So, since New Year there have been a few things that have changed in my life. Not only have I stopped eating chocolate and crisps (see New Year's Resolutions thread) but I've also started thinking more about the environment. Now I'm no Dave Angel (resident Fast Show eco-warrier), but have a few things I would like to discuss.

Plastic Bags - Quite an obvious one really. When I was a kid, I would go to my local shop and see loads of fruit and vegetables, nothing wrong with that. But the thing I never really see anymore - especially in large supermarkets - is the paper bags which were provided for me to put my fruit and veg in. Now, all I see is fruit/veg wrapped in tonnes of plastic and little silly (albeit usefully clear) plastic bags for me to put things in. Is all this plastic really necessary? I try to minimise my plastic bag use when I'm shopping.

Plastic Bottles - Making a plastic bottle produces 100 times more harmful emissions than a glass bottle. Furthermore, when plastic bottles are 'recycled', most are simply sent to China to be burned. I'm going to attempt to not buy any plastic bottles anymore - where I can.

Tin cans - Recycling them is a good thing. They are back on the shelves in a matter of weeks.

Local produce - Why buy New Zealand blueberries, when you can go a few miles away and pick your own fresh strawberries? Transporting 1kg of produce from the other side of the world can release over 10kg of Carbon-dioxide, not good for the environment. I'm going to try to minimise food from far away lands wherever there is a suitable local option. It would be nice if supermarkets really got more involved with local producers and stocked up with fresh, seasonal local produce. Simply put, local produce does not need to be transported long distances, using less petrol (i.e. oil) and polluting the atmosphere less.

Like I said, I'm no eco-warrier and have recently only started thinking about these issues. I'm far from perfect but in the future I'm going to really have a good go at bearing things in mind.

Does anybody else have environmental concerns? Does anybody have any good tips on being kind to the environment?

PS: Feed the birds in your garden and if you are really into such things, buy a wormery and turn all your kitchen waste into high quality compost.

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Whatever your difficulties in mathematics, I can assure you mine are far greater!
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955

Nice to see you are looking to future generations having a pleasent time on this earth of ours Lemming

Sadly though the days of the brown paper bag are long gone. Plastic can be got hold of very cheap and Supermarkets don't want to be eco-friendly accesories but purely maximise profits. Then again they could make the argument that a brown paper bag damages the environment also, you have to cut down a tree to make them. So all that harmful emissions etc. (carbon dioxide in part) can not be used for the tree.

Put it this way, oil will only last for the next 20 years tops before the prices get so high even the rich won't be able to afford it. This will eventually mean that we have to look at alternative resources. That means no plastic! Coal will last for ages so we have no worries there. Just global warming and a bit of acid rain from that.

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Watch this for a perfect about.
James May

There is one supermarket that does far more than the others to promote sustainable supplies and ethical purchasing policies. Co-op are different to other supermarkets, the first to have Fair Trade products, and the first to have 100% biodegradable carrier bags. Yes, I work for the Co-op, but I'm proud to work for a company that is ethically minded. As a co-operative rather than a plc, we have members rather than shareholders and our priorities are more than just making a big profit - there are issues of environment, of community, and of a fair deal for suppliers and growers.
This is something of a turnaround. My environmental concerns were often looked upon with amusement by Lemming in the past. But I welcome the change.
Today I have re-used bags at the supermarket, as I always do. Again, this is an area where I am pleased to see a positive change in the Lemming policy.
Grow your own, I say! My Dad grows lots of veg in our veg plot at home. Last year we had runner beans (lots of them), potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, spring onions, rhubarb and many herbs. Last night I watched 'Gardeners World', and Monty Don was going round allotments in Birmingham -the city is full of them. There was Mohammed, who gave Monty a lesson on harvesting cardamom, and there was one bloke who had loads of innovative ideas for producing the highest quality, blight-free fruit and veg without using any artificial pesticides and fertilisers etc.

- Use the car as little as possible - this is a big one for me. I now take the train to work, and only use my car on average once a fortnight. This also relieves congestion, which means fatty Prescott has less reason to concrete over more green parts of Britain.
- Recycle as much as you can. Even if it means more effort and a bit more investment, it means fewer natural resources are being taken out of the ground.
- Don't be extravagant - there is a heck of a lot of waste. Only make as much food as you need, so you don't end up throwing stuff away, and as a consequence having to buy more.
- Be energy efficient. Only turn the lights on if you need to. Don't have the hot water boiler going all day if you only need to use it in the evening. Put the mimimum necessary into the kettle (I'm now a very good judge how much will make 1,2,3 cups of tea).
- Be sensible about heating - insulation is important. One of my Dad's friends had her back door left open all morning, with the heating on full blast. That's stupid and irresponsible. turn down the thermostat a little - you get used to the temperature (as long as it isn't always -10C). I don't have a rediator in my bedroom, but I never actually noticed this until a couple of years ago, as I was used to it. I spent a winter living in a room with a draughty bay window and a radiator that didn't work properly - at times it was below 5 degrees in there, but I just got used to it. It wasn't hardship - and people get on fine in northern Finland, Russia, Norway etc.

I also have a vision, which is to do with more than just the environment, which I'll tell you about soon - but I need to watch some cricket for a bit.

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Just what is going off out there?

So here's my plan:

These days, more and more places are losing their sense of community, and of how they can function as a community, to co-operate together and provide each other with their needs. People live in one place and work in another. Big supermarkets have taken away local shops, because of their imcreased bargaining power when getting supplies and providing cheap products.

Now, you're never going to be able to get away from the economic reality that big companies can outmuscle small private businesses. That where the plan comes in. You can have the big company, but provide the service of the small private shop. Say, for example, Tesco have a supermarket in a small town. They are the major provider of goods, and no-one else can compete. The supermarket employs lots of people, and stocks lots of products, which it brings in from all over the place, much of it being imported from all over the world. The service is all too often impersonal and faceless. The supermarket is a big, modern, usually ugly building with a big car park, on the edge of town.

In 'them days' before the major companies took over, people went to local shops, staffed by local people, in the town centre, and there was more of a sense of community. So under my plan Tesco, instead of building one big supermarket, provide small specialist shops, in the town centre. Instead of everything under one roof, they have a baker's shop, a green grocer's, a butcher's, a fishmonger's, a DIY store etc. You get the picture.

In these shops, they employ local people, and train them in each particular trade, as well as training them how to run their individual shops. They provide apprenticeships, so instead of getting a job as a checkout worker, a young local person can learn to be a butcher, baker etc.

Of course, these shops need stocking, so there is an agreement with local producers - local farms for groceries and meats, local craftsmen for DIY products.

The benefits of this plan are:

- The town centre has local shops, staffed by local people, who provide a friendly and personalised serivce, building a rapport with their customers. customers feel the benefit of being served by people they know and trust.

- The town centre looks better aesthetically, as a row of shops is much more pleasant than having a big grey supermarket.

- Local people are provided with local jobs. This means that they spend less time and money travelling to work, improving their standard of living. It also means that there are fewer people using the roads, drastically reducing congestion, pollution, use of finite resources, and resulting in a much more pleasant environment.

- Produce is produced locally, supporting a true local economy. Farms, workshops etc can employ more local people, and the product travels short distances, further reducing congestion and pollution. The suppliers can also receive direct feedback on their products from the consumers, as they all live in the same place.

- Young people will have local opportunities to make a worthwhile career, in which they can develop skills, as well as building up relationships with their customers which will help them in the future. They learn hands-on, developing skills that they can apply immediately.

A truly local economy requires willpower and co-operation, but I believe it answers many of the questions being asked in Britain today, about the environment, about the erosion of 'community', about efficient ways of doing business, and about people's quality of life. If things are done locally, there is also less need for costly and inefficient bureaucracy.

I may have my head in the clouds, it may be pie in the sky and will never happen, but I can always hope. What do you think?

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Just what is going off out there?

I never really thought about recycling and matters like that.

However my mind was changed by outside forces if you will. Our local council adopted a policy of only empying the trash bins once every two weels, while giving us a plastic bag to put our plastic bottles, and other plastic products in.

Now I won't drink our tap water as it tastes like somthing I would have to use **** to describe it, so all our water is bottled.

So I had to take all out plastic and old clothes to the local tip, but this changed because bottle/plastic and housold cast offs can now be taken to supermarkets so now it is little trouble, and i think I now agree with the councils actions.

However in MHO one can go to far down the eco road, being an internationalist I agree with importing fruit from countries like Australia, or Bannana's from the West Indies (despite US pressure to but from Latin america), and maybe suger from the West Indies "despite" the dirty trick they did on the UK selling all their suger to the US in the time of the suger shortage.

Also wind power is costly, not reliable in the UK, and causes noise pollution, and is so open to attack if hostilities ever broke out in Europe again, and that's possible even the bible says "there will always be wars, and rumours of wars".

I believe that we should be eco friendly if practable, but not get carried away with unrealistic targets like a large percentage of electricity being generated from wind and sea power, and bother about packing to the extent with respect of excluding blueberries, and told to eat strawberries.

I agree in full with this, but I think supermarkets are going down this road to a large degree, with British beef,(used to be nearly exlusively imported from south America). and potatoes (the Pipers), used to be exported from cyprus- Egypt et al.

Like it or not the people will decide, look at the car industry, people bought cars made in Japan, like the Datson in the middle of the last century, with cars from Sweden, Fance and Germany prefared to the Austin and what was in the then British leyland group, so we now have no car industry at all, and have to use all the Carbon fuels importing these cars because we don't produce cars anymore, and I think Mercades (spelling) make all the busses, and large trucks that Leyland Moters used to make.

So I think this puts eco matters into perspective, and "Harold Wilson" tried and failed with this always on his lips "Buy British" but it fell on deaf ears, the public wanted these overseas products, so they/we are mostly resposible for the emissions caused by having to use transport to get our goods into the shops, and in the car salesrooms.

I agree with you as long as it is practable Lemming, I think people are becoming aware, and recycling, but I think we will have to live with packaging, we just need to be sensible and put them in the right bag for collection.

EDIT:- So right Mongoose, however my town was one of the best in Lancashire, but they blocked acces the the main street, and cut the Market in two to make room for cars.
90% of the shops have had to close, with business rates, lack of access, and to top it all the council is moving the rest of the market into the main street,to make room for evem more cars - what chance the remaining shops surviving?, a sorry time for my town.

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Ern

Which town is that, Ern?

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Just what is going off out there?

Chorley, once a thriving market town, now it really is a ghost town, with no cinema.

With a population of 90,000, we really do not do well as a market town, Chorley have dismantled the once large uncovered market, the thing that put Chorley on the map, and most of the remaining shops sell Mobile Phones.

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Ern

This business of sorting the waste is something which is catching on in the UK, but we are a long way behind some countries in continental Europe in this regard. Seems to me that sorting will only really take off when it is made easy - it is inconvenient to have to take your glass to the bottle bank in the UK, but a piece of cake in Germany or Austria, for example, because the bottle bank is in your own back yard - alongside the other three bins (one each for paper, plastic, glass and any other business). It's the same on any railway station or airport - bins are almost always in groups of four, and no German over the age of four would ever put paper in the yellow bin or glass in the blue one (it's just so obvious to him that paper goes in the blue bin and the yellow one is for plastic). Here in Prague, we are in a half way house - re-cycling bins are placed on my street corner, about 50m from my front door, and I do make the walk there to get rid of glass, paper and plastic separately. That is taken away free of charge. The bin in my back yard for other rubbish is only emptied if it is marked with the city tax sticker, which costs a few pounds per year per bin.

Back to Germany, and there's another reason why sorting of household waste works. If you mix your waste in some towns and states there, you'll get a whopping fine to encourage you to get it right next month (as high as EUR500 per month in some places).

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Money won't buy you friends. But it gets you a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan

This is now on the up in the UK. Lichfield (home of the Lemming) is leading the way with multi-sorted bin collections. Recycling will become much more widespread.

Another environmental scheme I recommend: car sharing. If your workmate lives a mile down the road, go together in one car instead of separately in two. Double benefit to the environment (less pollution and less use of resources) and double benefit to drivers (less congestion and less cost for petrol).

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Just what is going off out there?

Recycling is not that bad in the UK OF

When it was being promoted in some towns there was a lot of discontent with the councils cutting back on trash collection.
We had to go to the tip, which was inconvenient, but now we can take our bottles glass and plasic to various sites, along with unwanted clothing, shoes and paper.

But now recycling is no big deal, supermarkets have now got into the spirit, for my personel experience, we go to Morrisons to do our shopping, and just put the rubbish into recepticles for recycling.

The council empty the bins now two weekly, and on the alternative week collect rubbish for recycling, but never thought it though, and all the containsers are to small, so it's mainly thank's to the suermarkets making it easier.
From my point of view we don't drink tap water, so we have lots of empty 2 litre plastic water bottles, so we have to recycle or live in a sea of bottles.

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Ern