Round up of the month

I know, I know. It is already 22nd June and I have only written one post this month. Atrocious! I will try to rectify this over the next week.

Summer is here and everything is manic. There are so many activities that are only suitable for nice weather, that it is difficult to cram them all in. With only 3 weeks left of school before the summer holidays (we break up early in Leicestershire), every day is filled with performances, sports matches, school trips, school fairs, prize-giving and charity events!

I thought that the pictures below may give you the essence of last week. This was the day when I was straining a large bowl of cooled chicken stock, with my dog as close as she could get hoping that I would drop something. As usual I was multi-tasking, cooking lunch with the work surfaces covered in dirty dishes. I hope you can picture the chaos. I knocked a bottle from a shelf. It hit the ladle, which showered stock everywhere, and overturned the large bowl of stock onto the dog’s head, and all over the cupboards and floor.

 

I tried my best to clean up the dog whilst she tried her best to clean up the floor, but it was no use. The dog needed a bath, but as it was raining I thought what a good time to walk her and get her clean at the same time. Unfortunately, within 5 minutes of leaving the house, the light shower turned into a full on storm with thunder and heavy rain. I found that my old waterproof coat is no longer waterproof, and that doggy poo-bags are very useful for keeping your mobile dry when every pocket is wet, even though they are environmentally very bad.

 

On the plus side, the dog was clean J Life throws us good days and bad days, regardless. It doesn’t matter whether you are trying to be an environmental saint, you still get the bad days thrown into the mix.

This week has had some good days. For a start I have learnt lots of new things from all the lovely blogs out there. For instance I found out about Bircher muesli on Everyday Life on a Shoestring. It is 1/3 of a cup of porridge oats mixed with the same amount of milk and yoghurt and left overnight to soften. Fruit and nuts can be added too. It is a delicious, summery replacement for porridge and it saves on energy cooking the oats, which means no saucepan to wash either (win win win!).

On the same blog I found a comment about Geocaching. Somehow there have been 2 million ‘treasure chests’ or caches hidden around the world with clues to help you find them. Am I the only person who didn’t know this? Ok, so the ‘treasures’ are little things that kids love, bouncy balls and party toys, but there is a lot of fun and nettle stings to be had finding them.

Of course having found out that there are caches hidden in the woods behind our house, my youngest was desperate to have a look and hurrah, we found them! Yesterday, I collected my daughter from school, along with 3 of her friends, and walked the long route home with the dog, passing 5 caches. We managed to find 3 and had to give up on 2 as we had no signal. It took us 2 hours to get home and despite all the walking, mud and stings, the girls all wanted to do it again today!

The photo below shows a common weed called Plantain, which is excellent for stopping a nettle sting from stinging. The underside of the leaves have ridges down them, which helps to identify them. Just bruise the leaves and rub on the sting. Essential knowledge if you like the sound of Geocaching! Otherwise wait until Autumn when the nettles have all died back to avoid getting stung.

Then Jo at All The Blue Day has been looking into the dangers of plastic for our health, and sharing her ways of reducing plastic packaging. It is a shock looking around at all the plastic in our home. It is everywhere, especially encasing our food and seems such an enormous task to start to reduce it.

  

I felt really pleased that we only have 2 to 3 carrier bags of rubbish to throw away each fortnight. But I have been turning a blind eye to the 2 wheelie bins full of recycling, which includes paper, cardboard, glass, tetra-paks and plastics. A lot of this waste is bulky, and often unnecessary, packaging. Even if it does get recycled, it has still used a lot of energy to make and we are paying for something that is of no use to us. We try to reuse as much as we can, especially plastic tubs, which are always useful for storage. I am off to the car-boot sale on Sunday to see if I can find a suitable non-plastic alternative for storage. I also want to replace the plastic bottles we use for carrying water. My friend uses glass bottles with kilner lids, though these are not ideal for kids to take to school. The one metal flask we have, nobody likes. There must be alternatives?

 

Camping

Sorry that it has been a while since I last posted. Last week I went away camping in Cornwall, so this week has been totally manic trying to catch up with everything.

 

Well, we are finally getting the sunshine I have been craving for. This is my youngest daughter about to cartwheel down the sand dunes in delight. There is nothing like sun, sea and sand to lift the spirits J

 

The week didn’t start out sunny, in fact we had a few grim days with very cold nights and even frost. (I didn’t think you got frost in Cornwall!) It was so cold in the tent that we spread an emergency space blanket over us, and slept in socks and jumpers, zipped up to our noses in mummy sleeping bags with blankets piled on top. (In case you ever find yourself in that situation, the emergency space blanket definitely felt warmer, though it rustled every time someone moved.) Luckily the weather broke and the last half of the week was spent on the beach in the sunshine.

I love camping. Despite the traipse to the toilets, getting covered in insect bites, being woken up by the rain, and everything being messy, I really love it. It must be all the fresh air, seeing the stars at night and waking up to the dew on the grass. It feels cosy, all of us together, snuggled in our sleeping bags, with the dog spread-eagled across us (She was only allowed in because she was shivering out in the living area!)

Camping makes you re-consider all the belongings and clutter that seems so necessary for everyday life. There is also much more time spent together, as you can’t shut yourself away for some privacy. So I am thankful to be home and planning more family time. I feel even more aware that a serious de-clutter is required soon and I am being very strict on any new stuff.

I had a small post about population featured on clickonwales just before I went away, which you can read here if you are interested.

I am planning the next post about energy again, especially with the increased energy consumption for us Brits this year, as a result of the pro-longed winter. My direct debit for gas has been increased by more than double, and I’m not alone.

There is a project that will run over the next 2 years and is aiming to save 15% on energy bills for community buildings. When you consider that the price increase predicted by British Gas for this year alone is 15%, then these savings will be needed just to stand still. So if your energy bill is £1,000 for the year, you will need to put aside an additional £150, just for price increases, unless you can reduce the amount of energy you use. I had a friend who would set a budget for his energy bills and if the bills were more than he budgeted for he would switch the gas or electricity off until the budget balanced. This is a fairly extreme scenario, so hopefully I will have some better suggestions than that for you in the next post.

Character building

I was sitting at my desk, when I heard a crash and a flock of birds flew past my window. Hurrah I thought, they are chopping trees down in the woods. Now mostly I am against trees getting felled, but in this instance I was very glad.

The trees in question were sycamore, which are rather unloved in the UK, because they are non-native and quite invasive. Behind my house is a small woods, just a copse really. Very small, but still very pleasant to walk through and brimming with life. Small patches of bluebells and snow drops have started to appear the last few years, and there are foxes, badgers, woodpeckers and owls, despite it being over-run with nettles.

Last year I noticed that some of the sycamore were dying. A black dusty mould covered their trunks, the bark fell off and they died. Apparently this is aptly named Sooty Bark Disease. Last summer I spotted 6 dying or dead trees and reported it to the local council. Last week my youngest daughter counted at least 17 trees that are now infected.

 

 

The wood is made up of 2 sides. One side has many older trees predominantly oak, with other species mixed in. The side nearest us is almost all Ash with a few sycamore in one corner. Last year we found out that Ash Dieback disease had been found in numerous locations around the UK. Danish experts have said that there is no way of preventing the spread and that over 90% of the Ash trees will get infected and die. There is no sign of this disease yet in this small public woodland, but I fear it will come.

These diseases are strongly linked to climate change. The weather has been abnormally dry, then abnormally wet, then abnormally cold. How are trees that are rooted in the ground to adapt to such rapid changes to the norm? Like us they are stressed, and stress makes things more prone to disease.

So it was relief for me to hear the diseased trees being felled, because it may help stop the spread to healthy trees. By cutting away the dead wood there is now a clearing where the light shines in and something new can grow. I am going to be very sad when Ash dieback reaches our woods, and it will be horrifying to see all the trees cleared, but it isn’t the end of the woods. The other plants and creatures will adapt.

We have failed to mitigate climate change, or address the rapidly approaching resource depletion, so far. Some of the blogs I wander through talk about extinction, game over and the human race as a cancer. I can’t think of it like that, because we are part of the whole and the whole is beautiful. Ok so the future looks a bit bleak, but it has at other times too. Can you imagine how it must have felt to be French in 1940, when your soldiers had been defeated, and the German forces occupied the country? What hope was there for France or the future? How likely would it have seemed that other countries could or would join forces and be able to defeat the invaders? Yet they did.

There is a really remarkable story that I was reminded of again recently. It is called the Coconut Revolution and is the amazing story of how some indigenous people on the Island of Bougainville stood up to the might of the copper mines that were ruining their homes and ecosystems. Cut off from supplies they had to be ingenious and resourceful to survive.

 

I believe that the future is not set in stone, it is really up to us and the choices we make that will determine the outcome. There are always going to be hard times that we need to work through. I guess the older generation would call it character building J

400ppm

This week 400ppm of carbon dioxide was recorded in the atmosphere in Hawaii. That is 400 parts of carbon dioxide per million parts of air. It doesn’t sound much, but it’s a lot. In case you missed it...

 400ppm

It is a very, very big deal. It is a whole 50ppm more than the target to stabilise the climate at only 2 degrees temperature rise. We have left that target way behind now. There is no going back. We have already committed ourselves, and all the living creatures on the planet to go past a 2 degree rise in average global temperatures.

So it is Sunday today. Are you still going to stand in front of the telly and iron a basket of clothes? Are you still going to fill up the car with petrol, ready to run the kids to school? Are you still going to boil enough water for 4 cups of tea when you only want 1 cup?

Doing all these things, purely because you always have done these things, is continuing with business as usual. Buying an energy efficient kettle or a smaller car just won’t cut it. We don’t need to save 10% here or there by being more efficient. We need to save 75%, by cleaning out the kettle and then only ever using 1 cup of water to make 1 cup of tea. And if there is no excess water, there will be no excess lime scale. We need to save 100% of the energy by choosing not to ever iron our clothes again. You will be surprised by how few people will notice, and virtually no one will say anything. We need to save 100% by walking or cycling, not for leisure, but to replace the journeys we would otherwise make in the car. This may need us to re-organise routines, plan out safe routes or buy all weather gear, but is it impossible?

If 400ppm does not motivate you, then watch the absolutely brilliant film ‘Chasing Ice’ and see the effects that ‘business as usual’ has had on the glaciers over the last few years.

I have spent more than 10 years working to reduce energy consumption, in various different roles. It clearly hasn’t worked. It has actually been documented that energy efficiency doesn’t work. For example, we build houses that are insulated better to make them more energy efficient. It is true that the new houses use less energy than an older house of the same size. But on average there are fewer people living in each house, so there are more houses. The result is that overall energy consumption continues to increase.

The same can be seen with TV’s. They may be more efficient for the equivalent size, however we have bigger TVs and more of them. And so on with fridges getting bigger, electric lighting providing brighter rooms, washing machines used more frequently, and the addition of electronic devices that didn’t even exist 10 – 20 years ago. Shops follow the same rules. They have significantly grown in size and number and have increased use of lighting, heating and cooling, compared to the traditional grocer’s shop of 50 years ago. All efficiency savings with cars is dwarfed by the increase in the number of cars and the amount of journeys driven.

The way to reduce our energy consumption and carbon emissions is by changing our lifestyles. This means questioning why we do the things we do, not just doing them because we always have. 100 years ago ironing was necessary. Washing clothes in soap, left materials feeling rough and hard, and ironing would help to soften them. This really isn’t the case now, ironing is purely aesthetic. It is a luxury that we can no longer afford, along with many others.

There is a triple win from doing these things, that is we win in at least 3 ways for each of them. Let’s start with boiling the kettle. Just boiling one cup of water for one cup of tea, is far quicker than waiting for 3 or 4 cups to boil, so saves time. Less lime scale accumulates as there is less water boiled, and the water doesn’t remain in the kettle and get boiled again and again, so the water is fresher. And of course the biggest win, it saves energy, which reduces energy bills and cuts the carbon emissions. It is actually a bigger win than this because the peak loads in the electricity generating system tend to occur when everyone puts the kettle on, either when they get in from work on a cold winters evening or when the adverts come on in a football match or the X factor final. Large gas or coal power stations will be kept idling ready to meet that sudden peak in demand. If we can reduce that demand by just boiling 1 cup of water for 1 cup of tea, then this will reduce the stress on the electricity grid and save even more energy. It’s not rocket science, but it could have a significant impact if we all got it right, and it is so easy to do.

With the help of my eldest son and a good friend a few years back, we produced a rather homemade advert to explain why you should stop ironing, which you can watch here.

Benefits of walking and cycling include improving fitness, reducing congestion so that other traffic flows freely and more efficiently, and directly reducing the miles driven and the amount of fuel used, which saves money and carbon emissions. There are other benefits too, which could even include reducing oil wars, if everyone does their bit.

Simone deHoogh says that there is so little that we can change in a day or a week, but so much that we can achieve in a year. These words are very appropriate because tiny little changes in our habits or our mindset make little difference over a week, but over a year the accumulation of small actions can have a far bigger impact.

400ppm is scary. Nobody can deny that the prospect of climate change is really scary. It is way beyond our control. But business as usual is only going to make things worse. Any changes we can make now will help. We don’t know what the future holds, but we do know that what we do now can make a difference.

 

Do something. Even if it seems small, such as not over-filling the kettle, or sharing lifts with a colleague, or unplugging all the TV paraphernalia before bed, or ditching the hands free phone for a traditional phone, or tucking the curtains behind the radiator at night, or not chatting with the front door wide open, or switching the heating off when you leave the house, or having a quicker shower, or asking to work from home, or not leaving the TV on in the background, or hanging washing outside to dry, or finding out about your local transition group.

Make the little changes and the bigger changes will follow.

Travel

I wanted to let people know about an amazing bunch of people who are trying to change the world for the better. A bunch of British architects and town planners are cycling across America and back to London. The project is called Portland to Portland (p2p) and the purpose is to explore the provision for cycling infrastructure in different cities and come up with solutions to present to the World Cycling summit. On the way they will be raising awareness for cycling and raising money for charity.

You can track their progress and find out more here. They started at Portland in Oregon, and will be passing through Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York, Dublin, Oxford, ending in July at Portland Place in London. You can join them for part of the ride, or just give them a wave.

 

I enjoy cycling, but like many people, I get put off by the traffic, well.... that and the weather. On a day out in London with my kids, we did look at the Boris Bikes and I contemplated that we could visit far more places on bike than walking. Then I looked at the London traffic and returned to my senses. If it was just me I may have had a go, but with kids, who may have taken their cycling proficiency but were not experienced with traffic, then no. I did notice that cycling down the mall to Buckingham Palace and on towards Hyde Park looked lovely. Not only is there a lovely wide road, a pedestrian path and a cycle path, but also a horse path too and they were all rather empty.

There is a certain amount of freedom to be gained from cycling when you are young. I have a friend who loves cycling and her children are both confident and competent at riding anywhere. She also has an amazing bike with a cart on the front, which she can load with shopping or more often kids. When they were a bit smaller, she could fit 4 or 5 kids in the cart, and they all loved it! I remember seeing similar contraptions in Amsterdam outside a school, where a lady lifted half a dozen kids in and cycled away!

This is my problem at the moment, I am the taxi mum, and it is difficult to find a way round this. My youngest son is now starting to bike himself to school, but as it has hailed and rained all week we have not got off to a good start. He is probably tough enough to get a bit wet and sit in wet clothes at school all day, but I’m not tough enough to make him. My dad didn't like to give me lifts as a teenager. To be honest I could get most places on my own and enjoyed the independence, but there were a few places where I couldn’t get by bus and it involved long walks. I can vividly remember having to walk in driving wind and rain, with large lorries splashing past me, dressed in a denim jacket with a useless umbrella. I spent all day sodden and cold, and then walked home miserable in the rain again. I’m sure everyone in the UK remembers numerous such experiences.

I didn’t bike much because there were no cycle paths then and the traffic was dire, so I am grateful for how much things have improved. There are now cycle paths, and some rather less enticing cycle lanes, which seem to be just a line painted along the side of the existing narrow road, that drivers just ignore. There are also a lot more speed restrictions, sometimes enforced with speed cameras or speed bumps. The whole thing is still rather disjointed, so that you will still have to bike along a busy section of road to get from the cycle path to the pedestrianised town centre, but it is definitely improving.

There is the temptation to think that when petrol gets too expensive for people to drive anymore, then is the time to start cycling happily on traffic free roads. The problem is that it is too late then. Every journey is adding to the pollution. This week readings passed 400ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the measuring station in Hawai. That is pretty scary seeing as the target was to stabilise at 350ppm to prevent severe temperature rises and runaway climate change. We really have been dragging our feet with our heads in the sand.

So we need to give a massive thank you for all the geniuses who contributed to designing and perfecting the bicycle – the most energy efficient way to travel, powered by renewable human energy, and pedal into the future!