Regifting – eek (May09)
Photo: A rather well-wrapped present… I don’t just recycled my rubbish, I recycle presents too. I’ve recently discovered that this is called ‘regifting’. Apparently this is an American phrase and I learnt it from my sister-in-law, who comes from the state of Washington but is now living in Devon. If I get a present that […]
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?
Greening hotels (Apr09)
I stay in hotels all the time. And I quite often give feedback. Most hotels are incredibly wasteful. Common practices include: -Leaving lights on in bedrooms when they’re unoccupied -Double beds with lots of pillows for only one person (resulting in lots of unnecessary laundry) -Individually wrapped soaps, shampoos and other products -Over-heating or cooling […]
Rant about disposable napkins (Apr09)
“Do you ever find it annoying when you’re given wads of napkins and bags you don’t need?”. I was amazed to find this statement on Pret a Manger’s website. The answer is ‘yes – very annoying’. The reason for my surprise was because I think that Pret is once of the worst culprits of napkin […]
M&S Plan A (Mar09)
M&S launched their Plan A scheme in 2006. CEO, Stuart Rose heads the team and they have a very impressive list of actions and initiatives covering issues across the board from transport, packaging and re-usable hangers to food waste, refrigeration and laundry labels in their clothes. I’ve been to the progress reports for Plan since […]
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 […]
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 […]
Dog Bite and Hospital Waste (Nov08)
My son Rollo was bitten by a dog. He was lucky to be wearing a glove because he ended up with a nasty gash between his thumb and his fingers, as well as having a number of puncture holes from the dog’s teeth. The dog had been playing happily with a number of children who […]
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 […]
Printer Horrors (Oct08)
I’ve been having problems with my printer. Actually, it’s been annoying me for quite some time. The gremlin inside it gets particularly difficult when I’m trying to print something off before rushing out of the door to catch a train. Perhaps I should admit to be partly to blame for my problems. Having bought my inkjet printer […]