Spring

I think that most people must have noticed that Spring is not too far away now.  It is light in a morning when I walk to work, and, what used to be a fairly quiet walk punctuated by the occasional song thrush or robin singing, is now a cacophony.  The great tits are everywhere, but, even more noticeable than these repetitive  calls are the songs of the male chaffinches sitting high in the trees.

I thought about going to one of the woods in Northamptonshire that are showing off their carpets of snowdrops, but decided against getting in the car and stayed local instead.

The trees are starting to show signs of life; hints of green, fat buds and pussy willow starting to look furry.  Later on as the air warms these furry grey buds will be a riot of yellow as the male flowers open, providing much needed pollen for insects emerging from hibernation.  The bark of this willow (goat willow salix caprea) contains salicin, which is closely related to the active ingredients in aspirin.

At the country park I found that there were a lot of clumps of snowdrops, but they were only just starting to open and come into flower, and, other than the witch hazel planted near the entrance, most of the colour was provided by the ivy growing up many of the trees.  In my endeavours to try and take some pictures of the witch hazel and snowdrops I think I did annoy a pair of great tits that were checking out the nest box nearby.

The verges around Daventry are littered with crocus, but it is not just the non-natives that are flowering.  I found my first celandine of the year, flowering all alone in the grass on the way to the country park, as well as the occasional daisy and one very early dandelion.  I also came across some chickweed (pictured) and speedwell flowering.  I know that these are weeds and are found pretty much everywhere, but I was surprised to see so many things flowering just a couple of weeks into February.  However, I shouldn’t have been surprised.  A quick search of the internet resulted in the discovery that common chickweed has been known to flower under snow and that they can self pollinate – hence they are found everywhere, all year round and are considered a weed.  How can you fail to be impressed by such a hardy little flower?  They are also edible and contain lots of vitamins and minerals as well as supposedly having numerous medicinal properties.  But the most endearing feature I found when researching this plant is that at night the leaves fold over tender buds and new shoots.  (Information pointing out chickweed’s good points was taken from Alternative Nature Online Herbal, Garden Organic wasn’t such a big fan.)

Packaging Issues

OK, to some of you this may not seem like a big deal, but I am increasingly paying more attention to packaging and am trying to buy products with less packaging.  Where packaging is essential, then recyclable or recycled packaging is the preferred option.  I recently had cause to change my brand of porridge oats (mainly because Waitrose have a habit of putting  them on offer and running out of stock) so, my environmentalist head thought that it would try Jordans who are seem to be doing quite a lot for wildlife and sustainability.

All appeared to be OK, there are notes on the back of the packet about their work with farmers and nature-friendly methods.  However, when I opened the box I was hugely disappointed to see that there was a bag inside the cardboard (unlike my usual brand) – do porridge oats really need to havetwo layers of packaging – they are not very likely to go off?  What was even more disappointing though was that they did not respond to my email asking why they felt the need to add in the extraneous bag.  This is not to say that I will not buy their product again, because now I have done some digging I have discovered that unlike Jordans, my usual brand does not state the origin of their oats.  (I have therefore sent an email asking for their oaty origin, but usually, if they are not shouting about it they are not sourcing from the UK.)

My search for packaging information has also resulted in the discovery of a symbol on the cereal box that I had never noticed before – the orange and white arrows in the bottom right corner of the box shown in the picture above.  Whilst this is obviously not a recycling symbol, it does look as though it is related – one could maybe assume that the packaging was made from recycled materials.  Unfortunately this is not the case as a quick search around the Jordans website revealed.  The intertwined arrows merely show that the Company is complying with European regulations.  Companies over a certain size (turnover) or who buy above a threshold of packaging must ‘recover’ that packaging.  In practice this means that the Company pays a certain amount into a scheme which then recovers / recycles a certain proportion of packaging material.  So, in reality the intertwined arrows just mean that Jordans are not breaking the law on packaging waste regulations – not that they are doing anything special to help the environment.

Whilst Jordans are not the only company to put this symbol on their cartons I think that it is certainly misleading – I didn’t know what the symbol meant and I am responsible for ensuring that our company pays a sufficient amount into one of these schemes!

Garden Tidy Up

I struggle with motivation to go out and do anything in the garden in January – it seems to be dark almost continuously and (this year excepted) raining.  However, as February arrives there is the merest hint of Spring – heralded by the slowly emerging snowdrops.  These are bulbs I have unsuccessfully tried growing for years – the breakthrough came when we were given several clumps by my mother-in-law and most of these seem to have taken.  However, just as these start to show their first white flower buds, a small group that I planted a long time ago in with a camellia that lives near the house is already in full flower (as shown in the photo).

These encourage me to go into the garden, have a general tidy up and see what is about.  I am pleased to say that the garlic that I planted in the front and the back garden is starting to grow, although it is easier to spot in the back garden raised bed than hidden amongst the tulip and allium bulbs that are starting to show in the front garden.  (Maybe one day I will be organised enough to mark where they are when I plant them.)  The hellebores are the main providers of spring growth at the moment, but, somewhat belatedly, I have taken away most of their leaves, as recommended by both Monty Don and Carol Klein.  This has left the earth looking somewhat bare, but did uncover some anemone blanda that I planted some time ago as well as the first signs of growth of the aquilegia.

Elsewhere in the garden we have some winter scent from the sarcococca confusa that we have planted and colour from a winter jasmine and viburnum bodnatense dawn.

In the front garden we have trimmed down all of the grasses, moved some of the zebra grass and pruned the white bramble that we have as a centre piece.  In doing so, we uncovered about a dozen hibernating ladybirds – if they survive for another month or so we should have no trouble with greenfly this year!

The home produce has hit a bit of a hiatus, although the rhubarb is starting to come up and we have lots of shoots on the blackcurrant.  I have all my seeds ready for planting in the next couple of months, although I will mainly be concentrating on beans, courgettes, chillis and salad leaves in the hope of getting some good yields throughout the year (although the aubergine is an experiment probably doomed to failure).  If successful I will move on and add one or more new types of produce next year.

I am trying seeds from the Real Seed Company this year.  I am hopeful that as they are all seeds grown on their farm in Wales there may be a better chance that they will grow here in Northamptonshire.  They also encourage seed saving and send instructions with the seeds.

It is also noticeable how many herbs have survived the Winter – I have lots of oregano, some sage, wild basil, rosemary, and burnet all looking healthy so far (and I have some hopes for the fennel that has been in for the last two years and is much beloved of hoverflies).  The chives are also starting to show bright green shoots amongst the darker spots of the garden.  Next year I will be adding borage (for bees) and sorrel (for soups) to the mix as well as more thymes and lavender (also for the bees).

A surprise at the country park

We went for a walk in the snow today, partly to get some exercise and to enjoy the fresh air, partly to look for snowy photo opportunities.

I hadn’t planned to go to the country park, I figured that it would probably be fairly frozen and possibly filled with dogs – which if you are not a dog owner does not make for a relaxing stroll.  However, after wandering along the old railway track and deciding we didn’t want to go into town we headed left for the country park.

We were a little surprised to see that all of the small streams that run into the country park appeared to be ice free, even at the edges and debated as to the reason for this.

We walked through the woodland on the west of the reservoir for a change heading for the entrance.  There were a lot of small birds about, wrens, robins, blue tits etc, but nothing unusual.

We had just about made it to the entrance when I saw a water rail.  Although I realise it is probably a sad thing to admit to, I have to admit that I was very excited.  You see, I have seen reports of good sightings at Brandon Marsh, I have even been there on the days when the alleged sightings have been made, but I have never seen one.  Now, here I was, about a metre away and with a camera fitted with my best low light lens.  Such opportunities only come round once in a lifetime!  Whilst these are not uncommon birds, they are quite secretive and I would never have expected to see one so close to the busiest part of the country park.

The cold weather had obviously made it decide that it could stop being secretive or it could be dead and that wandering into the more populated parts of the country park would have to be done.  In fact it seemed so intent on looking for food that a bright pink small child wandering past noisily didn’t deter it from its wading.  It was only the barking of a dog that made it run away but not before I had taken some reasonable pictures.

What a fantastic day – a nice walk in the park, a new birding first and some good photos – perfect.  Bring on the waxwings!

Low Carbon Event

Northamptonshire Enterprise recently held a low carbon event over at the University – a morning of short talks by local businesses and organisations aimed at helping to promote low carbon growth in the county.  I heard about it through the Daventry Environment Business Network and thought it would be good for my colleague and I to attend.

So, was it useful?  Yes and no.  As with all such events, speakers are there to make money and to advertise their wares  – who can blame them, their time is valuable.  However, I do believe that if you are going to speak at one of these events, you should have a worthwhile message to get across even if the audience is not in the market for whatever you are selling.

A lot of it was not new, it is already out there and it was not presented in a new way.  However, it is easy to forget that long list of things that you had intended to do and never got round to.  I also came across a couple of new ideas that I had not really considered before.

The first couple of speakers were very good and mainly spoke about waste minimisation, cleaner processes etc without too much of a sales pitch.  Later talks were more about particular products – biomass and wood burning boilers, LED lights or services – water leak detection.  I think I would have liked to have heard more about successes and efficiencies that local companies had achieved though, as this would probably have given me more ideas.  However, I do not know where most of the other delegates were from, so maybe it was more applicable to them.

So, apart from completely unrelated things that occurred to me, what else have I thought about following this?

Firstly is an idea that has also featured in an environmental course I am doing – the idea that what is one person’s waste is someone else’s input stream and that recycling should be a last resort.  I need to review all of our waste and see how much is avoidable and whether any other waste streams can be sold or given away.  This points me towards some very interesting projects at one of our other sites.

Secondly, we really need to be more imaginative in order to change the hearts and minds of those around (and above us).

Thirdly was the saying from one of the speakers – do what you do, but do it better – that is – increase efficiency – this, I think, is the key to being more environmentally sound.

What will I be doing next?  Waste audits, awareness campaigns (waste and energy), increased recycling and checking out renewable heat incentives and other available grants.

Continuing the recycling theme from previous posts I note that there were some rather fancy recycling bins inside the building – although, unlike us they do not have any facilities (yet) for crisp packet recycling!  Perhaps I should send them a memo!

Recycling – the next step.

One of the things that I think that we have in common with many companies is that we had a big cupboard (or in our case an area on top of the locker room) which we used to store our waste electrical items.  The WEEE  (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) directive states that all waste electrical product made after a certain time should be taken back by the manufacturer – I think that most of our stuff was too old for that and as most of it is bought through our IT department it is probably difficult to find the original producer, much less make them take it back – it would just end up in a cupboard at a different site!

A recent visit to a centre that takes in WEEE waste provided sufficient momentum to get the process started – at least for our site although heaven only knows how much there is to sort out at the rest of the other sites.  All in all the process is quite simple.  They sent us a list of hazardous waste which we would have to pay an additional charge for as well as a charge for a consignment note.  Once the order was raised we had a pallet box on site for a week and then it was collected – as it was not far away we went to watch it being disposed of and had a great tour round the site.  I even took some pictures to prove to our IT department that they would not be usable afterwards.

The bits of equipment are bashed to smaller bits by huge whirling chains, then the ferrous metals are pulled out by magnets and other metals separated from the plastics.  The separate components are then bagged up and sold.  In addition the company operates in conjunction with some retailers to operate a scheme whereby products that are rejected (if, for example they have a scratch) are tested and sold at a cheaper price.  Certain products sent from the council recycling centre are also sold on to vetted buyers.

My colleague was a little concerned about the huge amount of stuff that is unthinkingly thrown away, something that worries me constantly.  However, in this case, the alternative is that they continue to sit up on top of lockers and under shelves etc (although I believe the WEEE directive states that they should be disposed of within 12 months).  At least now the plastic has been separated and will be recycled, as will the metals and the bits that make up the circuit boards.  However, it does raise the question as to how do we make more use of our electrical products and stop just throwing them away because a newer, faster model has just been released on the market.

First Steps

Just like everyone else I have a long list of things to do / organise / put in place which really do not take much effort or time at all.  One of these things is to increase the recycling that we do at work.  I have now taken the first step and we have installed a textile bin on site to collect old textiles on behalf of the firefighters charity.  The main idea behind having the recycling bin is to give us somewhere to put old uniforms and gloves, but it is also obviously available for people to bring their old clothes etc in from home.

As well as reducing the waste going to landfill, we will be donating to a worthwhile charity and raising awareness of the amount of things that can be recycled rather than wasted.  In many ways however, this is more a case of reusing rather than recycling.  Any useful items of clothing are sent to poorer nations in Africa, and any textiles that are beyond use are reused as industrial rags etc.  It was really easy to set up and the next step is to put these bins on the rest of our UK sites.

In a separate project, a colleague of mine has found a way to recycle (or upcycle as it is more correctly known) crisp packets – which is a pretty good idea considering that an average of 5 or 6 packets are eaten per day in the office (and there are only 8 people in the office!)  They are now collected up and sent to a PO Box for the Philippine Community Fund.  They are shipped on a boat that is already going to the Philippines and there they are made into bags and purses – about thirty crisp packets making a bag (or one per week for the office).  This is intended to reduce child labour in the Philippines as it means that the children of these ladies can then go to school.

Carbon Taxes and Cap and Trade

I recently completed an Economics Diploma for which I had to choose a topic for a research project.  Bearing in mind my interest in most things environmental I stupidly supposed that this would be a good subject area and decided to look at the effectiveness of government policy in reducing carbon emissions from business.

Now this was a more tricksy issue than originally expected.  I quickly decided to avoid anything relating to transportation for two reasons.  Firstly I am a little biased about car, plane etc usage, and, more importantly, it is difficult to differentiate business and private travel in government figures.  After a short time I decided that there was no point looking at the CRC scheme or the Feed In Tariffs even though I had gathered a lot of information about them – the problem is they are just too new and therefore data relating to their effectiveness (or not) will not be available for some time.

So I concentrated on the Climate Change Levy, Renewables Obligation Certificates and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

The Climate Change Levy is a tax on energy use by business and was introduced in 20o1.  From what I could see, probably due to its relatively low level, the fact that it didn’t change in level for 6 years and came in just after the price of electricity dropped dramatically, it has had no perceivable effect – after all it is just another number on the bottom of a utility bill (a quick calculation gives it a price of around £9 per tonne of carbon).

The renewables obligation certificate was meant to encourage energy suppliers to invest in renewables by obliging them (wonder where they got the name from?) to either obtain a specified amount of energy from renewables or to pay a fine which was then distributed to those that did comply.  It seems to have increased the amount of renewable energy generated, but the costs are passed onto customers (business and domestic) and government targets (10% by 2010) are nowhere near being met.  An improvement was made when they changed the level of certification for different types of renewables so that newer technology was worth more than established sources such as wind.  I think that the renewables obligation has also helped reduce methane emissions from landfill as the majority of these are now capped and used as an energy source.

The final scheme is the fabled EUETS – a cap and trade scheme.  This hasn’t worked to reduce emissions either.  It was aimed at power suppliers and high energy users such as cement manufacturers.  However, initial allocations appear to have been higher than business as usual scenarios – perhaps they were optimistic about growth prospects, more likely the government had no way to check the figures and did not want to ‘impair competitiveness’ – it was not just the UK government that was guilty of over and free allocations.  The first phase of the scheme has passed and the second and third do not look any more promising.  No minimum price has been established for carbon and probably never will as there are too few participants and the cap on emissions is not low enough meaning the true value of carbon is not seen.

So, overall I found that when I looked at emissions figures from 1997 (the year of the mythical Kyoto treaty) although emissions had dropped in some cases, it was not by much and did not seem to have been as a direct result of policy.  The only thing that did seem to have occurred, particularly with the EU ETS (and I think is the saving grace of the CRC) is that the issue of energy usage has become a talking point in the board room.  A favourite quote that I found was that for business to change their energy use they needed not only a carrot and stick approach but a tambourine as well.  As usual I think that government was too afraid to annoy business, energy companies and voters to do anything radical or useful – I came away from the project feeling more than a little demoralised.

Where Costa Rica goes can we follow?

I noted a news item in a magazine this week that was highlighting the environmental credentials of Costa Rica – not a country that particularly springs to mind when thinking of environmental achievements.  They have been awarded the 2010 Future Policy Award in recognition of their Biodiversity Law ‘as a milestone of excellence in meeting the goals of the UN convention on Biological Diversity’.

It would appear that Costa Rica, which is rich in flora and fauna, has developed policies designed to safeguard these habitats recognising their importance as an ecosystem and for bringing in ecotourism revenue (a topic I am not overly comfortable with).  The part of the policy that particularly got my attention was that at a time when it is rumoured that the UK coalition ‘greenest’ government is contemplating selling large tracts of forest and national parks, the Costa Rican government is channeling revenue from fuel tax, energy fees and car stamp duty to pay for the management of nature reserves and environmental services.

The immediate question is, if Costa Rica, a so-called developing country, can take such a stance to protect its habitats, why, when we are so wealthy, can we not afford to do the same?  Why do we not value what we have, whilst pointing the finger at developing countries for destroying their habitat.

Shaggy Ink Cap

One of the many things that I find mysterious in life is how anybody becomes an expert at identifying Fungi (and flies for that matter).  I have been on a fungi foraging / identification course and came back none the wiser.  I think this is in part because there are so many little brown jobs (bit like bird watching I suppose), some of which are even called ‘deceivers’ because they look like some other type of mystery mushroom.  However, there are some mushrooms that even a lazy idiot like me can identify, fly agaric is one, and shaggy ink caps (coprinus comatus) are another.

Fly agaric is the fairy tale red toadstool with white bits on the top and is to be avoided at all costs as it is pretty toxic.  Shaggy ink cap on the other hand is edible, but this is only recommended if picked when young and eaten almost straight away.  You have probably all noticed shaggy ink caps at some point, but just passed them by – when young they look a bit uninteresting, just white, cylindrical mushrooms covered with scales.  However, as they mature they start to change colour, and look much prettier.  Unfortunately for the fungus this is because as it degrades, which it can do in the space of a day, its gills start to change colour and secrete a blank ink as it autodigests itself.  Despite the cold weather there are still a few about, such as the one I took a picture of (which also left my fingers a little blackened as I moved some of the grass out of the way to get a better shot).

Pickers beware though, there is also a common ink cap which is more fawn in colour than white with which the shaggy ink cap could be confused – if eaten within a few hours of consuming alcohol then nausea and vomiting will occur.  Best be on the safe side and leave the foraging to the experts and fungi in the wild for photographers and nature spotters to enjoy.