Browsing: Comment

Applying Plan Do Review (ask any Primary age child for an explanation) to Christmas, I am now at the review stage. I planned with much thought, did with much effort and come to review without an ounce of either thought or effort left in my body. Such is the joy of January.

So how did I do with my ethical gifts? The jewellery elicited the most positive responses; the reactions to the stationery were more restrained. The champagne gift set was the greatest hit; the candles received the worst comment - “Not more bloody candles.” (Joint presents are always likely to please one partner more than the other.) I even managed to get away with a little regifiting, although my conscience is getting harder to ignore each time that I do it.

As for waste, our success was marked by the fact that there was still space in the bin on collection day. There has already been a trip to the recycling centre, the cards have been cut up for tags next year and the gift bags folded and stowed away for re-use. Result.

Read the rest of Planned, Did - Now For The Review! »

So how many of you made a New Year’s resolution today?

Every year, millions of us make resolutions on January 1st ……to go on a diet, to get to work on time, to go for a run every morning, to give up smoking…. And let’s be honest, most of us give up after a day.

Some we keep for a month.

Very few of us succeed in the long term.

And yet when the next January 1st comes round, we make resolutions all over again. Why is that?

That is hope. Hope that we can change for the better. Hope that this year, we will have the willpower to see it through. Hope that this year will be different.

However, when we watch the news or read the newspaper, it is hard to have hope when all around us are losing it. The financial crisis seems impossible to solve. The effects of climate change seem impossible to reverse. The rich seem to get richer whilst the poor get poorer.
It’s hard to believe that our small steps towards a more ethical lifestyle can actually have an impact. We have to believe that they do. Hope is what inspires us to make the ethical choice.

Let hope be what makes us do what we can to make the world a better place.

Let hope be what makes us bring hope to those without it.

Let hope be what makes us.

Let hope be.

If we ever need a little inspiration, a push in the right direction, or a kick up the backside to ‘Go One Better’ or green up our lifestyle than we should look no further than our own back yard.

It appears that nature is teaming with busy little environmentalists, all hell-bent on reducing, reusing, and recycling whatever is in their path.

According to Environmental Graffiti, a cracking site for environmentalists who don’t take themselves too seriously, these little chaps are the most eco-friendly bugs around;

3. Environmental Designer Extraordinaire: The Orb Web Spider
The female orb web spider is one of natural world’s top designers, but she’s one of its thriftiest recyclers too. She’s known to eat her web at night, before spinning a new one, to recoup some of the energy expended producing silk that’s rich in protein and stronger than steel.

Read the rest of The Top 3 Eco-Friendly Bug Awards »

This is not hypermiling.

Did you know that “Carbon Neutral” was word of the year at Oxford in 2006.

This year, the honour goes to Hypermiling, which has been picked as “word of the year” for 2008 by the New Oxford American Dictionary.

Read the rest of Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year for 2008: Hypermiling »

I am not about to confess a hitherto secret compulsion to wash obsessively. My obsession is firmly contained within my head and has yet to materialise into much productive output.

It all began when I looked at the label in my son’s new light grey sixth form trousers to discover that they were Dry Clean Only. I was so incensed that I overcame my inhibitions to ask about it openly at the Sixth Form Information Evening.

Read the rest of An Obsession With Washing »

The postal strike is having an impact on EthicalSuperstore.com but I worry that the real loser in this will be the environment. We’ve had to suspend our cheapest delivery rate, but generally most parcels are being delivered by our friends at Parcel Force. However, the long term implications of a weakened Royal Mail are definitely bad for the environment.

Our postie—she’s actually a young woman—drops our letters and small packets off every day at home around 9am. She walks from the delivery depot with a small sack of letters and then collects the rest of her letters from strategically located pick up points round her route. It works because all letters in the UK outside of London are still delivered by the Royal Mail. She passes every house every day.

Now imagine a world where Royal Mail is weakened to the point where they no longer deliver to every house every day. Either we’ll all be driving to the sorting office to pick our mail up – 500 houses on our postie’s route might mean 500 more journeys each day by car!!!! Alternatively, lots of new van or car based delivery schemes get launched and we all get multiple deliveries each week from multiple companies. May be slightly less impact than us all driving places but ultimately much worse than the system we have now.

Postal delivery is an environmental issue. The government—the current owner of the Royal Mail—needs to focus less on preparing to sell it and more on building the service it has to be truly world class. We have cost effective, environmentally sensitive delivery to every home in the UK – do we really want to squander it?