A greener Christmas

Christmas is the time of year when most peoples thoughts turn to family and friends, buying your loved ones presents to show your feelings for them, providing the most lavish meals you can provide and for many travelling long distances to visit friends and relatives. This makes Christmas an environmental nightmare so I thought this month I’d look at ways of reducing your Christmas’s environmental impact.

Make something to take when visiting friends and rellies? Homemade jams, pickles preserves, bake a cake, make something, paint a picture, copy treasured family pictures, these all say more than buying something made by another.

Why not give your time and expertise as a present to friends and relatives who need it most, gardening, cleaning, babysitting or teaching someone a new skill.

Buy good quality presents that can be used and enjoyed over and over again. For children try wooden toys that will stand the test of time, try not to buy plastic toys or those that need batteries (if you feel you have to, buy a battery charger and reusable batteries for that present)

Look at buying used goods as presents, look at the local papers or online petites annonces for little used or unwanted gifts, not only will it be cheaper but you save on another being manufactured - I never had a new bike as a kid!

Avoid presents with excess packaging and buy from companies that are doing their bit to help the environment, use and give paper products made from recycled materials.

Don’t send a Christmas card to everyone you know, most people you know have an email address – send them an email card, there are some excellent ones out there and they won’t sit on the mantelpiece for a month and then get sent to recycling or landfill, and the message and sentiment will be the same.

If you must have a Christmas tree get a live one and replant it afterwards or buy the best artificial one you can get and use it year after year, use reusable decorations and lights, or make them, my mum used to make figures of shortbread and hang them on the tree.

For your Christmas dinner don’t go and get beans from Kenya or fruit from South Africa, buy locally, get your bird from a local farmer, buy seasonal fruitS and vegetables from local suppliers. Next year remember to go from long Autumn walks in the countryside and pick up walnuts and chestnuts for free, it’ll save you buying them later. Not only will you be reducing your dinner’s carbon footprint but it’ll help local producers and shops and I’ll bet will taste better too.

If you are going to a party or Christmas dinner why not offer to give others a lift it’ll cut down the number of car journeys made over the holidays.

Think before you agree to travel long distance to see friends and family, I know the emotional pull is great but are you going to see them soon afterwards? Why not see them then and have a get together with your own theme without the commercial pressures of Christmas. If you do travel why not use one of the many the online organisations which plant trees to offset your travel footprint.

Finally after the season clean up responsibly, recycle or reuse all you can,

A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to All

A Snippet of Population Information

There is a promo on BBC TV at the moment that has Sir David Attenborough saying that in the 50 years that he has been reporting on the natural world the human population has increased threefold. Now I turned 50 in September and it horrified me, I am part of the increase – I blame my parents.

The estimated world population as of 09:38 GMT Sep 22, 2009 was 6,785,757,222 according to the US Census Bureau and growing at around 150 per minute. The biggest problem facing the world today is over population and the increasing over exploitation of the earth’s resources. It got me thinking about contraception and it’s benefits and it turns out so have many others better placed to quantify it.

The London School of Economics recently looked at the benefits of ensuring the world’s population has access to effective ways of contraception. It turns out that 40% of babies are unplanned so if you manage to stop them think of the consequences! It is also one of the cheapest ways of reducing CO2 emissions, through contraception it costs about 4.70€ per ton of CO2, cheaper than everything else analyzed except geothermal and sugar cane ethanol. By comparison wind power costs about 16.20€ per ton of CO₂ saved.

I know many of us are passed the age where having children is an option but it might help if we take the message out to the younger members of the world.

With the colder weather around the corner I thought it might interesting to look at some more environmental ways of creating fabrics to keep you warmer this winter.

There are people who collect all their pets fur when grooming them and spin it into wool to make clothes! In fact there is more than one business who will do it for you, all you have to do is send it in the post and for a fee will spin it and make it into the garment of your choice. Weird but not so bad when you think where normal wool comes from, I’d do it but I know how bad my dogs smell when they get wet!!!

Chilean designer Alexandra Guerrero has figured out a way of spinning a yarn from of all things cigarette buts! Trillions of ciggie buts are thrown away every year and if properly cleaned can be recycled into a wool-like fabric and made into stylish, durable and eco-friendly clothing,

Following on from last month’s bamboo bicycle, bamboo clothing. Crushed it produces a fibre which can be spun and made into a luxurious fabric, benefits include, it’s very soft, warm in winter, cooler in summer, antifungal, antibacterial, UV protective and anti static, the yield from cultivated bamboo is also about 10 times that of cotton and uses much less water. Why isn’t it available more commercially?

You could probably team up your bamboo clothing on a bike ride with a new innovative and eco friendly bamboo cycle helmet called the Roof R06, fear not it has passed all the European safety tests, but is a tad pricey at 208€

The Greening of Cars

Today all car manufacturers are desperately (and expensively) trying to produce a so called green car. Most of this is driven by the California State legislation that is trying to move all cars to zero emissions.

So today you can buy the first hydrogen fuel cell car the Honda FCX Clarity. This technology works something like this – the fuel cell converts hydrogen to electricity and water. The water goes out the tailpipe and the electricity powers a motor that drives the front wheels, to do this you go to the petrol station and fill up like a normal car, if you can find one that has a hydrogen pump. Easy but one of the most energy heavy things you can do ie produce hydrogen, hydrogen is always attached to some other element – e.g. H2O water – and takes a very complicated and expensive plant to do the separating and a huge amount of electricity power it. So until the technology becomes more advanced, the methods easier and electricity comes entirely from alternative generating methods it will take a lot of fossil fuels to produce hydrogen to produce a zero emissions car, so it’s a question of semantics really because somewhere down the line it’s polluting - a lot.

The same goes for all the battery powered cars like the G-Wiz, the up coming Chevrolet Volt and the lovely little Tesla, based on the Lotus Exige, until an awful lot of the electricity it takes to charge them comes from alternative generating methods they will still pollute.

The most mature of the technologies seems to be the hybrid vehicle seen in the likes of the Toyota Prius and the Lexus range. This is a system which the vehicle has both a petrol engine and an electric motor, the petrol and kinetic energy charging the electric motor batteries when running on longer drives and higher speeds and using the electric motor when being driven in towns. A great system that cuts the mile per gallon in fuel that car uses. But these also have their problems, if you live in the middle of the country, like I do, and most of your driving is at 90 kph you will just be using the petrol engine and you will not see any significant bettering in consumption, They work really well if you live in a town and do a little driving on the open roads. if not you’d be better off buying one of today’s highly efficient diesel cars which return over 70 mpg.

Recent legislation in France – indeed the whole EU – means that all petrol needs to have a percentage of bio fuels added to them. The new 95-E10 has 10% ethanol from the likes of maize added to it, which is fantastic, but please be aware that cars built pre 2000 may not be able to run on it, over a few tanks of this fuel it can create problems with the pipes and connectors in your engine. So if your car is pre 2000 be prepared to use 98 fuel, although that seems to be a rare beast these days.

It’s not the only problem that this fuel has, a friend recently was filling up in a petrol station in Angouleme when a beautiful new Lamborghini drove in and the driver noticed the new sign on the side of the pump “95-E10”, went to ask the attend and after some animated conversation strode back to his car and screamed off into the distance. It seems that supercars can’t run on it either

The Cost of Celebrity!!!

Scooting around the internet recently I've noticed a spate of green celebrities showing us and telling us how we should live our lives and quiet frankly they have no idea how the real world lives and it always amazes me the level of hypocrisy they exhibit.

Many treehugging celebrities seen all over the media extolling the virtues of a green lifestyle own multiple homes, I know many people who read this have a second home but, Madonna has at least 6 London homes, and estate in Wiltshire, an apartment in New York and a Beverley Hills mansion. Nicolas Cage has a German medieval castle and a 40 acre private island. That apparently wasn't enough because in 2007 he bought a 12-bedroom home in Rhode Island, a castle in England and a $3.5 million home in New Orleans' French Quarter. There are many others and what's the problem? Each of these homes has a permanent staff using electricity, water, gas and pumping out CO2 just to keep them primed for the occasional visit of the owner. To get to these (im)modest piles many of these celebrities get in their private jet and burn much more fuel than they would do if their shared a plane with the rest of us, we who paid for their many homes in the first place by buying the album or watching the film.

I read a recent article about how, actress and celebrity wife and mother, Jennifer Garner always bought bio and fairtrade products and tried to use Farmers Markets as much as possible, laudable but then I saw a photo a few days later of one of her Farmers Markets trips using disposable plastic bags to stash her goodies in. Talking of shopping bags I'm sure you all have “bags for life” from SuperU or Intermarche at around 75 centimes each, but how about splashing out for something a little more stylish? 350€ for a Stella McCartney organic cotton shopper, around 700€ for a Hermès silk tote or 1,200€ for a Louis Vuitton canvas model? Veg shopping will never be the same again.

Some celebrities have branched out into other activities to, perhaps, supplement their incomes when their looks and popularity fade. Colin Firth has opened an “eco” store in Chiswick, SW London where he sells a variety of worthy goods which, if his bamboo, biodegradable, environmentally friendly bicycle which sells for over 3500€ is an example, will be monumentally expensive!

The recent death of Michael Jackson was a shock to many and a very sad event for all his fans. Michael, despite his foibles, was an advocate for all things environmental, listen to “Earth Song” , and a champion for racial equality which he is rightly applauded for – but did he really want to buried in a solid brass, gold-plated, 22000€ casket called the “Promethean “ which will never, ever degrade and will be a fixture in the California soil for all time! Personally when it's my time to shuffle off I will be burnt and scattered somewhere off the West coast of Scotland, but if I were to be buried I will be choosing the Hainsworth wool coffin, biodegradable and warm, not that it'll matter much.

Why do I care? Or do I?

I was an eco-cynic, but after reading and watching all the information about the possibility of us ruining our planet (or not) from all sides of the argument I decided it was time to haul out a take on Pascal’s (French C17^th philosopher) Gambit (huh?) who basically said that live like God exists so if he does you’re quids in and if he doesn’t you lived a good life and everyone benefits. So recycle, save energy, water, do what you can to minimise the production of new stuff and no matter whether the World is in big trouble or not you can help.

Some figures to visualise the extent of how you can help:

• If you buy a newspaper everyday, on average you will buy 142kgs of newsprint every year, it takes 25 trees to produce a tonne of paper, so you use 1 tonne every 7 years or 3.5 trees a year to read your news. I mainly use google.com/ig, a way of creating your own daily newspaper with news feeds that you choose to read and are interested in.
  

• The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours. It also causes 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials.

• About 15% of the purchase price of anything is packaging, packaging accounts for up to 65% of household waste if you don’t recycle. If your household spends 500€ per week that’s 75€ per week or 3900€ per year on packaging.

• Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it.

• Plastic takes over 500 years to decompose. Used engine oil never does.

• A recycled tin can would save enough energy to power a television for 3 hours.

• If we recycled all the aluminium cans we would need 14 million less bins (UK figure).

I could spend the next 10 pages listing all the facts and figures, but I’m sure you see the point by now.

A Danish financier, who has obviously got too much time on his hands, too much money, and an over-active imagination, has backed a product which I’m sure we’d all have second thoughts about using, degradable plates and cutlery made in part from pig’s urine! Peter Tøttrup said "There are 20 million pigs in Denmark, and what they do environmentally is a problem," - no shit Sherlock.

But lastly my favourite green gadget (and I suspect most men’s as well). Writer Adrienne So in San Francisco has proposed a charger for iPods or mobile phones utilising the natural movement of a woman’s breasts (could work for the larger men out there as well). Apparently the bigger the breast the more potential energy the device could produce.

Heating a old stone house

After years of investment in our business it’s beginning to pay off and we are now in a position to renovate our house. Apart from the new kitchen, bathroom, flooring, insulation and paintwork the time has come to look at making the house as warm as possible during Winter. For years we’ve had woodburners, and although lovely, rustic and providing good heat (when on) are a pain in the bahookie to keep going, it’s a bit like the Forth Road Bridge, with 3 going it’s a never-ending round of stoking, fetching (in all weathers) and cutting wood. Given all this it’s never enough, you can’t really have one in the bedroom so it’s the good old electric heater and until you have the fires reset in the morning it’s paraffin heaters!!!!! So what to do?

Given my interest in all things environmental my first port of call was the reduced consumption technologies. Here is what I found:

Geothermic: Unless you have a large piece of land to dig up and lay the necessary pipe work in, you have to bore a hole in the ground, lay the pipe in a river or stream or use an air source heat pump. All of these system cost less to run but the initial setup costs are huge, coupled with the need to use under floor heating because the water temperature of most of these systems aren’t high enough to run the traditional radiators most of us use. Under floor heating also means digging up your floors, installing the heating elements (more expense) and waiting for months for the concrete to cure before your can use it (an operation not viable upstairs in our house where wood floors rule), or even live in it comfortably with stuff like furniture and carpets!

Reversible air-conditioning: Really good and efficient, initial start up costs are comparable with traditional systems and I like it. But if your partner has any idea of aesthetics you can’t have them! For each unit (or 2) you need a great big noisy unit (they say not noisy but our nearby neighbour’s bedroom sits next to one and can’t sleep when it’s on) perched on the side of your house, “we” decided not to live in a farmhouse that looked like it had been crossed with an office block.

Despite the “credit impots” available, which you have to pay up front and claim back, (who has that sort of money?) the environmental others are too expensive to consider (photovoltaic cells, windmills etc to run electric heating systems) so what have we decided? Wood - yes back to wood, a huge back boiler system big enough to run all the radiators needed, efficient enough to stay in all night and cheap enough for a poor man living in France.

This year to augment the system I will add to the 300 trees I have already planted with 500 or so quick growing poplars which in 4-5 years will be big enough to coppice and produce around 7 cubic metres of wood per year for around 25 years.

Governments should be more proactive in the renewable energy sector, it is the masses which use energy and the masses who would benefit from using renewable energy and it’s savings, both in money savings and in CO2 reduction, but only the well heeled who can afford it.

Looking recently for a nice piece of furniture to put my feet on I came across the Miss Rio Ottoman, comfortable seating made in Brazil from recycled flip flops, great I thought until I found out the price 350$ (not delivered) – I’m sticking to my Border Collie!

Eco-worrier

Eco-worrier

A monthly look at the challenges and occasional frustrations involved in living a green life

When did we stop being green?

This may be a strange way to start a column on ‘going green’ (by the way, how I hate that phrase and also being preached at by what Jeremy Clarkson calls ‘eco-mentalists’). But why do we talk about ‘going’ green? It suggests we weren’t ever ‘green’ in the past. Yet I can’t remember my parents and grand parents being wasteful. Not convinced? Let’s have a look back…

• Terry cloth nappies, what I was always wrapped in – now green
• Shopping trolleys and cloth shopping bags, my gran wouldn’t be seen out in the street without hers – now green.
• Buying things in brown paper bags – now green
• Taking the bus to the shops – now green
• Walking to the shops – now green and healthy
• Reusing containers (my papa’s garden was a riot of cans with geraniums in them) – now green
• Growing your own vegetables, my mum’s Ayrshire potatoes were the best – now green (apparently 100,000 people in the UK waiting on an allotment right now)
• Turning off the lights/TV (gran’s was only for showing off when people came around)/heaters – now green
• Making bricks out of old newspaper for the fire – now green
• Collecting rainwater; my papa had an old barrel at the end of the downpipe – this is green.
• Wearing hand-me-downs (now called vintage clothing) – now green

I remember the 1970’s when we all had to make do and ever since I have had that ‘old fashioned’ mentality that means I can’t throw something away without first spending a huge amount of brain power trying to figure out alternative uses for it. My workshop - really a recycling depot in today’s parlance - is full of, tins, plastic pots and bottles full of nails, screws and other bits left over from renovations. Lengths of wood, waiting for the next bit of work I can shoehorn them into, lie in untidy piles, while bits of cable and string hang from every rusty nail – I could go on.

The real message is that before the packaging designers, legislators and aspirational gurus got their hands on us and persuaded us that we needed to spend our hard earned pennies on the latest and best, we all made do and recycled. We can again…and if the economy continues to spiral down, we will have to.

Stop Press

Even world famous designers are jumping on the bandwagon. Frenchman Philippe Starck famous for furniture and hotel design has announced a new windmill. It is said to generate between 20%-60% of a single home’s energy and costs around 400 euros. Of course it isn’t just a windmill but a ‘personal wind turbine’ branded as ‘Democratic Ecology’ and comes in clear polycarbonate. I for one can’t wait.

Graeme Swan runs Les Cygnes, a Carbon-neutral holiday complex in the Deux-Sèvres. For more information visit: http://www.lescygnes.net