Category Archives: environment

environment

Recycle Week

To go along with National Picnic Week, 17-23 June is also Recycle Week sponsored by Recycle Now along with Keep Britain Tidy.

The intent of Recycle Week is to encourage us to recycle more. Recycling is important for the environment not just in conserving our resources but in preventing pollution and damage to wildlife.

We’d all like to be that bit greener, which means taking what we do already and pushing it just a little bit further. You may recycle at home, but do you recycle at work? Do you recycle glass jars as well as glass bottles? Do your kids recycle at school? Recycling for kids can be fun, and these are just a few ideas for steps you can take to recycle even more!

Remember that recycling isn’t just for bottles, drink cans and newspapers. You can recycle many plastics, metal cans and bottle tops, batteries, Tetra Pak containers, leftover food, water filter cartridges, vegetable and garden waste, even used cooking oil. Everything you can do makes a difference.

The Recycle Now website, www.recyclenow.com, has lots of ideas to help you recycle more.

environment

Bike Week

Bike Week 2013 starts on Saturday 15 June and runs until 23rd.

Bike Week is the UK’s biggest mass participation cycling event with events offering something for everyone; from families, schools and companies, to seasoned cyclists and those who have never cycled before. The idea is to show us just how easy it is to make cycling part of our every day routine.

This year, Bike Week is asking the nation to dig out their bikes, get back on the saddle and fall in love with cycling all over again! Cycling is not only good exercise but is also good for the environment in helping us to reduce our carbon footprint.

There’s lots of information and an events register over at www.bikeweek.org.uk.

environment

Bike to School Week

The week beginning Monday 10 June is Bike to School Week.

The idea is to encourage children to travel to school on their bikes. Cycling is good exercise and reducing car mileage has to be good for the environment; and it teaches children basic roadcraft. Moreover cycling is fun; it’s something I wish I was still able to do.


Yes, if you’re going to start cycling there are a few things you need to think about, but they’re not difficult. Firstly, ensure that your bike is in good working order: check the tyres, lights etc. You should plan your route, so that you know exactly where you are going and what the road junctions are like — and always make sure that someone knows the route you will be taking. And last, not not least, be safe and wear a helmet.

Teachers!? No you’re not excused; you’re expected to join in. Bike to School Week isn’t just for the kids!

Find more information on how to get started over at www.sustrans.org.uk/change-your-travel/children-and-families/schools/bike-school-week.

environment

World Oceans Day

Another “world day” this week comes around on Saturday 8 June; it is World Oceans Day.

World Ocean Day is the planet’s biggest celebration of the ocean and the theme for World Ocean Day this year (and next) is ‘together we have the power to protect the ocean!’. Yep, we’re all being asked to do our bit to help protect our oceans.


Oceans are incredibly important to the whole balance of the planet. We get most of our oxygen from the sea. They provide us with water to drink and bathe in … fish (and plants too) to eat … not to mention pharmaceuticals etc. The oceans probably also contain more unknown species than terrestrial environments; scientists are discovering hundreds, if not thousands, of new pelagic species every year.

In short, oceans are a bit of a miracle! But a miracle that we are polluting with plastic and chemicals, and whose life (especially fish) we’re raping unsustainably.

There’s a whole raft of small things you can do to help. Find out over on the World Oceans Day website, http://worldoceansday.org/.

environment, food+drink

World Environment Day

It is World Environment Day on Wednesday 5 June.

Every year since 1972 the UN has hosted World Environment Day to encouraging people to treat the environment more kindly and realise that it’s everyone’s responsibility to make the change … because it’s not just us that our actions on the world affects — it will have an impact on all our future generations too.

Although World Environment Day activities happen year round they culminate on 5 June every year, with the aim of enabling everyone to realize not only their responsibility, but also their power to become agents for change in support of sustainable and equitable development. It is also a day for people from all walks of life to come together to ensure a cleaner, greener and brighter outlook for themselves and future generations.


This year’s theme is Think.Eat.Save — an anti-food waste and food loss campaign that encourages people to reduce their “foodprint”. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), every year 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted; the equivalent of food production in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. While this is happening around 15% of the world’s population is under-fed or staving.

That is an enormous imbalance in lifestyles and which also has serious effects on the environment. So the Think.Eat.Save theme is intended to encourage you to become more aware of the environmental impact of the food choices you make and empower you to make informed decisions.


As I’ve said before, in my view there also needs to be root and branch reform of our whole environmental practice as well as of agriculture (for instance see here and here) — but that’s really a whole other debate.

As always there is a whole raft more information on the World Environment Day website at , including a list of activities by country.

environment, science

National Microchip Month

June is National Microchip Month. No, not computers, but pets.

It’s so easy to lose track of a pet. But getting your pet microchipped is quick and pain-free; it takes your vet about 1 minute to insert the chip under the animal’s skin (usually at the back of the neck) do and you 5 minutes to send in the registration. The actual chip is about the size of a grain of rice and contains a passive RFID tag.

And from then on your pet is quickly identifiable by any vet or animal shelter. I know. We had a stray cat turn up with us a couple of summers ago. We fed her and took her to the vet for a check-up. It took the vet 30 seconds to scan the microchip and then about 5 minutes to find the owner’s details on the national register. The vet contacted the owner and there was one happy owner reunited with his cat who he thought had gone for ever.

There’s more on microchipping at www.rspca.org.uk/allaboutanimals/pets/general/microchipping and Wikpedia.

environment, photography

Buggered Britain 18

It’s a long time since we’ve had an instalment in my occasional series documenting some of the underbelly of Britain. Britain which we wouldn’t like visitors to see and which we wish wasn’t there. The trash, abused, decaying, destitute and otherwise buggered parts of our environment. Those parts which symbolise the current economic malaise; parts which, were the country flourishing, wouldn’t be there, would be better cared for, or made less inconvenient.

These choice dwellings are is in Acton Vale, in West London. The photo flatters them — in real life they’re far more picturesquely scrofulous!

Buggered Britain 15
Click the image for larger views on Flickr

current affairs, environment

Heathrow Runways Reprise

Oh dear god! They just don’t get it do they.

After all the farrago a year or two back about London’s Heathrow Airport needing a third runway the idea was canned because (a) it was too expensive, (b) there was huge opposition and (c) frankly the business case was fragile.

But the idea has now reared it’s head again, in spades! A group of MPs is promoting the idea that Heathrow needs not just a third but also a fourth runway. Moreover they are suggesting that the third runway should be built to the south and west of the airport over the villages of Bedfont and Stanwell thus destroying even more housing than the previously suggested site to the north. (GOK how this would be done as where there isn’t housing in the way there are a couple of humongous great reservoirs!)

When are these people going to wake up and realise that there is no necessity, and I suggest no good business case, for expanding London’s airports? Just as it has now emerged that there is no persuasive business case for the proposed HS2 rail link.

Yes Heathrow runs close to capacity in terms of flights. But I know from experience many of those flights are far from full. And Heathrow’s passenger numbers have been stable at around 66.5M a year (plus/minus 5%) for the last 12 years. (The Olympic blip in volumes excepted; but that is a one-off, hopefully never to be repeated.)

London does not need airport expansion — and that doesn’t just mean Heathrow, it means all of them. Indeed I suggest that few places really need airport expansion. There are a number of factors mitigating against the expansion of air travel:

1. Business doesn’t need air travel as much as it used to. In the last 10 years I worked I travelled very little despite running teams of geographically spread project managers and technicians on million dollar projects. Unless you need to physically have your hands on something, just about everything can be accomplished by telephone- or video-conferencing, instant messaging and email. Yes it may need some companies to invest in a small bubble of technology, but their savings in travel expense (and remember it isn’t just air fares, it’s hotels, taxis, car hire, meals, non-productive time …) will likely pay for that in the first year. By constraining travel my former employer saved many multi-millions of pounds a year just in the UK. This is money industry cannot afford to spend in a recession when there are acceptable alternatives available.

2. Air travel is an environmental cost the planet cannot afford. It is a major polluter which can, and to my mind should, be reduced. And that’s aside from the environmental damage which would be caused by any expansion of the huge areas of tarmac.

3. How many people in these constrained times really have the money for significant amounts of (especially long-haul) air travel? Few airlines are managing to make useful profits from air fares. And it is going to get worse as the recession bites harder.

Airport expansion is not the answer. Sound business and financial judgement and management is. Isn’t sound and honest judgement what we pay our leaders for?

current affairs, environment, medical, science

Fukushima Reprise

4 Comments

There’s so much going on at the moment that I should be writing about that I’m having a hard time keeping up! Anyway here’s the next piece.

There was an interesting, and I suggest important, “Opinion” article in last week’s New Scientist (dated 17 March 2012). In it Don Higson, a fellow of the Australasian Radiation Protection Society, argues for the total revision scale on which nuclear accidents are measured and points up the lack of true comparison between Fukushima and Chernobyl. Along the way he highlights the major differences between the two in health effects, adding some further important perspective on the situation.

The article itself is behind a paywall, so I hope I’ll be forgiven for reproducing some factual highlights here.

Everybody who gets cancer in Japan over the next 40 years will no doubt blame their misfortune on radiation from Fukushima Daiichi […] This would be entirely understandable but will have no basis in science […]

[T]here is no possibility that the physical health consequences of Fukushima Daiichi will be anywhere near as bad as those of Chernobyl.

As far as anyone knows, no member of the public received a significant dose of radiation attributable to the Fukushima Daiichi reactor emergency […]

Chernobyl was the worst that could happen. Safety and protection systems failed and there was a full core meltdown in a reactor that had no containment […]

237 Chernobyl workers were taken to hospital with suspected acute radiation sickness; 134 of these cases were confirmed; 28 were fatal; about 20 other workers have since died from illnesses considered to have been caused or aggravated by radiation exposure […]

On top of that, it has been estimated that about 4000 people will die […] from radiation-induced cancer […]

At Fukushima Daiichi, the reactors shut down safely when struck by the magnitude-9 Tohoku earthquake […] problems arose after they were inundated by a much larger tsunami than had been anticipated when the nuclear plant was designed […] The reactor containments were partially effective […]

There were no deaths attributable to radiation. Two workers received burns from beta radiation. They were discharged from hospital after two days. Two workers incurred high internal radiation exposure from inhaling iodine-131, which gives them a significant risk of developing thyroid cancer.

Doses incurred by about 100 other workers have been high enough to cause a small risk of developing cancer after 20 or more years […] About 25 per cent of the population dies from cancer whether accidentally exposed to radiation or not. This rate might be increased by an additional one or two per cent among the exposed workers […]

[T]here have been no radiation injuries to children or to other members of the public […]

[T]he amount of iodine-131 escaping from all the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi was less than 10 per cent of the amount released at Chernobyl, and the release of caesium-137, the next most important fission product, was less than 15 per cent of the Chernobyl total […]

As I’ve said before, we need to keep this in perspective.

While there are clearly many, many lessons to be learnt Fukushima should be looked on as a success story in terms of reactor design. Yes there were shortcomings in the design of the resilience, the fall-back ability, the processes and the communications. And there have been massive knock-on effects on the population and the environment — and indeed it has been argued the worst of the health effects will be the devastating mental stresses on the Japanese people (see, inter alia, this Guardian report).

But given that those reactors are 40-ish years old, and that even before March 2011 we knew a lot better how to design safe and secure reactors, this should be viewed as a (limited) success story.