May 2008

At Last - Compostable Plastic Hits The UK

First there was wood, then metals, and finally plastics. Now we have reached a point where we have created compostable "plastic" from recyclable material.

Plastic is one of the biggest sources of landfill material, and most plastics won't break down for hundreds of years, but if people can market this new plastic on a large scale, this will be a really big boost towards saving the planet!

People are now talking about fully biodegradable "plastic " bottles. These bottles are marketed in the UK and are the current packaging for "Innocent Breakfast Thickies", (personally I just stick to Weetabix) which are a combination of yogurt, oats and fruit juice. The biodegradable bottle is made from completely renewable corn starch, but the material is called poly lactic acid and made in a carbon neutral process.

These bottles just take about six weeks to break down. Unfortunately, only 10% of the UK's recycling centres have machines that can sort these bottles, so you may want to recycle the cap and compost the bottle yourself.

According to the experts, for a plastic to be called compostable, it needs to be biodegradable (break down into carbon dioxide, water, biomass at the same rate as cellulose), disintegrate, and have no eco-toxicity (meaning it produces no toxic material and the compost supports plant growth). Experts also state that other materials that can be used to make the plastic is potato, tapioca, cellulose, and soy protein.

April 2008

What Are You Doing With Your Food?

How much food do you buy - and then throw away? According to recent research, it is a staggering third of all you buy. Nationally, that means £8 billion-worth of food a year. That comes to about 6.7million tons - imagine filling Wembley Stadium eight times over. The Government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) estimates that if households could cut out such waste, 15 million tons of carbon dioxide a year would be averted - the same as if we took one in five cars off the road. It seems we let too much food go off in the fridge and cupboard, and also cook more than we need or can eat - and then throw it away.

The Hedgehogs Are Coming !

With Spring and increasing warmth of the sun, hedgehogs around the country are waking up from a long hibernation this month. They are in need of food and water as soon as they emerge, as they need to replenish lost fat reserves in time for the breeding season. If you have hedgehogs in your garden, you can do a lot to help them. Offer them meat based pet food and fresh water - and soon they will be repaying you by snacking on your slugs and snails. Please take care when tidying up the garden from winter mayhem - many hedgehogs suffer terrible injuries every year from strimmers, garden forks, etc. For more info on helping these enchanting, prickly garden visitors, visit the British Hedgehog Preservation Society at: www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk

Self-Control is an Ecological Virtue

Self-control is possibly the most important ecological virtue. To save God's creation from either possible or certain catastrophe, humanity needs to exert self-control. We need to restrain ourselves like we have never done before.

Whether the human race will in the next 10-15 years demonstrate the sort of self-control required, the good Lord only knows, but He is calling each one of us to take our part in the jigsaw of planetary salvation by exerting self-control in our own lives.

! Control your car - Cancel your gym membership and resolve instead to walk or cycle everywhere you can.

! Control your carnivorous tendencies - Both our bodies and the earth would be much healthier if we all ate less meat. Replace mince with lentils, sultanas, cumin and chilli. Buy vegetarian sausages and bean burgers.

! Control your own temperature - Make sure you are wearing three layers before you turn on the heating.