The Age of Stupid film (Oct09)
I’ve just watched this film at a screening in the nearby village of South Petherton. The village hall was jam packed, although I was one of the few who had taken along my children. At the beginning we were warned of bad language in the film but actually all that I noticed was someone swearing […]
Radio 2 – Jeremy Vine show (May09)
Fierce debate about food waste and the merits of ‘slop bins’ or garbage pages as I prefer to call them. I’m being challenged by a chap who didn’t impress me much with with his views on food waste, recycling and climate change. Link?
Off to Kenya and street lights closer to home (Mar09)
Denuded landscape near Mombasa Sustainable agriculture training plot near Mombasa The offending street light on Coker Hill Rural view from my house Another morning digging ourselves out of the drive. As I was heaving large mounds of snow into the bank I was thinking about where I’ll be in a couple of days […]
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 […]
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. […]
Biogas potential (Oct08)
A couple of weeks ago I went to visit one of the few emerging biogas plants in the country. At Biogen (www.biogen.co.uk), near Bedford, they take in 30,000 tonnes of food waste and put it in large anaerobic digestors (ADs). Actually, they have to remove the packaging first, but the principle is pretty simple. The […]
A Trip to Waste Tip (Jun08)
Dimmer landfill site near Castle Cary in Somerset is unusual. It has a rather beautiful wooden eco-building within it’s boundaries, housing the Carymoor Environmental Centre. School trips for nature talks and wildlife walks are a regular feature – and they do a lot to educate the public on the benefits of recycling. I took my […]
Flash floods in Somerset (Jun08)
My local town of Crewkerne doesn’t often hit the headlines. Last Thursday it did. I saw the flash floods first hand. My sister-in-law had invited me – along with my mother and sister – to a birthday supper for my brother. It was rather a last minute event because she had forgotten about his birthday, […]
Flying is not much fun (Apr08)
I wonder if the chaos at Terminal 5 may actually be doing us all a favour. For two reasons. The first is that it reinforces the fact that flying is not much fun. It means lots of waiting, ghastly airports and lost bags – or fear of losing them. The second reason is that it seems […]
Great Briton’s of 2007 Award (Jan08)
I really appreciate ‘can do’ people and you can’t get much more ‘can do’ than Tim Smit (see photo), founder of the Eden Project – and the Lost Gardens of Heligan. So I was rather delighted to be on the judging panel that selected him for the short-list of three for the Environment section of […]