J for Junk

A little interlude from all the heavy stuff on environmental damage - let's take a - related - break...

Little did I know when, as a young person starting out in life and I was standing in a queue to enter a Saturday afternoon jumble sale or rummage sale as they are often called – that I was being environmentally friendly. I have always loved buying second hand clothes. I know some people find it distasteful to contemplate but I have always felt that one person’s junk is another’s useful item. Sometimes when looking for clothes in shops I look at the price and then imagine them on the floor at a jumble sale and that usually means I resist the temptation!

One of my favourite songs as a child was “Secondhand Rose” which I used to sing along to with Barbra Streisand:

“Everyone knows I ‘m just a second hand rose ..From Second Avenue...”

picture from junk by Zac Freeman

I suppose it was because I had a choice that I never felt upset that I was wearing second hand clothes. The advent of the ubiquitous charity shop in the UK has added a bargain hunting dimension to the shopping experience and given charities much needed funds. Don't you just love some of the expressions to describe second hand things though – “pre loved” is my favourite! Then of course clothes from my youth are now called "vintage".

And then what about those inspiring artists who create wonderful pieces of art work from junk? American artist Zac Freeman creates portraits “made entirely out of collected junk, found objects, and general trash” and they certainly have a haunting quality.                                                                                                                                                 

self portrait Zac Freeman

I for Insulation

If everyone in the UK installed 270 mm loft insulation, we could save nearly £500 million – and 2.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, the equivalent of taking nearly 100,000 cars off the road. Source: Energy Saving Trust.

heat loss house drawing

There are quite a lot of initiatives in the UK to support people on low incomes with roof, wall, cavity and loft insulation. Sadly I live in a draughty Edwardian house built in 1905 that has solid walls that lose twice as much heat as cavity walls. 

insulating fleece

Infrared imaging of house

The actual insulation has an eco angle with the filling products of natural wool, wood fibre, hemp [sustainable of course] and cellulose [from recycled newspapers ] at the eco friendly end to polystyrene foam at the other... chemistry degree anyone?


Diagrams abound on the heat loss problems with houses in  the northern hemisphere.                                                                                                                                                     
There is even a market in conducting thermal infrared house surveys to detect cold spots. Very pretty pictures that tell a chilling tale of heat loss, of course. 
This picture is courtesy of  Multiguard Solutions.
An hour ago I listened to the news on the radio and discovered that this is part of a Green Deal the UK government are consulting on. They plan to legislate so that if you want to improve your home by extending it, then you may only get planning permission if you pay for loft insulation and draught proofing at the same time. Watch this space!

H for H20

Slight cheat but this blog is about water or H20 and as a Water Aid supporter this is a topic dear to my heart. Here at least I can lift my head up and say I live in a house which has replaced the bath with a shower. I have no dishwasher and no garden sprinkler and a water economical toilet. I save 12 litres of water by turning off the tap when I am cleaning my teeth. But I expect I am still close to the average English water use of 150 litres of water every day – if I had to walk 5 miles with that on my back I sure wouldn’t use that much!

Rob and Goobs blogspot - carrying water

Not only is water not as abundant as you might think it also uses energy and increases emissions of greenhouse gases contributing to climate change.

One in six of the population has no regular access to a clean water supply to drink. Energy saving Community website notes that

Around a half of the world’s food supply comes from the one-fifth of the cultivated land around the globe that is irrigated and keeping up with that level of thirst makes huge demands on available resources. In some parts of Europe alone, irrigation accounts for 80 per cent of total water usage.

Scarcity of water is not the only concern. One of the big issues about water is our addition of phosphates to laundry detergents to soften water, help break down dirt on fabrics, keep dirt from returning to fabrics and provide alkalinity for better cleaning. Their use, however, has been attributed to increased water pollution, leading manufacturers to develop phosphate-free laundry products. And I wish I could get on with these especially the eco balls that have come on the market – all tried and abandoned...how bad is that?

G for Greenhouse gases

carbon footprint logo

It is very easy to worry about greenhouse gases, and our carbon footprint which is related – the footprint being the measurement in units of tonnes (or kg) of carbon dioxide equivalent of all greenhouse gases we individually produce.

There are opportunities everywhere to calculate the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burningfossil fuels for electricity, heating and travel. But how many of us have actually calculated them when faced with the information needed to work it all out. And then what? Are you really going to avoid going on a journey if there is only you in the car? Will you cut out that foreign holiday?

Most people believe that global warming is caused by an increase in the greenhouse effect.

myclimatechange.net image

image from gogreentravel.com

There are lots of controversies around carbon footprints and in particular 

schemes designed to  offset the damage like tree planting but if you look at it in more detail you find these described as feel good strategies that do not take into account the subsequent CO2 released when the tree dies. The arguments abound.

For some industries the issue has turned it to their advantage and made a virtue out of a  necessity– for hotels I imagine the “protect the environment and don’t have your towel washed today” message results in them reducing their laundry bill and feeling good that they are doing their bit. 

F for Food miles

Food miles (or food kilometres) describe the distance food is transported as it travels from producer to consumer. Choosing food that is local and in season means it does not have to travel so far. Reducing food miles can have a dramatic effect on reducing carbon dioxide emissions [more on that in the next blog].

Food miles illustration courtesy biegpozdrowie blogspot

It seems that in the UK the distance that our food travels from producer to plate has increased by over 50% in the last 10 years and estimates put the cost of all these food miles – which have more than doubled since 1975 – at £9 billion every year, of which more than half is due to the road congestion it causes.

banana

There is a lot of information aimed at children on food miles as it is a bit more tangible than other areas. Just looking at our choice of bananas gives us food miles lessons and also of course might involve human rights and Fair-trade issues too. But I still buy them even though the nearest banana to me in the UK is thousands of miles away - about 4,000 to be precise as they are most likely to come from the Windward Islands in the West Indies. According to New Scientist the banana is the most popular product on the world’s supermarket shelves ...and yes I still have the taste of my breakfast banana in my mouth as I write this. 

food miles book

Finally did you know that if you avoid “ready meals” or heavily processed foods your carbon debt drops by 200kg a year. 

E for excess packaging

Don’t you just fume when you see over packaged items in the shops and in deliveries to your house? 

I certainly agonise about what we are doing to the environment in choosing this sort of solution to sell off food worth a few pennies/cents – use of cling film and polystyrene tray for a tiny bhajee. 

over packaged food

In the county I live in the council have worked out that an average county home throws out around 4.6kg of packaging such as shrink wrap, cardboard sleeves and plastic trays every week - equivalent to 575 plastic bags. The point is made that food needs packaging but it is the excess wrapping that is the problem. We have all seen shots of a single banana in a tray covered in film...and opened pass the parcel style deliveries.

I was disappointed to read that last year our government chose to stall on setting up tougher measures on packaging. This image accompanied the article in The Independent. 

What's your excess packaging horror story?                                                                                                                                                                         

Independent newspaper waste image

D for Dump

I use the word “dump” deliberately because that is still a word we use here to describe the place we take unwanted things. We are always “going to the dump”. Our dumps used to be piled up in one inglorious heap with everything destined for landfill. Not so these days. Now every possible recyclable component is directed to its special place as we gear up to reducing landfill. The dump has become an efficient local recycling centre and every visit produces another revelation about the potential of recycling.

The word “dump” though has some truly awful images associated with it where barefooted children pick over rubbish which is piled high all around them – a terrible reminder of our consumerist lives and the wretchedness of some people’s existences.  

Mae Sot Dump

This picture from www2.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=16608

My first experience of dumps though had a kind of dangerous, romantic edge to it with the children’s book by Clive King called  “Stig of the Dump”, also loved by my sons...

Original Stig of the Dump book cover

What have you been delighted to find you can now recycle?