Shopping Trauma (Feb09)
I don’t really like shopping – particularly when it entails actually going out of the house. I do most of my shopping on the internet. Earlier this week, I went into Yeovil for a few things. It made me even more committed to purchasing with my ‘mouse’. First on my list was an energy-efficient, decorative […]
Snow crash (Feb09)
I would have abandoned the idea of school if I hadn’t run out of oil. I’ve been lasting a year on one tank – and I lasted a bit too long. Of course it ran out over the weekend before the snow hit. Actually the house wasn’t that much colder than normal. During the day […]
Chilling facts about supermarket refrigeration (Feb09)
I’ve been working with the Environmental Investigation Agency on a campaign to highlight the climate change impacts of supermarket refrigeration. The HFC cooling gases used have a global warming impact that is about 4,000 times worse than CO2, so this is a huge issue. Here’s an article that I’ve written on the results of […]
Plugs, insurance, credit crunch, beetles and lunch (Jan09)
Last week was busy. I flew from meeting to meeting. Not literally I hasten to add – they were mostly in London. I started with a meeting about insurance – I’m not a great fan of the industry. They’re so inefficient and bureaucratic. Talk about excessive paper production. I was talking to Adam Clutterbuck. […]
Bee in my bonnet about fuel efficiency (Jan09)
Green expert Julia Hailes tries out an ‘environmentally friendly’ BMW. How does the new BMW perform as a green family car? I’ve got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about the fuel efficiency of cars. I can’t understand why they’re not a whole lot better than they are. Article originally written for Telegraph online.
Christmas tree alternative! (Dec08)
I got an email asking me whether I thought an artificial Christmas tree or a natural one would be the greenest option. I said that I thought an artificial one – made from plastic – would be better environmentally, if you re-used it year after year. But I’ve never gone that route. (I’ve now […]
Yo Sushi is Wasteful (Dec08)
It’s a shame there’s not a Yo Sushi at Waterloo because that’s my regular train station and I’m a fan. If I’m going through Paddington I often perch on one of their stools and help myself to something exciting from the conveyor belt – and at airports too. If you’re interested, it’s not too difficult […]
M&S Packaging fact sheets for consumers (Dec08)
Public concern about over-packaging so often misses the point that we should be looking at how to reduce the environmental impact of producing, distributing, storing, selling and consuming food, rather than the amount of packaging waste we have to throw away. Consider the fact that overall the carbon emissions from wasted packaging is one tenth […]
Wasting heat through open doors (Nov08)
This week I had a meeting with the Carbon Trust, a government-funded organisation that helps businesses move towards a low carbon economy. They offer advice on saving energy, so I thought it was rather ironic that the doors of the large office block where I went were wide open – letting the heat out and […]
Good riddance to US car companies (Nov08)
I sat next to a chap from Citicorp Bank for Sunday lunch at a pub last weekend. His company was apparently waiting to hear about the $20 billion cash injection from the US government. But he was more struck by the news about America’s car giants and their approach to getting a government bail out. […]
