The Green Diaries

After months of talking about it, and an official government stance in this year's budget that plastic shopping bags should be charged for, Marks & Spencer's has officially started charging 5p for every plastic shopping bag customers use.  It may be just one store for now, but it means a few million people a day will be deterred from getting a bag for a single sandwich or a soda, which happens all of the time. Prior to the charge coming into effect on May 6, every time I bought my lunch at an M&S it seemed like everyone is front of me was getting a plastic bag for the tiniest of purchases.  I support a full ban on plastic shopping bags altogether, until they make them non petroleum based and completely bio-degradable. They aren't necessary and they leave a terrible legacy. 13 billion a year used in the UK alone, just sitting in landfill for the next thousand years. And if they aren't around people will be forced to use their owns bags, boxes, baskets and carts

Keeping our new home, a rented cottage, is proving challenging. When the temperatures dropped last month, every room was freezing with droughts coming in from the rickety windows and doors. The huge, ancient boiler chugged away trying to keep up to no avail. It was depressing.  Solution: Rolls of insulating tape to line every gap and hole. And a large wooden drought excluder to block the massive gap on our front door. The difference is massive. It gets warmer quicker and stays warm longer.  But it brings up the issue of environmental responsibilities of landlords. Should all landlords be required to follow eco-codes for their housing stock? Should double glazing, draught proofing, minimum efficiency ratings for boilers and appliances be required? 

I have made an official request to visit any of London's recycling centres for an in-depth look at how they really work. Questions like a) who sorts out the 'mixed bags' full of various types of recyclables and b) how are they actually recycled?   Most people I speak to are cynical that anything happens to the mixed recycling bags and I myself don't understand how our typical mixed recycling bag, which will usually contain up to 6 types of plastic, aluminum, glass and various types of paper (including little bitty pieces) can be efficiently sorted unless there is a huge team rifling through it all on conveyor belts.  I want to know - is it all a London borough con? Where is the evidence of how it is all actually recycled? I can never find any reports on it, apart from % of waste that is sent to recycling sites, not how much is actually recycled or how it is recycled.  One of our friends accidentally put his recycling bag out a day early on his street in Notting Hill (

Me and the husband found ourselves with a spare week on our hands in October and decided to make a last minute trip to visit my family and friends in New York. It was mid-October and I thought let's go now so English husband can see the spectacular east coast fall foliage for the first time. So we bought last minute tickets - bringing our flight tally to 3 for the year - 2 short hauls (Berlin & Outer Hebrides) and 1 long haul (New York). Taking the train or driving to any of these places is a) impossible or b) ridiculously long (13+ hours) so I feel vindicated in my pollution choices. I packed a bag of sweaters, jeans and scarves expecting the typical brisk autumn temperatures. But when we landed in New York we were greeted with summertime, balmy weather.  We drank outside, ate outside and took long, sweaty walks along the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn and even had a beach day trip to CT. The warm weather felt fantastic, I have to admit. But it was freaky. Just like last y

I love National Geographic. It's just about the only publication I trust. Each story is crafted and researched for months by experts, fact checked and fact checked again. It explores the unseen, wild and exotic in a way that is tangible and captivating. With some of the best photography around. The cover story this month is on biofuels. It is, as usual, a thorough and balanced view of the potential future of fuel plus excellent pub quiz knowledge like: this year's Indy 500 was won in a car fuelled by ethanol and driven by a Scot.  As a bonus, there is a complementary interactive piece online that compares the different types of biofuels. + National Geographic's Biofuel Inteactive I wonder if someday we can use our household compost to power our cars...?

We took another holiday, using the TGV instead of flying as our mode of transport, in August, as our attempts to keep air miles down continues. But as we zoomed through the French countryside at 180 MPH, we wondered how efficient is the TGV, really? Or have we just bought into the hype that it is more efficient than flying? I've never seen any statistics other than soft evidence provided by The Guardian and various news sources. We've been told by journalists that train travel is significantly greener, but with the electricity required to hurl a TGV through the countryside, and electricity plants being a major contributor to green house gases, what was a real, non-hype comparison? Or was my sudden skepticism just an excuse to trade the 5 1/2 hours on the stuffy train in for 1 hour on a plane? (Always fun going down and an absolute pain coming back.) With a little investigating, I found some statistical information comparing the efficiency of various modes of transport, based

I have lots to report on the eco-front including: - The adoption of our massive composter - Another trip on the TGV - pros and cons - Waste calculator of moving house But that can all wait because there is much bigger news to deal with. Apparently, our fair friends, the moose, are huge contributors to global warming through their burps. The study is more believable as it was conducted by seemingly neutral Nords. We are trying to cut down on red meat as cows, and the over herding of them, majorly contribute to the methane tally. Fascinating that moose are also contributors.