give a damn

I’m afraid I stole this from another 43-er. Liamvictor wrote an entry here but I really think the article he references fits well on this goal. It’s here, and while it’s quite long, I really recommend that everyone reads it because it’s shocking, fascinating, and very, very upsetting.

I’ve boycotted Nestlé for years because of their aggressive policy of encouraging mothers in the third world to use formula milk rather than breast milk. This policy has contributed both to health problems stemming from malnutrition and mixing the formula with dirty water, and to financial hardship for strapped-for-cash families forced to pay a premium for inferior powdered milk once both the free samples and the mother’s breast milk run out. All in all, it’s a nasty, money-grabbing, vicious and, frankly, evil little policy and while it received a fair amount of publicity in the ‘80s and ‘90s, it doesn’t get so much coverage these days, leading to an assumption by many that this odious practice no longer goes on. But it does, and it’s become even sneakier and more subtle than before. So, before you pop off to make yourself a cup of Nescafé to enjoy with your Kit-Kat, I urge you to read this article from today’s Guardian, and think again. For more info, try Baby Milk Action.

Last night I received an invitation from PurpleHeather to this goal, and promptly joined up. It’s a little application that allows you to configure your computer to switch off to varying degrees when it’s on but hasn’t been used for a little while. Now, your computer already has these settings, but it’s unlikely that you’ve jiggled with them. I know I hadn’t. But the really cool thing about this application is that it adds up the amount of oil, power, and trees you have saved by using it, so you can actually see what good you’re doing. And you can join as part of a group, see your joint savings added together, and compete against other groups in a league table of energy savers.

I joined up immediately, as part of the “43 Things” group. I strongly urge all other 43ers to do the same. Not only will we be saving money for ourselves and the world from certain doom, we’ll be able to kick the asses of all other localcooling groups and our world domination will be assured. Mwahahahah!

So, everyone, please. Go to www.localcooling.com and download the application, then join the “43 Things” group. Don’t delay, do it right now!

This week, the UK news has been full of what is, effectively, a terrorist campaign, so far, thankfully, constrained to letter bombs that have caused little more than a few cuts and a couple of fainting fits. The targets were the offices of organisations dealing with the restriction and administration of traffic, such as the DVLA and Capita, a company that collects the congestion charge paid by motorists to drive into a clogged-up and polluted central London. It seems that disgruntled motorists, pissed off that someone is actually doing something to restrict what they see as their unerring right to continue living as they always have – pumping out pollution, destroying the environment, even speeding with no regard for the danger they cause to other motorists and pedestrians – despite the fact that our world is dying, have decided to take matters into their own hands and resorted to recourse in the best way they know how – violence and damage. Did it ever occur to them that there might be a reason behind legislation to curb their selfish behaviour? Did it ever occur to them to make changes in the way they live off their own bat, so that the government doesn’t have to resort to forcing them into it? Man… I am so angry right now that I can’t even write lucidly. Fucking idiots. This article says what I want to say far more eloquently than I could right now.

Man. Angry.

This morning, like most of my colleagues today, I was late, and traffic jams were the cause. It’s extra-cold today, and I suspect that many of those who own cars but who normally opt for public transport have gone “fuck it”, and hopped in their motors. And everyone is late, and all the talk this morning in the office is “Ooh, The bloody traffic! It was appalling this morning! It’s ridiculous!”

Yes, it is ridiculous, and it was appalling this morning, and you know why? Cars. Your cars as well as everyone else’s. Why is it that so many car drivers have an inability to see that their one car feeds in to a pool of many, and it’s that pool of many that clogs up the roads and makes them late for work? They bluster indignantly about it, as if they, those who drive every day, have an immovable right to drive to work, and how dare anyone else use their patch of road, and what an inconvenience it is to have to sit in a traffic jam during their two-hour commute each day because they insist on living in a pretty little country village in the middle of nowhere while working in the town, and driving a huge gas-guzzling Range Rover 150 miles a day with only one occupant. And then they have the gall to whine about the price of petrol, when all the while, the more they use, the more the prices rise as it becomes a rarer and rarer commodity.

Hint, people. There are many things you could do. Move closer and walk to work. Work from home. Get a job closer to home. Share a car. At the very least, buy a smaller car, as you do not live up a mountain. Better, get over your public transport prejudices and get a bus – yes, public transport might not be so hot right now, but if people start using it, and demanding improvements en masse, the powers-that-be will have to sit up and notice and make it viable. Stop bitching and moaning about the fucking traffic, and stop being the traffic.

Electrical items left on standby do my head in. I mean, really. I’m amazed that people don’t realise that a TV left on standby is, to all intents and fuel-using purposes, on for no reason. Do you really value your right to plop your fat arse straight down in the chair and switch the telly on with the remote instead of walking to the telly and using a finger more than the future of the planet? Do you? So I have never left anything with an off button on standby. My mother would have killed me.

But there’s one thing worse, and that’s the electrical item built without a proper off switch that forces you to use standby. What?! Why? My stereo is one such item, and annoyingly, if I switch it off at the wall, it blanks out all the settings, like my favourite radio stations, the time etc. So to my shame, I’ve left it on standby, for years. But no more. I’ve realised the folly of my way. I don’t use it that often, so from now on, anything in my house that won’t switch off properly without going off at the wall is going off at the wall when it’s not in use. Off the top of my head, that’s the stereo, the DVD player, the cable set-top box and yes, the modem and router. Take that, electrical companies with an interest in the oil business. ::swipe::

Everyone should see this film, and they should at the very least watch the trailer. If ever you need visible proof as motivation to act to reduce climate change, this is it. It pulls together the science of climate change into an easy-to-understand form, and shows you pure hard evidence that climate change is already in effect, and that it doesn’t just mean “Ooh, nice warm summers”. The before and after shots of barren and stony mountains that were previously capped with snow, and the dried-up riverbeds, and retreating glaciers will shock you to your core. It’s happening now, and it’s our fault.

How timely. There’s a great article in the Guardian today about keeping your house clean without using dozens of chemical cleaning products.

In fact, the Guardian Ethical Living section could teach us all a few things. I particularly like this article where “war babies” share the tips they lerned from thrifty parents in the post-war rationing period – they were doing it to save money, but lots of the tips are ecologically shiny.

Raised on a former farm in the middle of nowhere, in a medium-hippified family, environmentally friendly products and recycling everything that could be recycled were, unusually for the consumer-crazy ‘80s, just part of life. As a young child I kind of resented the way it marked me out, in small ways, as different from everyone else at school – in the ‘80s, everyone else’s mum bought the new modern plastic squeezy ketchup bottles, while mine stuck with good old recyclable glass, how old fashioned! – but as I grew up and began to make my own way in the world, moving into the city made me better appreciate the beauty of where I grew up, the cycle of nature and the way it supports life on earth, and the absolute imperative importance of preserving it. I continue every one of the green traditions taught me by my parents, adding my own as I go. A recent, shall we say, reduction in income has made me rethink my consumption even further, and make some changes. I’ve listed some of my new environmentally helpful habits in this goal here, along with a few that aren’t so environmental but which just save money and make me feel good.

These days, there is little that makes me angrier than those who play fast and loose with the environment. The amount of day-to-day carelessness… The liberal squirt of washing-up liquid to wash a cup that’s held nothing but tea, made from a kettle that boiled a litre when only 200mls was needed, the lights left on in an empty room, the equipment left on standby, the single-occupancy car clogging up the roads and the environment while the bus lies empty… Why do people have this gap in their conscience and consciousness that prevents them from realising that every little action they make adds up to one part of a great big effort? That’s why this goal is so great. It’ll enable people to really see others making efforts too, and that’ll spur everyone on to try harder and harder, because we’ll be able to see that we are not alone, we are part of a whole.

So. To my personal current bugbear. Plastic bags. To be more specific, the mindless, thoughtless, needless offering, acceptance, and then, after one use, disposal thereof. I bet we don’t even need 80% of the bags we use, we just take them because they’re given, and we’re not given a choice. It’s become so accepted now – buy something, the assistant puts it in a bag – that when I say “I don’t need a bag, thanks”, they look at me like I’m gonna carry it home up my arse or something. But we don’t need them, and they wreck the environment – a statistic I found says that we use between 500 billion and a trillion of the little bastards every year, and they take hundreds of years to biodegrade, clogging landfills, littering the landscape, getting caught in trees. And the recycling provision for them appears to be almost none.

I’ve made a conscious effort for years to minimise my use of carrier bags for years – taking them to the supermarket with me to re-use or recycle, using them till they drop, lining bins with them, and even so, my flat is full of them. They spill out of the bag-holder from IKEA onto the floor, and this is in a flat where I try not to use them so god knows what it’s like in most people’s homes where they couldn’t give a toss about the environment. Actually, I know. They throw them out.

So, I pledge right now, and I want others to pledge with me, to reduce even further my plastic bag consumption. From now on, I will carry with me at least two plastic bags in my handbag at all times, not just when I remember or think I might need one. They will live in my bag, scrunched up and secured with a rubber band or suchlike to make them compact. I will make them the superstrong “bag for life” kind, sturdy enough to carry heavy stuff in. Yesterday I carried in one of mine four onions, two pounds of apples, four large leeks, a butternut squash, a bulb of fennel, a pound of mushrooms and a massive celeriac with no collateral damage whatsoever – that load would have destroyed a lesser bag. In shops, I will proudly continue to say, “I don’t need a bag, save the plastic”, and whip out my own. Eventually, when I see one I like, I’ll buy a large and sturdy canvas bag that folds up small enough to be convenient, and carry that around with me instead, thus unplasticising myself even further. So who’s still with me after this enormous rant, and who’s with me on saying nix to more plastic bags?

By the way, I’m checking this off, as I’ve always given a damn, but I’ll continue to post ideas and contribute to this very worthy goal.