A plastic bag for life or Not a plastic bag?

Plastic bags are the green talking point of the moment, what with Anya Hindmarch's designer bag 'I am not a plastic bag' hitting the headlines, courtesy of Kate Moss and other celebrities.

The bags and publicity campaign were developed with the group We Are What We Do, who arranged a high profile launch with Sainsburys supermarket: last Friday, Sainburys offered limited supplies of the bags for sale at £5 in 450 of its stores, resulting in the predictable queues, headlines and discussion of trends.

Sainsburys also used that day to give away free its reusable Bags for Life, available to all for those not prepared to get up and queue from dawn.

I certainly wasn't one of the dawn shoppers for the Anya Hindmarch bag but I did go along to claim my Bag for Life. They wouldn't let me take photos in my local store, so you'll have to take my word for it that shoppers were going out with trolley loads of bags for life, treating them in much the same way as the normal plastic bags. How many will be used more than the once remains to be seen.

Both campaigns were good for raising awareness, but neither the designer bag nor the Bag for Life addresses people's underlying behaviour or the roots of the problem of plastic carrier bags. I can think of a few factors:

- people now mainly travel to the shops by car, so they don't think about how they are going to carry their shopping home when they set out (as they used to do when they were carrying everything home by hand - what happened to the string bag, by the way?)

- shops which use bags as advertising are not geared up to encourage a reduction in the amount of bags issued (a cynic would say it's no coincidence that Sainsburys changed the colour of their bags to orange now that there's a mainstream discussion around reducing the use of plastic bags....)

Even charging for bags is not completely proven as the answer (in Ireland it is suggested that the sale of black bin bags has gone up since the introduction of a tax on plastic bags - see an article from 2004 on Food Production Daily). I feel that rewards are better - generally, people respond more positively to rewards than they do to restrictions and penalties. Sainsburys could reintroduce their penny back idea, or introduce green Reward card points, like Tesco does.

The free 'Bag for Life' day last Friday would have been a good time to introduce some of these tips and ideas:
- checkout staff could be encouraged to use the approach which Boots the chemist has had for years, which is to ask all customers 'Do you need a bag?' instead of automatically giving them out.

- stores could also introduce high-profile publicity to encourage people to fold and pack a bag to carry in their pocket, wallet or handbag - plus regular 'bring a bag' days with rewards.

There was a debate in the House of Lords in July 2006 which ranges widely across the issues: see the report on They Work For You, or directly from Hansard if you prefer. Here's a sample: "My Lords, was not the noble Lord's mother absolutely right in her reuse of these bags? I certainly reuse them to bin kitchen rubbish before putting it into the black liner. What is wrong with that?" (follow the links above for the response...)

Finally, it's important not to make so much noise about plastic carrier bags that the issue of waste plastic in food packaging gets sidelined. Many people are as concerned about this as about bags - probably more, because everyone says it's someone else's problem (supermarkets blaming suppliers etc), with the consumer being blamed for wanting produce in a particular way - which is very frustrating.

The Peak Energy "Wakey Wakey" Tour, Spring 2007

Peak Energy is coming! For the UK, it has already peaked: oil production in the UK sector of the North Sea peaked in 1999 and natural gas production in 2003. (see here)

Concerned at the lack of public dialogue on these issues in the UK, a network of people interested in Peak Energy are organising a national programme of events "to say, 'Wakey! Wakey!' - peak Energy is coming and we all have to address the problems it will create today".

This is the Peak Energy "Wakey Wakey" Tour From March to June 2007, it takes in almost 30 towns and centres across Britain, including Findhorn in Scotland, Lampeter, Leeds, London and many more.

For more details, venues and dates please visit the website.

Climate change, emissions and our ecological footprint

The debate on climate change does not yet focus strongly enough (at least in the public consciousness) on the link between climate change and global warming on the one hand and overuse of resources and large ecological footprints on the other.

There is a hierarchy of topics and 'labels', which follows a descending order in the public mind:
~ top are climate change and global warming - 'the planet's getting hotter' + 'we must do something or we're doomed'
~ next is carbon emissions - 'we must cut them back to stop global warming, climate change etc'
~ then come a range of concrete things we feel we should be cutting down on (flying) or doing more more of (recycling) or changing to doing (buying local produce)
~ and right at the bottom, debated mainly among better educated sections of the population, comes reducing our own use of resources altogether in line with Ghandhi's belief that 'the earth has enough for all our needs but not for some people's greed'

The focus of the debate therefore needs to be inverted, so that overuse of resources becomes the top priority and central plank, if that's not too mixed a metaphor.

A good analogy would be the fight against AIDS and the stages involved in the debate and public awareness over the past 25 years.
~ For AIDS read climate change - dramatic, scary, huge and unknown.
~ For HIV read carbon emissions, the cause - initially debated and now overwhelmingly accepted.
~ The recycling and other small cutbacks (with which most lay people are currently attempting to combat climate change) are analogous with practising safe sex to combat AIDS.
~ But, just as the root cause of the escalation of AIDS lies with the situation of a particular section of the population, so too with climate change, although with one major difference: with AIDS, the section of the population involved is those living in poverty and thus poor health, whereas with climate change it is the reverse - the people escalating the problem are those living in the wealthy industrialised countries, with their overuse of resources.

Tragically, as with AIDS, it is still the poor who will suffer the worst.

Cathy Aitchison, London

How green is your local authority?

Interesting article in The Guardian recently discussing the top ranking councils on action to cut carbon emissions and prepare for climate change. See "Leading by example", Wednesday, 3rd January.

One dimension is still not at the forefront of thinking, however, namely a measure of resources use. Below is my letter of response (or read the published version here: Society Guardian letters).

Dear Sir
I welcome Terry Slavin's report highlighting the actions and initiatives of some local authorities to combat climate change. ('Leading by Example', Wed 3 Jan)

However, we also need to start ranking local authorities by their Ecological Footprint, ie. measuring their use of resources in global hectares per person (as calculated by the REAP project from the Stockholm Environment Institute at York University).

There is a strong link between wealth and size of footprint: the richest areas, such as Kensington & Chelsea, Woking, Guildford and Epsom & Ewell, have a footprint of 6.5 and above, whilst the lowest consuming local authorities are also among the poorest: residents of Merthyr Tydfil, Rhondda Cynon Taff, Torfaen and Blaenau Gwent each use less than 5 global hectares per person for their needs.

So whilst Woking should of course be praised for slashing CO2 emissions, it is starting from a very different point from Blaenau Gwent (4.8) or indeed many others, eg. Easington in County Durham (5.07) or Barking & Dagenham in London (5.02).

What is needed now is more recognition, incentives and support for areas with smaller ecological footprints and the people living there - people who have less and so consume less, thereby producing fewer emissions per person. If this led to new ways of measuring the health and success of the country, instead of in purely economic terms, so much the better.

Yours faithfully
Cathy Aitchison

----
(see my website for a list of some of the local authorities with their ecological footprints)

Climate change, terrorism and social injustice

What is the link between preventing terrorism, combatting climate change and tackling social injustice?

One link is that they all depend on the good will and consent of the public in implementing solutions; another is that each is being handled badly by the authorities who currently run the world.

Perhaps most important, however, is how they fit together: social injustice, with its extremes of wealth and poverty, power and powerlessness, is at the centre. Social injustice is the key factor, contributing on the one hand to natural instability in the form of ecological deficit (overuse of resources) and emissions leading to climate change, and on the other hand to the human response to such instability - terrorism (aggression born of impotence) and the witch-hunting, intolerant fear of 'the other'.

If you accept this analysis, then combatting both climate change and terrorism can be achieved only by tackling social injustice.

This is actually not such a tall order, given the enormous power of the electronic media, but it involves major changes in attitude - changes which are eagerly awaited by much of the population of the world. It may sound simplistic, but here goes.

Three new attitudes
1. Respect the poor and those who use few resources: this is not to say that we should glorify poverty, but we must start respecting and rewarding moderation - constant growth is not the best way of measuring success, as we are finding out to our cost.

2. Listen to the poor and allow 'ordinary' people to act: we assume that the world has to be run centrally, all of a piece, but is this natural? only mankind tries to control any more than a small section of territory. Listening is not the same as having a Big Conversation. Solutions must be implemented quickly by those who are most closely involved, not necessarily expert, sometimes whose only qualifications are that they belong to a particular area.

3. Be honest about failures, limitations and imperfections: in our consumer-driven society we try to achieve perfection and total safety, forgetting that we do so at someone else's expense and at the expense of the planet. We have no absolute right to total safety, because we are human, fallible, mortal and part of the fabric of the planet. If we are encouraged to demand it ('How can we make sure this never happens again?'), we lose sight of the fact that we are demanding for ourselves something that at least four fifths of the world will never be able to have.

Community media have a role to play
Media literacy (as in participating, ie. questioning, reporting and disseminating a message) and community media have a central role to play in making such changes happen. Whilst we still have the luxury of the internet and electronic communications (dependent as they are on the luxury of reliable electricity) we must make the widest use of them to spread this message and achieve such changes.

Let's move the focus away from hunting out extremism and instead focus on providing media access for all, so that people can share their own concerns and offer their own suggestions, no matter how small.

To paraphrase a Biblical saying: he who stops worrying about his own safety, and starts listening, will be safe.

My Climate Challenge

We welcome the Climate Challenge website and campaign from Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). In the Get Involved section, you can comment or add your own Bright Ideas.

You are also welcome to comment and add your own Climate Challenge ideas here. Look for Comments at the bottom of this post, then click on this link and a new screen will open. Read any comments already there and add your own in the box (moderated).

Here are some of my Climate Challenge ideas:

First, some challenges for individuals:

One Warm Room - heating a whole house or building is a luxury we can't afford. Instead of central heating, when it's cold try heating one central room in your home.

Do It In Daylight - our modern 24 hour lifestyles are unsustainable, especially during the winter months with their longer hours of darkness. Rethink and reorganise your time. If you can't (eg. because of outside constraints such as night working etc), think about how you would manage if 24 hour resources were not available to you.

Stickers For Stick-In-The-Muds - attach stickers to (or place information leaflets near) items which still use excessive and unsustainable resources (high food miles, unnecessary plastic packaging etc).

Put That Light Out! If you live near an office or public building which leaves lights and computers on all night, call and leave messages, or give out leaflets outside the building, asking them to switch off and save energy.

Lower Income, Lower Emissions - the richer you are, the more emissions you create and the more resources you use up - check your local authority's ecological footprint* against the highest and lowest in the country (Highest = St Albans, Kensington & Chelsea, Guildford, Epsom & Ewell at 6.5+ global hectares perperson; Lowest = Merthyr Tydfil, Blaenau Gwent* at less than 5 gha per person). A good reason to be proud if you're not among the country's 'top' people. Whatever your rating, lobby your council to reduce its footprint even more.
*source: Stockholm Environment Institute York, REAP website (free but requires registration)

Don't Borrow Tomorrow's Resources for Today - reduce your debt, don't borrow for today's pleasures from the resources your children will need tomorrow.

And an important challenge for the Government:

Economic Growth Is For Dummies - we urgently need to rethink how we judge economic success: to be sustainable and to combat climate change we need to measure success and progress on sustainability, stability and social cohesion instead of on financial growth alone.

Thoughts on the day the planet tips into Ecological Overdraft, 2006

9th October 2006: We've already used up the year's supply of the Earth's resources - now we're in ecological overdraft until the end of 2006, with almost 12 weeks still to go. See articles in The Independent and The Guardian today, Monday 9 October.
 
Why not use the remaining 83 days of the year to make yourself aware of your contribution to the planet's ecological overdraft and to work out how well you'd get on if you had to improvise and live on reduced resources. There are some ideas below.  

NB: Many of the ideas may sound extreme, perhaps leading to a boring life, if you read them one after the other as shown below. However, there is no way of escaping it: we must find simpler ways of living, even if it means giving up our current sophisticated, fast-paced lifestyles, because modern life in industrialised countries uses too many of the planet's resources.

1. Make an inventory of everything you own. Can't do it? List the contents of the room where you keep your financial information, plus a bedroom and a shed, garage or storeroom. Include any vehicles which you have.

2. Split the list of things you own into two parts: 
a) things which need input from someone or somewhere else (eg. electricity, internet access, petrol/diesel, spare parts from the manufacturer etc) before they will work and 
b) things which are useful without external input (eg. spades and hoes, blankets and bedding, paper and pencils, candles and matches, cash and jewellery, clothes and shoes, bicycles and pushcarts etc)

3. Spend one day each week using only things which require no external input (eg. putting more clothes on instead of turning on the central heating, going to bed when it gets too dark and cold, cycling or walking everywhere, not using the microwave, freezer, internet or TV etc).  

4. Encourage your neighbours or friends to do the same - swap or share things you need which you don't have in your own home.

5. Hold a Makeover and Mend Day, dealing with items in your home which are no longer useful but which could be used if mended or adapted in some way. Make a list of items which are too complex to mend but for which more straightforward versions are (or used to be) available. 

6. Hold a Plastic Awareness Day - put a coloured sticker on every piece of plastic which you touch or use during the course of the day. Analyse the results: what? how many? which could be avoided?

7. Hold a Food Miles Day, working out how far your food has travelled to reach you. Repeat the exercise a couple of times to see if you can reduce the total each time.

8. Make a note of all the meat you eat during a week. Try and reduce the amount of meat each week, eating no meat at all during one or more of the weeks before Christmas.

9. If you celebrate Christmas, have a One Planet Christmas using as few external resources as possible for your food, presents, travelling arrangements and entertainment.

10. If you have a car, sell it and don't buy a new one till the planet can afford it....

Cathy Aitchison