Re-cyclechat
- Thread starter Bigtallfatbloke
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trustysteed
Guest
i use my shopping bags as my rubbish bags instead of buying black bin-liners.
Global warming is a global problem, so anything we do in the UK to change our own behaviour is a trivial part of the solution.
Far better than messing around with plastic bag replacements is:
1/ Try and get the UK government to try and influence the next US president to take the issue seriously ('cos it wont happen with Bush) and so start the big shift in carbon use needed by the developed world
2/ Support, with money and time, efforts to improve education (especially of women), public health and population programmes in the developing world. These are proven to reduce birth rates fast and without the need for big inputs of money or complex technology. It improves the quality of life in the countries concerned and means that as these places develop, less resources are needed by them.
Far better than messing around with plastic bag replacements is:
1/ Try and get the UK government to try and influence the next US president to take the issue seriously ('cos it wont happen with Bush) and so start the big shift in carbon use needed by the developed world
2/ Support, with money and time, efforts to improve education (especially of women), public health and population programmes in the developing world. These are proven to reduce birth rates fast and without the need for big inputs of money or complex technology. It improves the quality of life in the countries concerned and means that as these places develop, less resources are needed by them.
If anyone is looking at a way of reducing their waste I would recommend bokashi http://www.bokashi.com.au/Bokashi-Instructions.htm
It means that you can compost almost all of your food waste (including cooked). When it is fully fermented (this is what bokashi does) I put it in our compost heap in the garden and it helps the rest of the compost decompose a lot quicker.
Also worth a look for people who don't have space for a compost heap.
It means that you can compost almost all of your food waste (including cooked). When it is fully fermented (this is what bokashi does) I put it in our compost heap in the garden and it helps the rest of the compost decompose a lot quicker.
Also worth a look for people who don't have space for a compost heap.
trustysteed said:
Just bought a frame that fits on the back of a cupboard to use those bags for rubbish.
My wife took it out of the packaging at the checkout, the staff got themselves in a write tiss, "you cant do that your wont be able to return it if its faulty" etc , I pointed out this was codswallop. They eventually after 5 mins of arguing with several staff , took payment.
They then sulkely threw the box in a corner.!!
The best way of keeping your waste down is not accepting it to begin with.
Modbury are now plastic bag free - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/6605435.stm
twowheelsgood
Senior Member
- Location
- Zurich Switzerland
Yes bof, but you can't lecture the rest of the world from anything but the moral high ground.
KitsuneAndy
New Member
- Location
- Norwich
Surely taking things out of the packaging at the shop is pointless, you haven't used less.
What you've done, is made it someone elses problem. It means you can go home and be smug about not having things in packaging, while the supermarket chucks all of your rubbish in the (potentially non-recycling) bin.
What you've done, is made it someone elses problem. It means you can go home and be smug about not having things in packaging, while the supermarket chucks all of your rubbish in the (potentially non-recycling) bin.
OP
OP
Bigtallfatbloke
New Member
...true to a point I concede. However it would send a strong message to the supermarket if we all did it and they had to pay to dispose of the stuff themselves. It would hit their bottom line which is the only way they will ever change anything.
twowheelsgood said:
Where's the lecturing? It's appealing to self-interest (theirs and ours). A big mistake of the environmental movement is that it is generally lecturing and the attitude that implies the third world cannot have what we have - which understandably pisses them off a tad.
KitsuneAndy
New Member
- Location
- Norwich
Bigtallfatbloke said:
I suppose that is true, most businesses only understand money.
We get all of our shopping delivered by Tesco's as we don't have a car and do one big monthly shop. You can request that they dont bring any plastic bags, which is good, but takes bloody ages to unpack, I feel sorry for the driver standing there in the rain while we take each item out of the boxes one by one...
Amanda P
Legendary Member
- Location
- York. Well, York-ish...
The problem goes deeper than just recycling, reducing carbon footprints and so on.
The problem is that we only have so many resources on this planet. Classical economics insists that constant economic growth is The Only Way. That means that we must have constantly increasing human populations, consuming constantly increasing amounts of resources (and coincidentally producing increasing amounts of waste, like carbon dioxide) to sustain our economies.
Economists argue that resources to do this are effectively infinite, since as we begin to run out of something, we find a way to substitute something else, and so on. (Eventually this argument leads to propositions such as, when we run out of space to grow food for everyone, we'll grow it in space, or on the moon, or on Mars).
Ecologists (by which I mean scientists, not tree-huggers (although the two aren't mutually exclusive)) know that there's no such thing as an infinite resource, and anyway, while something might be theoretically infinite, in practice, wars, famines, crop failures and the like tend to occur before substitution does. Any biology graduates remember their population ecology? Populations tend to grow logarithmically until they reach a limiting resource, then crash. In human populations, those crashes have historically been wars. And no-one likes them.
There's a growing field of ecological economics, recognizing this limit and proposing steady-state economies instead of growing ones. It's a compelling argument.
Google "Brian Czech ecological economics" if this interests you.
This has been a public information broadcast...
The problem is that we only have so many resources on this planet. Classical economics insists that constant economic growth is The Only Way. That means that we must have constantly increasing human populations, consuming constantly increasing amounts of resources (and coincidentally producing increasing amounts of waste, like carbon dioxide) to sustain our economies.
Economists argue that resources to do this are effectively infinite, since as we begin to run out of something, we find a way to substitute something else, and so on. (Eventually this argument leads to propositions such as, when we run out of space to grow food for everyone, we'll grow it in space, or on the moon, or on Mars).
Ecologists (by which I mean scientists, not tree-huggers (although the two aren't mutually exclusive)) know that there's no such thing as an infinite resource, and anyway, while something might be theoretically infinite, in practice, wars, famines, crop failures and the like tend to occur before substitution does. Any biology graduates remember their population ecology? Populations tend to grow logarithmically until they reach a limiting resource, then crash. In human populations, those crashes have historically been wars. And no-one likes them.
There's a growing field of ecological economics, recognizing this limit and proposing steady-state economies instead of growing ones. It's a compelling argument.
Google "Brian Czech ecological economics" if this interests you.
This has been a public information broadcast...
Bigtallfatbloke said:
Good points, good question too.
What are we doing in our house...
Well, we grow nearly all of our own veg on the allotment, the main input is locally sourced s**t. Food miles, well, about one, and that one by bicycle
Our bread we make from flour bought in bulk at a shop within staggering distance. I say staggering distance 'cos when you're carrying a sack of flour and a rucksack full of rice you tend to stagger. So most of our 'dry' goods are bought in bulk, in biodegradable packaging (the plastic there is cornstarch).
Our waste we compost at home; we have a composter bin, a wormery, and a bokashi composting system*. We're not waste neutral, but we do okay. Everything else gets separated for recycling of course.
We're energy efficient as we can manage. I need more loft insulation, the energy savings people just advised us that we might save up to six pounds per year by doing that(!). We're fitting energy rated A windows in October/November.
Our meat is all extensively reared outdoors or wild. And as local as we can manage.
We don't run a car, we don't go abroad by plane. Haven't for years now.
Naturally our lights are energy efficient, we don't leave things 'on', we've got efficient gas central heating (looked at alternatives, none were practical for our house), and energy efficient electrical goods.
We're not perfect of course, but we're doing what we can. Its not like we're living in sack cloth and eating ashes, our lives are actually better than those most people have.
*I'm still in two minds about Bokashi. Good idea, but the 'official' claims for how it works don't look credible to me; I rekon I can replicate the process, even do it better, through simple ensilaging, and I'll be experimenting with that presently...
Uncle Phil said:
No, they really haven't. If you look at the growth curve for humanity, none of the great wars have been more than tiny blips. Some local depopulations have been drastic, but the big population killers have been diseases. Black death, even the flu pandemic of 1918-1920 or so killed more than wars ever have.
I agree, theres no such thing as limitless growth, but that doesn't mean that the analogy to biological systems is quite as compelling as some of the proponents of this principle would have us believe. They've got a point, but they need to back off and take a good long, hard look at just how far you can strain the comparison.
