Although we missed reporting this story when it broke last year, it’s still worth a mention today due to its implications for the future of the world’s energy consumption.
Despite 40% of the country’s electricity being generated by burning fossil fuels, Germany hit the headlines back in 2016 when it emerged that, for a short time, some consumers were actually PAID to use electricity.
Wind turbines can be a bit like Marmite – People either tend to love them or hate them. Whether you’re in favour of more electricity being produced by them or not, one thing is clear; they’re a clean source of renewable energy.
Back in December of last year, Scotland’s wind turbines generated more electricity than the entire country used for four consecutive days. Wind powered turbines provided a record amount of energy over the Christmas period between the 23rd of December and Boxing Day included. Not only that, the total amount of wind energy produced on Christmas Eve alone set a new record with more than 74,000MWh produced, which was enough to power over 6 million homes.
The UK produces around 7.3 millions tonnes of food waste each year.
What most of us are not aware of is that around 240 thousand tonnes of this is made up of banana skins – That’s over 3% of all food waste in total.
This guest post has been submitted by Daniel Brooks who is currently in Bali whilst filming a fly on the wall documentary for UK Television. It highlights the huge problem of plastic waste not just in Bali, but throughout Indonesia.
Myself, my wife Deborah and our three children, Oliver 9, Hazel nearly 5, and Heather Blue nearly 2 have moved to Bali for an experimental six month period to see if we want to live in south east Asia. A UK TV crew are following our story and have given us a camera to film as we go for a new documentary series about families going to live more sustainable lives in the wild.
We arrived during a spell of the very worst weather Bali has seen in years. The most rain I have EVER experienced in all my worldly adventures! Torrential rain, gales, electrical storms, floods and landslides! What had we gotten ourselves into?! This was not what we had imagined.
Who’d have thought that you can help save the planet just by having a few beers? Well, as odd as that sounds, it’s actually true.
A UK brewer is now producing a refreshing ale called Toast and, as the name implies, it’s made from surplus bread that would otherwise have been thrown in the bin.
In the UK, bread is by far the most ‘chucked-away’ food. An astonishing 44% of all bread made never even reaches our mouths – That’s not too far away from almost half of it that’s baked every single day.
All round bright spark and entrepreneur Tristram Stuart decided to do something about this mountain of discarded bread by founding the first bread to beer ale. His aim is to reduce global food waste by turning as much bread as he can get his hands on into a tasty craft beer.
Tristram says:
“We aim to put ourselves out of business. The day there’s no waste bread is the day Toast Pale Ale can no longer exist.”
With speed cameras becoming more sophisticated these days using ‘average speed’ technology, a possible new type of enforcement camera could be on the horizon, but this time, to catch motorists with bald tyres. The laser analyzing technology already exist in the form of the Treadcam, a device that police can use to see whether a … Read more
Many of today’s younger generation have never heard the term ‘rag-and-bone man’ as these enigmatic figures have largely all but disappeared from our modern streets.
It was extremely common back in the 1970s to hear a rag and bone man calling to householders as he travelled slowly down our roads, shouting ‘old lumber’, ‘rag-and-bone’ or something similar. As some will also no doubt remember, the profession even spawned a hit TV show in the 1970s in the guise of Steptoe and Son.
What’s a rag-and-bone man?
If you’re new to the term, a rag and bone man (sometimes referred to as a ‘totter’) was a person who either travelled by horse (or pony) and cart or in a van at a snail’s pace down every neighbourhood street, looking to collect a wide range of materials to sell for a profit.
On hearing their call, residents with items they thought the rag and bone man might want would go outside into the street and stop them. The rag and bone man would then tell them if he wanted to take their scrap or not.
History of the rag and bone man
Whilst scavenging for anything of value is by no means a new idea (we’ve been doing it since the dawn of time), the term – or variations of it, seems to have been commonly used in the early to mid-1800s.
Rag and bone men would travel through city streets on foot, usually carrying a large bag over their shoulder. They rarely had any form of transport and were generally very poor people trying to eke out a living from collecting anything that they thought might have a resale value such as old rags, cloth, bones and metal.
They were typically referred to by names such as bone grubbers, bone pickers or rag gatherers.
Improving quality of life and providing wildlife habitats in urban areas.
Green open spaces in cities help improve the quality of life for human residents and also provide habitats for many different species of wildlife. Trees and plants produce oxygen and remove pollutants from our atmosphere.
Unfortunately, space in modern cities is at a premium and while everyone agrees that it is more pleasant and healthy, both physically and mentally, to live amongst green spaces there is not much incentive to build urban parks and conservation areas as they are not profitable.
Italian architect Stefano Boeri is leading the way with an innovative solution: Vertical Forests.
It has been widely reported that our oceans are becoming more polluted with plastic waste.
This discarded plastic causes the deaths and injuries of hundreds of thousands of marine animals each year. Animals become entangled in old beer can holders or plastic bags and smaller pieces of plastic are eaten by marine life who can’t differentiate it from their natural food supply.
It’s not only the solid waste that causes harm to marine life; plastic pollution does further damage as it degrades in the ocean releasing toxic chemicals causing contamination to the water.
{youtube}https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNua0nxpGq8{/youtube}
Following our recent story accompanied by the saddening picture of a deer holding a plastic carrier bag in its mouth, this story is far more upbeat and has a happier ending.
Indian-born inventor and entrepreneur Ashwath Hegde has spent 4 years developing a new type of carrier bag that looks remarkably similar to the plastic bags commonly found in our supermarkets today. But….there’s one major difference; the EnviGreen bag doesn’t contain any plastic whatsoever.
Inspired by a ban on the manufacture and sale of plastic bags in his hometown of Mangalore, he says: “The Mangalore City Corporation implemented a ban on the manufacture, sale, and distribution of plastic bags in the year 2012. But the decision was taken without preparations for alternatives.
People were concerned about how they would carry products from the market now. Everyone cannot afford a bag worth 5 rupees or 15 rupees to carry a kilogram of sugar. I decided to come up with alternatives after hearing about these problems in my hometown.”