More bad news creates a global buzz

It's official. The entire western world has gone green mad. Global warming is now regular news usually supplemented by another feature on boroughs that don't recycle. There are now regular debates on television shows, radio, print, in the office, at parties... So, everyone is talking about it, panicking, worrying, wondering what is true, what is hype. But what is anyone actually doing about it? I only know a handful of people who have actually changed their lifestyles. It seems to be all of the rage in media land but not in reality. I hope everyone starts embracing the little things they can do: Turn off the lights. Turn down the thermostat. Take public transport or walk when you can. Try to reduce your flying by at least one flight a year. Buy locally grown and made goods.

But I'm still convinced that businesses are the worst culprits. I continue to chip away at the large company I work for and have begun the responsible office movement.

The latest news on the Parisian climate meeting with the world's top climate scientists presenting 20 years worth of research. The verdict: there is a 90% probability that is human activity causing the warming of the planet. + New York Times article on the Parisian summit and global research + A NYT collection of the latest green news and debates

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Why isn't all packaging recyclable?

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...

Relieving your travel guilt with carbon neutralization packages

Brother Ren, who shall now be called Research Ren as he is better at it than I am, has sent in this guilt-alleviating website which allows anyone to purchase carbon neutrlaization packages. + Carbon Neutral Question you may have: What is a carbon neautralization package? Is it something that can only be purchased at Star Trek conventions? Answer: These packages plant trees to help absorb the nastiness left in the air from your flight to the Maldives. It will also calculate how much CO2 you emit on flights based on your destination as well as CO2 you emit with your car mileage. It's a smart site, easy to use and I feel more green-angelic just for looking at it. We're taking the Eurostar/TGV to a wedding in the south of France in 2 weeks rather than flying but we still have all of those air miles to make up for from our London-NY-San Fran-LA-London trip so looks like we'll be using this site's offerings to help to plant a small forest somewhere. (Though I do wonder how ...

TGV - how energy efficient is it really?

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...

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