The Fun Green Roundup #5 - Halloween Green

As I was preparing to write a post about going green on Halloween (I liked the rhyme), it occurred to me that I may be a bit late and other people may have beaten me to it. And indeed they have. So if you want to learn more about being green this errr All Hallow’s Eve, then read on…

• Lighter Footstep have to nice tips here.
• Vanessa at Green As A Thistle (thanks for explaining what that means by the way, here) has a two-parter on her blog, but as I write this, only the first one is up here. I’ll update this when the second part goes up. Edit: here it is.
• And TreeHugger has a very tenuous link to Halloween here.

 

Would Banning Cars In London Cut CO2?

According to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Oxford University, it would be the only way that a drastic reduction of CO₂ in London can be achieved. In fact, it would reduce emissions by 72% by 2030.

London is currently on course to reduce it’s emissions by only 10 - 23%. For more information, read the BBC article.

Green Cooking News

BBC Good Food magazine has lots of good “green” food and kitchen news and advice.

Innocent drinks have been trying to work out the carbon footprint of their (admittedly delicious) smoothies. In collaboration with the Carbon Trust and the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management, Innocent have found that transporting it’s Mango and Passion Fruit smoothie resultd in relatively low emissions but creating the packaging caused much higher emissions.

Kitchen gadgets can obviously be a major source of energy consumptiopn, but some are more efficient than others. The following examples all use one unit of electricity:
- Mixing a cake a week in a mixer for one year.
- Cooking 1.3kg of chips in a deep-fat fryer.
- Blending over 400 litres of soup.
- Grinding over 90kg of coffee in a coffee mill.
- Boiling 6.8 litres (12 pints) of water in a kettle.

Over 6.7m tonnes of food waste is generated by households each year (costing around £250-£400) and around 50% of this is still edible. A few tips to reduce your food waste:

• Plan meals ahead so you don’t buy food that you won’t use.
• Use-by dates are a huge reason for waste so try to plan ahead.
• Don’t buy too much at once, just because you’re in the store. You can always go back again int he (unlikely) event you need more.
• Set your fridge to be between 1 and 5C so food keeps as best it can.
• Use leftovers creatively or better still, don’t make too much in the first place.
• Compost as much leftovers and scraps as you can.

[Via: BBC Good Food]

UK To Ban Petrol Cars By 2040?

The Liberal Democrats, a political party in the UK, have backed a series of radical proposals to tackle climate change. One of these is a proposal for a ban on petrol fueled cars by 2040.

A series of measures for a carbon neutral Britain by 2050 have been set out, including proposals for:

• Introduce green mortgages to encourage more environmentally friendly homes.
• Charging lorries to use the UK’s roads in order to double rail investment, possibly creating a high speed line running north to south.
• Boosting spending on flood defences to respond to climate change.
• Encouraging microgeneration by paying a higher rate to producers who export energy to the National Grid.
• Creating a climate change levy of £10 on domestic flights.

Do you think the proposals will ever be implemented? Would they make any difference? Have we seen some of them beofre, or are you doing them already where you are?

[Via: BBC]

Great Magic Trick - Sam The Bellhop

A nice diversion for today, a cool card “trick” from Bill Malone - Sam the Bellhop.

The Top 35 Environment Blogs - And We’re #1! Or Maybe #35…

Okay, it’s more likely we’re number 35, especially if Treehugger is the first on there, but I like to think of it as being in reverse order.

Actually Read/Write Web haven’t numbered them. As part of Blog Action Day on Monday 15 October they listed their top 35 environmental blogs. They’re some great sites on there (and friends - hi to Josh at the Lazy Environmentalist and Vanessa at Green as a Thistle) so it’s nice to be mentioned in the same company as all them.

If you don’t know about Read/Write Web, they’re one on the 25 most popular blogs in the world according to Technorati and write about web technology, do reviews and analysis.

Environmentally Friendly Dry Cleaning

Most people know that dry cleaning is anything but dry. Toxic solvents are used instead of water that can cause environmental issues and health problems. As Jerry Seinfeld said: “Let’s get one thing straight about dry cleaning right now. It doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing as dry cleaning. There’s no way of cleaning with dry. Dry itself is nothing. You can’t use it. You can’t do anything with it. It’s not there. Dry is nothing. Are you listening to me? And we walk into these places with the big signs out front, “Dry Cleaning”, and somehow never question how they were able to put this absurd concept over on us. If I gave you a filthy shirt and said, “I want this immaculate. And no liquids!” what are you going to do? Shake it? Tap it? Blow on it? Give me a break. You almost can’t get something dirty with dry, let alone cleaning it.”

However now a German company called Fred Butler uses a new technology that replaces solvents like perchloroethylene with recycled carbon dioxide that is collected from industrial processes, gas that would otherwise have been emitted to the air. Their method works by placing clothes or other textiles in a cleansing machine, removing the air and letting CO2 fill the vacuum. High pressure combined with bio-degradable cleansers ensures dirt particles are removed from fabric. The carbon dioxide used is a by-product of industrial processes and once a cycle has been completed, 98% of the carbon dioxide is filtered and reused.

Fred Butler claims that clothes cleaned using this procedure are less likely to lose their colour and shape than if treated with conventional methods because the cleaning is done at very low temperatures, 5-15 degrees Celsius, and with gentle detergents. The patented process has been certified eco-safe by Nordic Swan, and costs to consumers are on a par with traditional dry cleaning.

[Via: Springwise]

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