Save the Tree House

I saw this on Allotment Lady's blog. Someone who lives in her village built this tree house out of recycled materials, on his parents land and far away from any other houses. It's not a residence, it's just a project for some students who wanted to "opt out of the drink and drugs culture" and do something worthwhile instead. But now he and his friends are fighting to prevent it being pulled down under planning laws.

Visit the Treehouse website for more information about the project and more videos. If you want to support their fight, please sign the petition.

Waitrose 1 - Poynton 0

Not long ago the Poynton Against Tesco campaign celebrated a victory over Tesco when their planning application was rejected by the council.

But now a very similar proposal by Waitrose has been accepted, perhaps due to less vigorous opposition by residents. We know that Tesco are appealing the original decision, and now that the Waitrose development is going ahead perhaps they will be more successful next time. After all if there is to be one large supermarket in Poynton, why not two?

I think if campaigning is to continue it needs to shift its focus. I was never very happy about being anti-Tesco in the first place because I don't naturally like being anti-anything. I'd much rather be pro-something. So now I'm going to be pro-local shops. I won't say "I'll never set foot inside Waitrose or Tesco", if they do get built. But I'm going to go all out to give Poynton's local shops as much support as I can.

What's New in the Sustainable Blogosphere?

For the last two weeks I have been too busy to keep up with my emails and blogging, and now I'm catching up. Here's a few of the things that landed in my mailbox that I thought worth sharing with Bean Sprouts readers.

Earth Day

First of all, this coming Tuesday is Earth Day. Earth Day has been going since 1969, but the time is right for it to really take off. I'd love to see it become bigger than Christmas (which is a religious feast for Christians like me but tends to be just an excuse for an orgy of over-consumption and wastefulness for, well, for Christians like me and everyone else as well). Earth Day is for everyone who lives on Earth. You'd have to be living in a cave not to notice Christmas when it comes around. Earth Day should be the same. Every time you buy a calendar or a diary it should have Earth Day marked on it already. So do something. Spread the word. Send an e-card. Give gifts of LE light bulbs and organic wine. Invite friends around for a meal of local food, obviously. Blog about it. Spread the word.

Swaptree.com Donates to the Sierra Club

In honor of Earth Day this Tuesday, Swaptree.com, the website where you can trade the books, DVDs, CDs, and video games you have, for the ones you want, for free, will be donating $1 dollar for every trade made on Earth Day to The Sierra Club. Swaptree is like Ebay but cash-less. British readers of a certain age will remember Noel Edmonds' Multicoloured Swap Shop which used to be on TV on Saturday mornings. Young viewers would send requests to swap a Bay City Rollers scarf for an Action Man with eagle eyes and so on. Swaptree is much swankier - you type in the bar code of the book, CD, DVD or video game you have and the clever Swaptree software figures out 2-way, 3-way and even 4-way swaps that mean everyone gets the things they want. You don't pay Swaptree for the privilege. It doesn't cost you anything apart from postage, and Swaptree can calculate the shipping cost and print out a mailing label so you don't even have to go to the post office. You give and receive feedback so you can feel confident you won't be ripped off. There's a video tour so you can see how easy it is. But sadly it is only available in the United States at present. As soon as it comes to the UK I'll be the first to sign up.

Penguin Classics Partners with The Nature Conservancy

Staying with the topic of books, I have some news about one of my favourite publishing imprints, Penguin Classics. On April 1st, 2008, Penguin Classics began their support of The Nature Conservancy's ambitious reforestation plan to plant and restore one billion trees in Brazil's Atlantic Forest.

In bookstores everywhere, bookmarks (printed on recycled paper) featuring three of Penguin's favorite environmental classics, Rachel Carson's Under the Sea Wind, John Muir's The Mountains of California and Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature and Selected Essays, will encourage readers to visit The Nature Conservancy's website, donate a dollar and help plant a billion trees.

There's more information about this partnership here.

Downshifting Week

International Downshifting Week starts today. Yippee! Thanks to Rebecca from Sallygardens for the reminder. Last year it was just National Downshifting Week, so it's growing fast. Visit the website for ideas of how to take part, including:

• Book a half-day off work to spend entirely with someone you love, no DIY allowed


• Cook a meal from scratch, using locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, preferably organic


• Cut up a credit card

I'll have a think about what I'm going to do this year, and I'll let you know later in the week. Please leave a comment and tell me what you'll be doing for IDW.

Take Back the Filter

The indomitable Beth Terry from FakePlasticFish has started a new campaign to urge Clorox (the company that owns Brita in North America) to take responsibility for the millions of plastic Brita water filter cartridges that are disposed of each year. It's called Take Back The Filter and has its own homepage. Here in the UK we can recycle our Brita cartridges. The FAQ page of the Brita UK website says:

All components of the Brita cartridge are recyclable. Cartridges returned to Brita will be returned to our own recycling plant in Germany where the component parts are separated and processed for secondary use. For information on BRITA In-store recycling contact the BRITACare team on 0844 740 4800

And the recyclenow.com Top Tips at Home webpage says:

In line with growing consumer demand for greener living, BRITA has launched a new in store recycling scheme. Recycling bins are now situated in a range of high street stores such as Robert Dyas, Argos and Cargo. Other major retailer collection points will be following soon.

The BRITA branded bins will be located next to the existing water filter category in store. Customers can recycle any BRITA consumer product filter cartridge, including those for the new BRITA water filter taps.

So once again this is more relevant to US readers than to our home grown readers. But the Internet is an international medium and I'm glad to support Beth's campaign.

This Bill's Got No Balls

Here's one specifically for UK readers, though. 'This Bill's Got No Balls' - the new short film from I Count - follows three hilarious scenarios where the protagonist, Bill, confronts three eyewatering situations - on the football pitch, in the office and on the street - that clearly demonstrate that he's lacking a sensitive part of his anatomy. Click here to watch the film.

Viewers are encouraged to visit the I Count website, from where they can put pressure on their local MPs to vote for a Climate Change Bill with balls when the new law is voted on in the summer. The film can also be viewed on myspace and facebook so please feel free to forward it to your friends.

Mathew Horne - of BBC3's 'Gavin and Stacey' who provided the voice over for the film - said:

The Climate Change Bill needs balls if we're ever going to tackle climate change. I will be putting the squeeze on my MP to make sure we have a tough bill. You should too.

The Broke Vacationer

Sally Thompson of TravelHacker has written an article called The Broke Vacationer: 100 Ways to Get Free Stuff When Traveling. I like some of the frugal tips in this article, although I don't really want to encourage people to fly all over the world on their holidays. Have a look at the article and decide for yourself which of the tips fit your own ethical values and which you might prefer to pass.

Home Gardening Tips

Bill Stanley, author of Home Gardening Tips, got in touch to ask if he could add Bean Sprouts to his blogroll. Bill has been a home gardener for over 20 years and enjoys sharing his gardening tips with friends and family as well as the rest of the world. As well as tips on plants and gardening, Bill has recently added articles about saving the environment whilst gardening, buying flowers online and those slimy little buggers, snails. Just for the record, I'm always delighted when anyone adds Bean Sprouts to their blogroll, or links to Bean Sprouts in a blog article. You don't need to ask permission, but if you do I'll check your blog out and maybe write about it, just like this! So email me and say hi.

We Dig for Victory

Rob Burns has built a mini campaign site called We Dig for Victory. He has created a little sticker and his website says:

By using this sticker on my blog or site I'm digging for victory by...
1. Growing some of my food at home or at an allotment - however modest.
2. Eating locally and seasonally where I can and reducing food miles.
3. Buying from small, local shops where I can and supporting my local economy.

There's a bit more about the campaign on the page titled About This Site. Why not add the sticker to your own blog or website and spread the word?

Thats it, I'm all caught up with my emails now. I only wish the same were true of my laundry .

Earth Hour

Thanks to Throbgoblins for the image.

It's Earth Hour at 8pm this evening. Please turn your lights and other unnecessary gadgets off at 8pm local time for one hour to save energy and (mainly) to raise awareness about climate change.

Google is marking the day by putting a dark background on its home page. Dark colour schemes are said to reduce energy usage on older-style CRT monitors, although they make no difference on modern LCD flat screens.

The BBC are covering the event with a story on their web page and an audio story. Bean Sprouts reader Killi tells us that her electricity bill from ESB, the Irish electricity supplier, had the WWF logo on the front and a promotion for Earth Hour on the back. The city of San Francisco has moved its Lights Out event from October to March 29th, to align with Earth Hour.

Tell a friend. Spread the word. Start a debate. Join in.

Birthday Present For Me

It's my birthday on Saturday, March 29th. I'll be thirty-mumble, but that's not important right now. Do you know what I'd really like as a present? I'd like you to turn your lights off between 8pm and 9pm, local time. It's Earth Hour:

On March 31 2007, for one hour, Sydney made a powerful statement about the greatest contributor to global warming – coal-fired electricity – by turning off its lights. Over 2.2 million Sydney residents and over 2,100 businesses switched off, leading to a 10.2% energy reduction across the city. What began as one city taking a stand against global warming caught the attention of the world.

10.2%? That's incredible. It's what E-Day should have been if it hadn't been so badly stuffed up.

In 2008, 24 global cities will participate in Earth Hour at 8pm on March 29. Earth Hour is the highlight of a major campaign to encourage businesses, communities and individuals to take the simple steps needed to cut their emissions on an ongoing basis. It is about simple changes that will collectively make a difference – from businesses turning off their lights when their offices are empty, to households turning off appliances rather than leaving them on standby.

So please will you give me a birthday present? Will you participate in Earth Hour, even if you don't live in one of the participating cities? Will you blog about Earth Hour and spread the word? Will you email people who you think might be interested?

I think this is really important. I think this could wake up the people who say "It doesn't matter what I do, I'll cut my carbon footprint when industry/the government/China cuts theirs". It proves that what individuals do does matter. I think it could shake up the people who say "I'm not prepared to go live in a cave just in case man-made climate change is real". It proves that you don't have to go live in a cave, small changes can make a big difference if everyone does them.

Just one hour. It will be fun. Turn off your lights (and other unnecessary devices). Then you'll have to figure out how to entertain yourselves in the dark for one hour. Personally I think burning paraffin wax candles kind of defeats the point, but we can quibble over that in future years. Burn a candle if it makes you happy. Join in, have fun, and talk about it to your friends and neighbours. Sing "Happy birthday dear Melanie", and then leave a comment here to say you did it. For me. For my birthday.

UPDATE 16/11/2009: This post seemed to be attracting a great deal of spam comments so I have reluctantly deleted the spam and disabled new comments

Chicken Out!

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (the only TV chef I can bear for more than a few seconds) is campaigning about the wretched conditions of battery chickens. It's a topic dear to my heart. On Hugh's Chicken Out campaign website he says:

I feel so strongly about our chickens that I'm launching a national campaign, which I'm calling Chicken Out! Part of it will be a new TV series on Channel 4, which will help you to understand the conditions in which most table birds are reared, and to put pressure on the industry to raise its standards. Chicken Out! is being led by River Cottage locals, especially in and around Axminster, who are boycotting intensively-reared chickens and choosing free range instead. I need you to do the same.

You can go to the Chicken Out website and sign up to the campaign. But most of all you can stop buying battery farmed chicken and eggs.

I buy chicken very rarely, but when I do I get a proper free range organic corn fed chicken from the butcher in the village. It's not cheap, but I don't expect it to be. I don't expect steak to be cheap either, it's a luxury food. I think of chicken that way now. As a delicious luxury item to have once in a while, to prepare lovingly and enjoy. By God, my roast organic corn fed free range chicken tastes fabulous. You can't say that for a £2 battery bird. And it usually gives my at least three meals - roast meat one day, stir fry or something with the leftovers the next day, and soup made out of the carcase on day three. So it's really not that expensive after all.

And if you want to be absolutely certain about the quality of your eggs, and save money, and enjoy a taste of the good life, why not keep a few chickens yourself. For years I wished I had space for a few chickens. When I finally took the plunge, I realised that almost every house we've ever lived in had more than enough space for chickens. They really need very little room, and they're very little trouble. If you could keep a rabbit, you could keep a chicken. For more information about keeping backyard chickens, start here.

Review: Guerrilla Gardening

Good old Santa. He brought me a pile of books about gardening and ecology. Actually, I drove one of his "little helpers" to Liverpool, led him into my favourite radical bookshop, pointed him to the ecology shelves and said "Anything from that section". You see, receiving crap gifts is wasteful to the environment, and you know how I hate waste, so I prefer to leave nothing to chance.

The first book I read from the pile was "Guerrilla Gardening" by David Tracey. It's about how to garden on land that isn't yours. How to beautify those horrid patches of wasteland that attract litter and junkies and illegally-dumped household items. You might throw a seed grenade over a wall, you might tie containers filled with growing salad greens to a chain link fence, or drop a few runner bean seeds at the foot of every utility pole, or even break through the tarmac with a road drill and plant a tree.

I thought this would be a good book just from the title, but it turned out to be even better than I expected. Tracey really is focused on beautifying the neighbourhood and giving it back to the neighbours. He's not just out to "stick it to the Man". So there are sections on how to get permission from the landowner, and how to get support and maybe even funding from City Hall, as well as advice on when it is better to seek forgiveness than permission. There are ideas for long-term projects where a group of people plant a garden and tend it regularly, as well as "hit and run" projects like the seed grenade idea. I really loved the idea of cutting a slogan out of a bedsheet, then using the bedsheet as a stencil by spreading it over a lawn in front of e.g. some corporate offices, and sprinkling organic fertiliser over the gaps. Over time the grass should grow thicker and greener in those areas and spell out your message in an environmentally-friendly but hard-to erase way.

The book is written with a light touch, filled with witty jokes and short quotes. I often paused to read a little bit out to Ed or my dad because I thought they'd smile. Things like "Resistance is Fertile" (slogan on a protest placard), "Please sit on the grass" (sign on a guerrilla-planted lawn), and "Certain gardens are described as retreats when they are really attacks" (quote attributed to Ian Hamilton Finlay). But it's no coffee-table book, filled with sound-bites and devoid of content. It's a practical how-to book which tells you the best way to plant a tree as well as suggesting some helpful things to say if you get stopped by the police. But primarily it's an inspiring book. I'm very keen to give some of these ideas a try, and I've signed up with Guerrilla Gardening.org to try to make contact with like-minded people in my area.

The Story of Stuff

I just watched a 20-minute online video called The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. It's part-animated (by the same people who created The Meatrix) and presented by Annie Leonard (an expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues). The video describes the journey of the stuff we buy, from the extraction of materials to the incineration of garbage. But it puts the people in the picture all the way through, asking "How are people affected by this process?" Not only the people in the developing world whose natural resources the affluent West is pillaging, but also we Westerners. Does this process make us happier or are we enslaved by it as well?

And finally, it presents alternatives to the work/watch TV/shop treadmill, which allow us to have more fun as well be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. It's a great example of the new wave of environmental activism. It's positive, not gloomy. It's entertaining, but fact-based. It makes smart use of the Internet and viral marketing (no-one asked me to write this piece, I just liked the video so much I wanted to share it with you).

I tried to watch it last week but when I realised it was 20 minutes long I just didn't have the time right then. So I saved it to my favourites folder, and one leisurely Sunday morning I got myself a cup of coffee and settled down to watch it. I recommend you do the same. Save the link and watch it when you've got 20 minutes to kill. It's just as entertaining as "I'm Strictly a Celebrity's Big Brother, Joseph" but far more worthwhile.

Go to: The Story of Stuff

(Cartoon below by Climate Cartoons. Click on the panel to view the whole strip.)

Dilemma!

I have a terrible ethical dilemma. Perhaps you can help me out.

Tomorrow (Saturday 24th November 2007) is Buy Nothing Day.

It's a day where you challenge yourself, your family and friends to switch off from shopping and tune into life. The rules are simple, for 24 hours you will detox from consumerism and live without shopping. Anyone can take part provided they spend a day without spending!

It's organised by the awesome culture-jamming organisation, Adbusters. You can send an e-postcard, download a computer desktop or a poster, join a BND Facebook group, participate in an event near you, or do anything at all except shopping.

So where's the dilemma?

Well on that same day, and that day only, The Guardian newspaper is giving away a 100 page baking guide by bread guru Dan Lepard. To get the free guide you have to buy the newspaper.

Do you see my problem?

I've decided to be loyal to Buy Nothing Day, and not go out and buy The Guardian that day. But I'll ask in my local Freecycle group if anyone got the paper and didn't want the guide. I'll ask on Freeconomy as well. And I'm asking you chaps, is anyone prepared to post me an unwanted baking guide (I'll refund your postage, of course)? Don't go out and buy The Guardian just for me. That would defeat the point. But if you get it delivered anyway, and you didn't want the baking guide yourself, that would be great.

Have a happy Buy Nothing Day.

Tesco and Local Shops

Tesco have bought a site in the village where I live, and I'm not happy about it. One reason is that I think our thriving local shops will be damaged when Tesco moves in.

The local shops and businesses certainly think so. There are "Poynton Against Tesco" posters in most of the local shops and petitions on the counters. And there was a well-attended protest in the village last weekend (I didn't know about it, so I didn't go. I'm on the mailing list now).

Our MP, Sir Nicholas Winterton, agrees. He said:

Another Tesco store will undoubtedly have a huge impact on the local community and, in particular, on the small retail sector. Whilst Tesco’s corporate affairs manager for the North West assures me that Tesco will help bring both jobs and customers back to Poynton, this will surely be at the expense of local independent retailers.

The 2006 all-party parliamentary report "High Street Britain 2015" also agrees. After a detailed examination of the pressures on independent shops, including competition from large supermarket chains, the report concludes that independent newsagents and petrol forecourts are very unlikely to survive and independent convenience stores/grocers are unlikely to survive until 2015.

And the 2005 New Economics Foundation report "Clone Town Britain" stated:

... we are reaching a critical juncture: We can choose to take action that will lead to thriving, diverse, resilient local economies across the UK; or, we can do nothing and condemn ourselves to bland identikit towns dominated by a few bloated retail behemoths.

What do you think? Do large supermarket chains damage local retailers, or is it all hot air?

Today's cartoon from Climate Cartoons.

Manchester Climate Change Meeting

There's a meeting in Manchester on Thursday 25th October which aims to demystify the science and politics of climate change. Professor Geraint Vaughan of the University of Manchester will be giving a presentation (he was my atmospheric physics lecturer at Aberystwyth back when he was plain old Dr Vaughan), and there will also be talks by Friends of the Earth, Camp for Climate Action, Campaign against Climate Change, Greenpeace, the Green Party and Action for Sustainable Living.

It starts at 7.30pm prompt, it's at the Friends Meeting House (behind the central library). I'll be there so if you're in the area come and say hello.

Video - Spoof Tesco Ad

I loved this video by Friends of the Earth. It's voiced by Alexei Sayle and it's spoofing Tesco's ads, but with a rather different message.

Palm Oil

What is palm oil anyway?

You may never have heard of palm oil but you have almost certainly bought plenty of it. It's the most widely-used edible oil in the world, and is found in many processed foods (it is estimated than one in ten supermarket foods contains palm oil) as well as soap, shampoo, make-up and toothpaste. It is also becoming an important biodiesel crop.

So what?

Well palm oil is pressed from the fruit of the tropical palm tree. Vast areas of rainforest are being cleared to make way for palm oil plantations. It is considered to be the main threat to orangutans, which could become extinct in twelve years due to palm oil. The Sumatran tiger and the Asian rhino are also critically endangered due to rainforest clearance and palm oil is the main culprit. Not to mention the bitter irony of felling our rainforests, those massive ancient carbon sinks, in a bid to grow biofuel which is touted as a solution to climate change.

What's more, palm oil is bad for you. It's one of the few vegetable oils to contain high levels of saturated fat. That's what's so appealing about it, if you're a food manufacturer. It's cheap and it's easy to handle, being solid (or semi solid) at room temperature. But saturated fat is bad for your heart. Yet another reason to avoid the stuff, as if the orangutans weren't reason enough.

What can I do?

VeggieGlobal, the animal and environmental website, says

If you were making conscious efforts to buy "dolphin friendly" tins of tuna, then it's now time to think twice before buying foods or cosmetics containing palm oil

But if it is so ubiquitous, how can you do that? Even reading the ingredients label isn't a sure-fire way to tell if a product contains palm oil, as it is often listed just as "vegetable oil".

But there is good news. In July this year, Asda announced that it would not sell products containing palm oil unless the suppliers could prove that it comes from sustainably-run plantations. They have banned all palm oil from Borneo and Sumatra, the worst affected regions, and hopes to have eliminated all unsustainable palm oil from 500 products within a year. Meanwhile The Body Shop has established its own sustainable organic supplier in Colombia.

So here's what you can do:

1. You can shop at Asda and the Body Shop, or you can write to your usual retailers and ask them why they aren't banning unsustainable palm oil as well


2. You can write to your member of parliament and tell her about your concerns over palm oil


3. You can visit the Palm Oil Action website and learn more about the issue (and see beautiful pictures of orangutans)


4. Find 4 products containing palm oil or vegetable oil and write to the manufacturer


5. Print out 5 copies of the Palm Oil Action brochure and hand them out to your friends, or better still forward it by email and save a tree.

Manor Gardens Allotments Update

Yesterday was the scheduled date for the demolition of the Manor Gardens Allotments. If you remember, the 100-year-old allotments are close to the site of the 2012 Olympics, and will be demolished to make way for a path which will be used for 4 weeks.

A rally was held to mark the occasion. Protesters brought wreaths and flowers to lay at the allotment gates, "for all that's being lost".

Allotmenteers were joined by local residents and other people displaced by the Olympics outside the town hall. They then marched to the Olympic Gates to demonstrate their "disquiet, and distrust of the promised benefits the Olympics are claimed to bring".

What upsets me is the profound lack of understanding about gardening and growing things displayed by the Olympic committee and the various courts and authorities who have failed to prevent this. It's not good enough to just give them a different site. It's not good enough to say they'll be allowed back to their old site after the games. When you garden a plot of land you improve it. You dig it and incorporate manure, lime, sand and so on to improve the drainage and fertility. You work to eradicate resident pests and perennial weeds. You plant perennial plants such as rhubarb, asparagus and soft fruit bushes which take time to establish but which will be productive for many years. You establish a crop rotation system in which your nitrogen-hungry brassicas follow your nitrogen-releasing legumes, which in turn follow your ground-breaking and weed-smothering potatoes, which have followed your root vegetables and so on.

You can't just turf people out and say "Look, we've got this other site for you. It's brand new, so it must be better. There are sheds and everything". And you can't just say "We'll build loads of concrete and paths over your old site, but we'll bulldoze them back up again in six years' time and you can have it back. It'll be just the same".

If there had at least been some recognition of what the allotmenteers are losing - if they had been offered significant compensation for example, or if the media who reported the case had shown that they understood what was at stake - perhaps they might have felt less aggrieved. But instead they have been portrayed as a bunch of stick-in-the-mud old fogeys, standing stubbornly in the way of progress.

It seems to me that this battle has been something very primal and basic. People who work an area of land to produce their own food are fighting against the invasion and loss of their land. It's a noble cause, and I am sad that they have lost. I am even sadder that they have been so profoundly misunderstood and misrepresented.

From BBC News and the Lifeisland website.

Wake Up Gordon

Did you know it's Organic Fortnight until September 16th? The Soil Association are celebrating by running a Wake Up Gordon campaign. There's a funny flash game where you can feed Gordon Brown a healthy organic breakfast. The tally of how many people play the game will be presented to Gordon Brown as a petition in favour of supporting organic farming in Britain.


You can find out what other Organic Fortnight events are taking place near you on the Soil Association's What's On page.


Thanks to The Allotment Junkies

Climate Cartoons Launch

Last night I went to the launch of Climate Cartoons website in Manchester. Marc Roberts and Marc Hudson draw edgy cartoon strips about environmental issues: sort of Viz meets Friends of the Earth. The cartoons are made freely available for other people to use as long as the creators are properly attributed. So any other green bloggers out there, or anyone who produces a newsletter or anything like that, should have a look.

The green movement is often poor at communicating our message without sounding hectoring or panic-mongering or just plain boring. So I really like Hudson and Roberts' light-hearted and light-handed approach. Having met them, I can also say they're really nice people (though unnaturally tall).

Carry A Bag

Inspired by the Morsbags movement, September's challenge is to take a reusable bag with you every time you shop, instead of using the disposable plastic bags give out by stores.

According to the Morsbags website, over 1 million plastic bags are consumed per minute, worldwide. They've only been around for about 30 years, but they may take closer to 500 years to degrade (no-one really knows - plastic wasn't invented 500 years ago). So every single plastic bag that has ever been made still exists somewhere, whether it's buried in a landfill, or fluttering gaily from a tree (where I believe they are termed "witches' knickers"), or filling up the stomach of a minke whale.

You cannot throw them away. There is no "away". But if you buy or make a sturdy reusable bag and remember to take it with you when you go shopping, you can avoid perhaps 150-200 plastic bags. That's approximately how many we each use per year.

Take the challenge. Carry a bag. And don't forget to vote in the poll in the right-hand sidebar.

First Morsbag

I should have been sewing nametapes onto the kids schoolclothes but I've been bitten by the Morsbags bug, and I made my first Morsbag instead out of some snazzy purple fabric. The photo doesn't do it justice.

It's not quite finished as I haven't got any Morsbags labels to sew onto it yet, but I'll do that as soon as they arrive. The instructions on the website are very clear and easy to follow, and the process is quick and easy. I especially liked the way it said "fold a narrow hem, fold a deeper hem" rather than insisting you measure and mark exactly 7/16" or anything like that.

I'll make some more later. But I'll sew the nametapes in the kids' clothes first.

Sociable Guerilla Bagmaking

I just come across Morsbags and I love it! People get together in groups to make bags from stash fabric (old duvet covers etc.) and distribute them free at their local supermarket or shopping centre, encouraging people to use them instead of disposable plastic shopping bags.

I have a prodigious fabric stash, so I can get "bagging" straight away. I've placed my order for some of the nifty labels, although you can also download a PDF if your printer can print to fabric or fabric transfer paper (mine can't). And I've signed up to the Morsbags website and put out a call for other baggers in my area. I bet I can recruit Steph next time she visits - or maybe she'd like to start a group of her own in Sunderland. And I'll talk to the playground mums, maybe put ads in the post office and the health food shop and the quilting shop. And when I've got a bunch of people who want to join a guerrilla bag-making pod, we'll have a secret meeting and make a bunch of bags, then distribute them at Tesco's and inform the local press. Who knew saving the planet could be such fun!

Drive Slower, Cut Carbon Emissions

How are you getting on with the Drive Slower Challenge? 33 people have voted so far and there are still 5 days left until the poll closes. If you want to vote, the poll is in the right-hand sidebar.

Why do I want you to drive slower anyway? Well, it's safer, and it saves fuel which saves you money, but mainly because it reduces carbon emissions. Some of you may be well-versed in the whole carbon issue, but I suspect many people are still kind of fuzzy on what it's all about. So here is:

A (VERY) BRIEF HISTORY OF CARBON

Carbon dioxide is a natural part of earth's atmosphere, even though only in tiny amounts (4 parts in every 10,000). But it's the second most important greenhouse gas. That means it has a huge effect on the atmosphere's capacity to retain heat, trapping energy in our atmosphere.

It's not the most important greenhouse gas - that would be water vapour. The amount of water vapour in our atmosphere isn't changing. But the amount of carbon dioxide is, because in recent human history we have burnt off massive amounts of coal and oil and natural gas - fossil fuels. I'm sure you remember from school science lessons that fossil fuels are formed from prehistoric living organisms, such as animals and plants, that got trapped under rock and buried deep under the earth. This sealed away enormous amounts of carbon and stored it up for millions of years. But in just the last hundred years we have dug most of it up and burned it, releasing it into the atmosphere again.

GLOBAL WARMING? BUT I FEEL COLD!

All this extra carbon dioxide increases our atmosphere's capacity to store energy. Overall, this means global temperatures are rising. But locally it can mean warming or cooling, more rain, or drought. It means the disruption of familiar patterns and weather chaos. Some sceptics gets their knickers in a twist about this, but it makes sense. My friend Jim Finnis once explained that the climate is a bit like a child's swing. If you put more energy into it, say by giving it a hard shove to the left, you don't expect it to just move over to the left and stay there. You expect it to swing about more, both more left and more right. More energy means more everything. Just more weather.

SO WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT IT?

Good question. I feel really strongly that we can't dither about and wait for someone else to fix this for us. I hope that governments will do something to fix it, but that will only happen if the voters demand it. I hope that businesses will do something, but that will only happen if stockholders demand it. I hope that scientists will find more solutions to it, and they are doing that. But we already know the solution - every one of us has to take responsibility for emitting less carbon dioxide.

Driving slower is one way to start.