The Week In Green Numbers

5.4%

- fall in passenger numbers at Scottish airports for June 2009, compared to June 2008

660 million

- estimated number of people who will be affected by climate-related disasters by 2030

93

- number of applications for wind farms in England in the last 3 years

35

- number that were approved

54%

- people opposed to the Trident nuclear weapons replacement

2.6 billion

- slices of bread thrown away by Britons every year

49.4%

- reduction in the number of plastic bags given out by supermarkets in the last 3 years in Scotland

2

- age of Suitably Despairing today. Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me...

Beanz Meanz Bollockz

Photo by thebittenword.com

You can picture the scene: I'm standing in the veg aisle at the supermarket yesterday, looking for something for my dinner. There's a stonking great sign extolling the virtues of Scotland's fresh produce. I spy a packet of Dwarf Beans, reduced in price because the Best Before date is today. Not only are they organic, but the sign along the edge of the shelf has a couple of Scottish flags on it.

I snaffle them up.

It's only when I get home that I realise that they're not from Scotland at all. They have "Produce of Egypt" stamped on them.

D'oh!

Which just goes to show that even the most cynical, greenwash-savvy of us gets hoodwinked sometimes. Or maybe I'm just an idiot!

Don't You Love It When A Plan Comes Together?

Photo by Andrew Dunn via Wikimedia Commons

By now, you've probably seen the UK government's "low carbon transition plan" - their roadmap for how to meet their carbon reduction targets. (The Guardian has a quick summary of the main points here).

In the main, it's welcome. It doesn't do everything I would want, and it does some things I don't want. Plus, there's a sodding great "Coming Soon" sign over the railway section.

But in the main, it's the start of a snowball. The quicker we get started, and the more we do, the less frightening decarbonising will seem to the general population. So it is to be welcome.

Unfortunately, it's purely coincidence that on the same day the M4 Relief Road was scrapped. It would have been a powerful statement of intent if the plans were ripped up because they would have contributed too many emissions.

Talking Trash

Edinburgh's binmen (are there any binwomen?) have been on a work-to-rule for the last couple of weeks, with rubbish piling up in the streets waiting to be collected.

I've said before that I think, at the best of times, Edinburgh is an incredibly dirty city. I think there's three factors: a population who think it's ok to just dump rubbish at their feet, combined with a wind which will lift trash out of a bin if it's not nailed down. Oh, and the Nazi Seagulls From Hell tearing binbags apart.

If tourists were walking the streets first thing in the morning it would be embarrassing, although I guess you could say the same for any major town or city. Thankfully, the binmen usually get the job done before the throngs arrive in the city centre. Until now.

The one thing the "strike" does highlight is just how much crap we discard, for someone else to clean up and put away out of our sight. Maybe seeing bins overflowing like this one in Princes Street the other morning will make people stop and think about how much they're throwing away.

Green Energy A Go-Go

Friends Of The Earth Scotland and WWF Scotland have commissioned a new report from energy analysts which looked at 5 future scenarios for the country, and discovered that it was feasible that Scotland could be run entirely on renewable energy by 2030.

In fact, one of the scenarios has Scotland producing 143% of it's energy needs from renewables!

I'm sceptical enough to know that 143% is perhaps out of our reach - there's no political or business will there to do it - but even the "business as usual" model which sees us hitting government targets (ha!) will see renewables making up 68% of Scotland's generating capacity.

We just have to get on with it.

You can read the report summary in pdf form here or the full report here.

Bowing To The Bleeding Obvious

Sometimes, something becomes so painfully obvious that even the government can't ignore it.

Germany's "feed-in tariffs" system, which sees householders paid for producing electricity, has been the superior model for encouraging household renewable schemes for a number of years now. The UK government has always resisted, I suspect because the civil servants want to protect the monopoly of the energy companies. I mean, if anyone could produce their own electricity for the National Grid then there would be chaos, wouldn't there?

But it stands to reason that if an energy company can charge a householder for using electricity, then the reverse is true: that householder should be paid for providing power to the energy company.

The UK government has finally conceded that point this week, which will hopefully see a rise in the number of household renewable schemes as the pay-back times are slashed.

It should also be a lesson in taking best practice from anywhere else in the world, instead of sticking with crap proprietary ideas.

Green In The Media 13th July - 19th July

Just what are we eating? The BBC tries to find out on Tuesday evening, although I suspect some of it may make you choke on your burger.

Tuesday 14th July

Home Planet

On: BBC Radio Four

Time: 15:00 to 15:30

Richard Daniel and the team discuss listeners' questions about the world we inhabit and our interaction with it, from astronomy to geology, biology to environmental science.

What's Really in our Food?

On: BBC 1

Time: 21:00 to 22:00

Food is the most important thing we buy, but can we trust what we are eating? Reporters Tom Heap and Simon Boazman set off on a mission to find out, revealing the tricks of food labelling and uncovering the murky world of food fraud.

Wednesday 15th July

The Wednesday Documentary

On: BBC World Service Radio

Time: 09:06 to 09:30

The Greening of The Deserts.

Some experts now argue that some deserts could get greener. Ayisha Yahya explores the arguments in Mali.

Thursday 16th July

One Planet

On: BBC World Service Radio

Time: 10:32 to 11:00 (Also 1630, 2030, 0130)

One Planet looks at how we use our planet.

Sunday 19th July

The Food Programme

On: BBC Radio Four

Time: 12:32 to 12:57

Watercress.

Watercress has been dubbed a 'superfood' in the media. But is there anything special about it or is it all just marketing hype? Sheila Dillon visits Vitacress Salads Ltd in Hampshire, Europe's leading grower of watercress and the world's biggest producer of organic watercress. For several years, it has funded medical research into the potential health benefits of watercress. Sheila finds out why they did this, how much they spent and what they found out. She asks if the science is credible or if it is all just a clever marketing ploy to boost sales.

Britain's Embarrassing Emissions

On: BBC 3

Time: 00:45 to 01:40

Rebecca Wilcox has an embarrassing problem - her carbon dioxide emissions - but she's ready to do something about them. But does everyone else feel the same way about theirs, and are the energy and aviation companies as green as they seem or are the boys in big business full of hot air? In this documentary, Becca is on a mission to find out who cares about the environment and who has been 'greenwashing'.

Excerpts taken from DigiGuide - the world's best TV guide available from http://www.getdigiguide.com/?p=1&r=20818

Copyright (c) GipsyMedia Limited.

The Week In Green Numbers

69%

- number of people who say they will continue to cut back on organic food after the recession

57%

- number of people willing to pay more for local food, in the same survey

20 years

- remaining life expectancy of the Great Barrier Reef

$4.5 billion

- what the Great Barrier Reef is worth to the Australian economy

10 million years

- length of time it took corals to return after the Permian extinction

42%

- amount that Arctic sea ice has thinned in the last 4 years

9%

- fall in the sales of bottled water in the UK in 2008

£7,191

- cost of the energy wasted by the Houses of Parliament every year

5%

- amount of water needed for a vertical farm compared to a conventional one

Bird Brained

When I moved into this flat last September, one of the first things I noticed was that there was a bird's nest in the tree outside, about 20 feet from my living room window. With the leaves falling from the tree last autumn, the nest became pretty exposed and I wondered if it would survive the winter, and also what type of bird had made it.

Survive it did, to the extent I wondered if it was cemented in place! Surely the wonderful creature who had built this architectural marvel would be a joy to watch during the spring. I highly anticipated being fascinated as I waited for mum and dad to make an appearance.

And waited. And waited.

By the end of June I had given up hope. Spring was over and to my limited knowledge so was breeding season. My exotic species of bird had obviously - if you'll excuse the phrase - flown the nest, never to return.

Then three days ago, I heard some wing flapping. Two birds were coming and going, checking out the nest and tidying it up. Last night, I noticed that they were taking it in turns to sit in the nest and I caught glimpses of an egg when they changed positions.

So what wonderful creatures have become my neighbours? What glorious species has kept me waiting three quarter of the year to catch a glimpse of them? Here's a photo of one on the nest, to give you a clue:

Do you give up?

It's a sodding pigeon. What's so bloody exotic about that??

Still, it'll be interesting watching them over the next month as they rear their chicks.

New Plastic Recycling Plant "Soon"

Photo by nyki_m

This can't come soon enough.

Scotland is to get a dedicated plastics recycling factory, handling all the plastic waste which is at the moment sent to Asia or England. It should be built within the year.

I'm wondering why there isn't one here already, though?