon' link to the No New Coal site, pretty soon it'll top the list of anyone searching for Eon. (This tactic was succesfully used a few years ago to make 'swivel-eyed loons' link to UKIP).
Two weeks ago www.nonewcoal.org.uk wasn't in the top 50 sites when searching for Eon. I just searched and it was at number 5! cool!
So a simple online action can help us get our electronic placards in their face without getting out on the cold winter streets.
If you have a website, blog, myspace, bebo, forum account, etc. then please place a link to http://www.nonewcoal.org.u
Ideally you write 'Eon' and place a hyperlink to http://www.nonewcoal.org.u
If you're wondering what else to write, you could copy this whole piece.
To pip eon to the top will require a lot of effort so tell your friends, consider putting this simple action in your newsletters, spread the word online...
Notes:
* 1. It works best if you mention Eon several times in an article.
* 2. If you are posting the link in a blog post then put Eon in the title and the tags.
* 3.The more important the site the more kick nonewcoal.org.uk gets from the link.
* 4. If you are really determined then consider setting up a fake site like the EON CSR blog that way you can link loads of times to nonewcoal.org.uk from a site that is very relevent!
* http://eon-csr.blogspot.co
* 5. Why not take this is seriously as a real world action and forward it to people with green blogs/campaign groups etc.
To see this post on the Greenpeace website visit http://www.greenpeace.org.
Sunday 30 November 2008
Movie night on Thirsday
Hi,
Does anybody from you have Life in Cold Blood?
We would like to show it on Thursday and it will be great if you can borrow 2 first series.
Thanks a lot
Lena
A bit of news and remember, meeting this Tuesday at 5pm in Conservatory!
Hi everyone,
Hope you’re having a good weekend.
First off, just wanted to remind you that we’re having our next meeting this Tuesday, Dec. 2, at 5pm in the Conservatory.
Second, if you haven’t done the carbon footprint survey yet, do it!
The link is here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=HfAlg_2f3hvg1ozb6mOIXrxQ_3d_3d
And then encourage your hallmates, officemates, and general silwoodmates to do it to if they haven’t already. The more we know about what Silwoodians are willing to change in their lives, and the more input we get from the campus community, the more luck we’ll have with our efforts to cut Silwood’s carbon footprint.
Third, I propose that as our first big club outing we all go to the National Climate March in
For more info see here: http://www.campaigncc.org
We can talk about it on Tuesday, but I think that if we want the government to take action, we need to make it visible and obvious that climate change is an issue we care about!
Next, (fourth for those of you who like counting, but I’m getting bored of it ;-) ), I thought I’d give you guys a little run-down of what we heard at the (really good!) panel talk on Climate Change on Thursday, hosted by the public interest research centre’s (http://pirc.info/) Climate Safety group (www.climatesafety.org).
The panel included Caroline Lucas (MEP for SE england and head of the green party), George Monbiot (author of Heat and various other books and environmental journalist bits), Jeremy Leggett (founder of a solar E company and general energy guy), Kevin Anderson (from the energy program of the Tyndall Centre, manchester), Tim Helweg-Larsen (director of pirc), and Leila Deen (activist for I’m not sure which groups, google seems to say World Development Movement and Plane Stupid).
There were a lot of interesting bits and details that I won’t write out today (maybe tomorrow), but the main points were:
-The climate change problem is likely even more serious than people are making out so far – the effects of even a 2 degree C increase in global average temperature could be really terrible, especially considering positive feedback loops triggered by the melting of sea ice and methane release from melting permafrost.
-to prevent this, carbon emissions need to peak soon, and then drop dramatically – which means that real, big, changes need to be made. Each of us recycling more and remembering to turn off lights will not be enough – system-wide, country-wide changes are necessary.
-George Monbiot set out a practical plan for how to achieve necessary reductions in the
-Our action is needed! Everyone agrees that solutions to the energy/climate problem exist – we don’t need new technologies, just better infrastructure, etc – the job ahead is to educate everyone about the problems and solutions, and convince governments to take confident action. Furthermore, everyone agrees that there are lots of things to be done, tipping points to push, etc – we should all just pick something to push for and go for it!
Nothing too new I guess . . . I’ll send along more details soon.
Ok, that’s all for now!
See you Tuesday!
best
Yael
--------------------------------------------
PhD student, Division of Biology
Ascot, Berkshire SL5 7PY
+44 (0) 20 759 42255
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