Reduce, reuse, recycle.

These words are everywhere these days as it becomes fashionable to show a degree of "greeness". The words are listed in order of the importance that each activity has on the environment but in realilty people are looking at them in reverse order.

Recycling is something that many people now do as a matter of course, separating the newspapers and glass bottles etc from the landfill rubbish and taking excess clothing to charity shops. For a lot of people that is as far as it goes.

Reuse is practised by a smaller number of people. Some shops offer a refil service for products such as washing up liquid so that you can re-use the original container many times but it is not a very widespread practice. Some items may be reused within the home like jam jars but generally once an item is used it is thrown out.

Reduce may be the word that occurs first on the list but it seems to be ignored. Reduce could be practised in many areas, fossil fuel use, clothing purchase, things bought for the house but its a message that just doesn't seem to be getting across. Perhaps it is because "reduce" is not doing something, not buying something,that it doesn't seem so attractive as actually doing something eg recycling. May be it is because reducing seems a bit like doing without and if we are to some extent judged by what we own then having less seems like failure.
While views like these are widespread the chance of reducing our impact on the earth in the near future is small indeed. The real challenge it seems is to try to get across the positive side of reducing, the less you have - the less you have to maintain and the less hours that have to be worked to pay for that maintenance.

If this post seems to be a bit moaning its because I've been shopping today and the sheer volume of unneccesary items seemed depressing.

We had snow!

There was snow on the ground when I woke up this morning but there wasn't very much and it only stayed a few hours. I took a few photographs once it got light just to keep a record. I don't imagine we will see snow much in future winters.

The Sun has moved round!

No, its alright, I know it hasn't. I realise that its not the sun thats moving. I should probably say something like the angle of the earth facing the sun has changed or something like that.
Anyway the important thing for me is that I get to see more of it. We are surrounded by other houses quite close which means that for a month either side of the shortest day we don't get much sun, maybe just a bit in an upstairs window and nothing in the garden. Today it is a bright sunny day and the sun is shining on my washing. OK so its not the most exciting news but we don't have a tumble drier and I try to get all our washing dried outside as we have condensation just running down the windows anyway and it is much worse if I spread damp washing around the house.
So, simple pleasures, the darkest part of the winter is over, the sun is back and it will be easier to get the washing dry.

Shipping News

Iwas listening to the radio while cooking dinner this evening and heard about the ship MSC Napoli which is beached just a mile from the Devon coast after getting into difficulties in the storms last week. Over 200 large containers have been lost from the ship and some have been washed up on the local beach revealing their contents -BMW motorbikes, barrels of wine and sherry, car parts, toys, nappies , cosmetics and cat food!
It made me think about the amount of stuff that must be transported around the world. This was just one ship and it had 2400 containers on board. There must be hundreds if not thousands of ships moving constantly all over the world. How much longer will we be able to use our precious fossil fuels to move things around the world instead of making them where they are needed? - and how many of them are really needed anyway?

Climate Change Game

I found this Climate Change Prediction game today. You can pretend to be president and implement the policies of your choice! The challenge is to do the right thing for the environment while remaining popular so that you are not voted out of office.