The Green Diaries

I am in complete adoration of the Lazy Environmentalist blog. All of his June pieces have been very interesting.  The piece on eco-transport and the new media zeitgeist are good reads and link throughs. Lazy Environmentalist My apologies about lack of entries lately. Working hard to get the $/£ to but those Eco products! Though, I confess, I have longed for the harshness of bleach to whiten my ever greying sinks.   After our California trip, it's nice to be back in London where there's a Smart Car on every corner and Vespas instead of Hummers. And the national papers seem to be attacking SUVs in cities more and more regularly. I recently saw a bloke drive through a red light at a busy pedestrian intersection in his Range Rover, while on the phone, as an ambulance was trying to get by him while he continued his big-car mayhem, oblivious.  

The more we ask people about their views on being eco-friendly the more inspired we get. Some eco-green stars need to go to: Julie and Luis who have started their own organic garden in the heart of Hollywood. Lovely Christina who campaigned to get recycling started on her TV show Kevin Hill and won. She's now considering starting an industry-wide campaign to get recycling bins on all sets. Brooklyn's Michele and Charlie who have installed state of the art recycling compartments in their new kitchen, use eco-products in the house and have bought their first composter for their city garden. Hugo in London who is petitioning to get more serious recycling efforts going for his apartment building. Virginia in Portland, Oregon who has recently attended a master recycler program (how cool is that?) and has promised to send on the details. Paul and Heather who now recycle in their east London flat and order the local veggie basket for their organic greens. I have some catching ...

The UK goverment is being so slow in bringing in green legislation. I'm still surprised that there is no tax on plastic carrier bags a la Ireland and many other European countries.   I'm hatching a plan to start a Green Store Scheme whereby stores can voluntarily join forces with the policy of 'to show or support of reducing waste, we will only give you a plastic bag if you pay' with the proceeds going to a worthy eco-cause. Need to get the ball rolling in the private sector! It would require a lot of planning, canvassing, PR and a few willing high profile stores to start the trend. I'm thinking each store would carry a poster and information on conserving, recyling and reusing. The one catch - I'd need to quit working to have time to even get to step 1. Any volunteers?

While I was walking to the tube the other day, I saw the coolest thing. A middle-aged man in a helmet on a Segway overtaking a group of cars that were overtaking 2 horses making their way back to the stables. 19th, 20th and 21st century transport modes all lined up. I wish I had had my camera.

Everyone who knows me knows that I hate flying. It's loud, uncomfortable, confining and if things go wrong there's no way out. (I'm an advocate of parachutes under seat, not inflatable vests.) But the real reason I hate flying these days is the environmental impact. a) Apparently you're better off driving to your destination, alone , even if it's thousands of miles away, than being on a full plane. That's how bad the fuel consumption is. b) Planes dump their emissions in the most delicate part of the stratosphere and there's nothing to help mitigate the damage. For all of the pollution cars create, we have our plant life down here to help soften the blow. c) They are noisy, booming things and no matter where we go, we seem to be able to hear one or see one, even the far hills of Scotland. d) The amount of packaging they use per passenger is amazing. When my husband recently flew on a short haul flight to Amsterdam, he asked the air steward if they recy...

Just bought the green issue of Vanity Fair (May 2006). It's packed full of research and helpful tips, including a small booklet of 100 simple ways to have a greener lifestyle. The booklet covers the basics like: + buy energy efficient light bulbs + don't leave things on standby + bring your own bags shopping + walk or bike whenever you can + buy A grade appliances (most energy efficient) + recycle diligently at home + get your office to recycle + try to fly less as it's massively dirty and wasteful form of transport apparently, even if your flight is packed to capacity, you're using way more fuel than if you drove alone in a regular 30 MPG all of the way - alone! - and that includes long haul trips (at least that's what I read in Leo Hickman's book.) There's also a lot of info about forward green-sense global activists, politicians and business. My favourite profiles: + Wangari Muta Maathai - She's currently the assistant environment minister in Kenya...

The product reviews are on their way tomorrow... but first, we have one HUGE new product review - a car. I'm so ashamed! But I've been carless for about 6 years now and, man, it felt good to get out of London and not be fleeced by the train companies. For American readers, train tickets here are about 4-5x more expensive than in the states. And gas is about $7/gallon. They get you every which way in the old UK! There's one man somewhere on this island sitting on a huge stack of gold... Our car is a Spanish Seat and it gets about 40MPG highway, 30 city. Not great but not terrible. I pushed for something compact with way better fuel consumption but the Mr. found our green list cars to be wimpy drives. And he was getting aggravated by the never-ending requirements--especially since he does the majority of the driving as I have yet to figure out how the hell to get round a round-a-bout in London without having a nervous breakdown. We had a tight budget and were only looking at...

Friday night is beer night at the offices I've been working with for the past few months. It's a hip, modern web agency with standard new media perks like a pool table and an open frig policy on Friday PM. But, despite protest, it's one of those modern companies that's lazy about things like recycling. (Thus making it stone age, really.)It recycles paper but no bottles or plastic. I've sent emails to to the head of operations but to no avail. I've even tracked down the dude that picks up the paper in his huge green recycling truck who said 'We can pick up everything but this company just does paper.' So Friday I offered to recycle the bottles of the people I was chatting to by taking them home. No one thought it was weird. (I stopped myself at picking bottles out of trash cans though someone offered to do it for me! I'm just to vain to be propery green, huh?) In fact, everyone who gave me their bottle thought it sucked that there was no recylcing in...

I just found out that the BBC2 has a new TV show about a family that goes for a completely sustainable existence in a new series called It's Not Easy Being Green. I've been waiting and waiting for a show like this and can't believe that I only found out about it by accident in a blog search. BBC2 - where is your advertising??? We'll definitely be watching next week. Has anyone seen it and what are your thoughts?

We've been trying to expand our ecological product usage. Our cleaning cupboard is now full of Ecover cleaners and we're replacing old standbys like bleach with the less toxic vinegar. After reading the latest edition of The Ecologist, there are enough products to try out to last us year and years. In fact, the more I read, the more I realise how just about everything I use, from my shampoo to our laundry detergent, has a weird array of chemicals. But can I move to happy-hippy beauty products and still fight of the wrinkles? Will our always stained porcelain sink respond to earth friendly Ecover instead of the Ajax that I've used since the dawn of scouring time? To help answer the questions for ourselves--and give you some insights--I've decided to start a product review once a week. It will be as non-biased and as thorough as possible. I'm also going to try to bring more concrete research into this so it isn't just the typical blog me me me babble. So if there...

We went to the much publicised Ideal Home Show today in Earl's Court. It was touted as having a eco and sustainable living theme. But it was actually a massive jumbo mall of home wares. There were the slice and dice men whizzing through carrots with ginso style knives, fake leather bean bags chairs, log cabins booths, TV sales tents and...a lonely recycling exhibit sponsored by Recycle Now . Where were the solar panels and wind turbines and Huf Haus booths? Where was the info on happy composting and energy efficient boilers? Not by the pub on a trolley... So we left with our lone Ecover jute bag that we found at the Ecover stand buried in tat and with despodent staff who were bummed by the complete lack of green theme. The organisers did have a huge, Vegas style waterfall with some shrubs stuck to it in the middle of the circus...maybe that was the green offering? We did have a fun Sesame Street style wander through the Recycle Now exhibit which was in the style of a recreated ti...

It's been an interesting week trying to buy household products and food only made from recyclable packaging. A mixed bag. Literally. For example, I just made a rocket (arugula) salad with fresh mozzarella. The rocket I bought from Waitrose last week was in a recyclable bag made from recycled plastic. However, the rocket I bought from Sainbury's today was in a bag that did not have the recyclable sign, nor was it made from recycled plastic. The Sainsbury's mozzarella was equally guilty. However, Sainsbury's does use some bags that are recyclable, mainly for their organic products. Less confusing were the products in cardboards boxes/cartons and aluminum packaging. All clearly recyclable. And almost all of the plastic packaging we bought was recyclable apart from a few random items we bought at Marks and Spencers and the lunch spot Eat. Things like salad containers that looked like they were candidates for the recycling pile turned out not to have any recycling symbols...

Just found this hep-cool green blog. Lots of good green references and shopping tips. Greenloop Lots of recycling this weekend. Ralph made me clean out my stash of plastic bags which I have such guilt about releasing back into the world. They seem so inocuos in our broom closet. But Westminster Council has installed a new bag recylcing container so now we can guilt-free get rid of them knowing they are going into recycling loop. When we got there with our bag full of bags we found a like-minded yuppy doing the same things. Bonding in at the recyling depot in W2. We've been really really good about not using shopping bags - we either stuff already used bags in ours pockets before we go to the store or use our durable canvas style bags. But still a few sneak through every now when we find oursleves bagless and in need of stuff. It amazing the interest from grocery employees who really dig the fact that we bring our own bags. One French woman who works at the little corner store near ...

This winter, my husband and I decided we were going to go green. We were already slightly eco-friendly but there was a lot of room for improvement. And when my mother-in-law gave us a book on ethical living we realised how ignorant we were on just about everything to do with sustainability. Which was a bit of a shock as I always considered myself a mother-earth-loving, modern gal with my cool, retro reusable shopping bags, my willingness to walk miles for a recyling bin, my loathing of everything SUV (they are just so ridiculous, clunky and ugly) and my preference for walking and cycling over anything with a combustible engine.  But The Good Life by Leo Hickman was a real eye-opener. Everything we did seemed to need a review. Cleaning, travel, shopping, restaurant selections, getting from A to B...everything. No more leaving the water running when brushing the teeth, no more taking cabs, recycling everything possible, no more asparagus shipped from Chile, no more meat with every...