February 2023

Days are getting longer and Spring is on the way

THE CARBON PAW PRINT

This is a touchy subject. On the whole, probably it would be better for the planet if we didn’t keep pets. But it wouldn’t be better for us. Pets are good for mental and social health. Dogs get us outdoors and walking (saving car journeys sometimes) and many people make friends when their dogs do. Cats kill about 55 million birds in the UK every year but we love them. So if we aren’t prepared to forego the fun and comfort pets bring us, what can be done to reduce our carbon paw print? Here’s some advice from the RSPCA

 ·         Get your pet from a rescue centre

·         Neuter all pets, to avoid excess animals who can’t be homed. There is a big cat over-population crisis and rescue homes often cannot place all the kittens they get.

·         Don’t buy plastic toys; that’s what old tea towels and sticks are for. Use ceramic or metal bowls

·         Rabbits are the environmentally friendly pet, because they naturally eat a plant-based diet!

·         Dogs can live on vegetarian diets, provided they are well-balanced.

·         Cats must eat meat because it includes ingredients like taurine, vitamin A and arachidonic acid, without which they get ill. At least most cat food is made from meat, fish and chicken that would otherwise be thrown away.

·         Use biodegradable cat litter and compostable poo bags.

·         If your cat goes outside, please put a bell on it and save millions of birds.

WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT EVs (Electric Vehicles?)

In 2022, new registrations of EVs surpassed that of diesel cars for the first time.Worldwide, the market for EVs grew 60% last year and, in the UK, they now represent about 30% of new cars on the road. Although EVs are more expensive to purchase, the total cost of ownership over 4 years (including fuel, insurance, tax and maintenance) is about 10% cheaper. And once the car has done somewhere between 15,000 and 40,000 miles (depending on the make and model) the emissions cost of production has been written off completely. 

There are more EVs in FG these days. So I asked some EV owners what they liked about their cars. The answers were sometimes surprising:

“I just love the thought of never having to go to a petrol station ever again.”

 “It’s just a great car; it looks beautiful, it’s so silent, everything works so well—and for the first time in my life, my car passed its MOT without any work being needed.”

 “I like thinking I’m not spewing rubbish out into the air. I couldn’t believe it when I heard that air pollution now causes more deaths than smoking. So driving an EV makes me feel better about driving. And because the engine slows down immediately you take your foot off the accelerator, it uses brake pads less—so there are even fewer particulates from that!”

 

“It’s so cool to drive! If only cars had been like this from the very beginning, we wouldn’t be in this mess…”

They were! At the very beginning of the display of historic cars, the Automobile Museum in Turin, has an electric car built in 1907 and designed by Colonel Augustus Pope. See its picture above.

If we want our way of life to be more positive for the planet, what are the changes worth making? Climate numbers can be confusing. 

The very best grassfed beef is seven times worse for the environment than tofu. The worst beef causes more than 100 times the emissions of the best tofu. Personally, I’m not a big tofu fan but I am coming round to it. What this also means is that, if you are going to eat beef, eat the best you can afford.  

Is organic beef any better? Sadly not, because the cattle produce less meat and grow more slowly which means they have more time to emit climate-heating methane.

Is eating locally produced food better for the planet? Strangely, it doesn’t make a big difference. Transport of food in European diets is responsible for 6% of our emissions—while eggs, dairy and meat account for a whopping 83% of emissions from food. So a plant-centred diet is better for the environment—and if it is produced and bought locally, that helps a bit too.

 

Here is my favourite chart, presented by CAST, the Centre for Climate Adaptation and Social Transformation, based at Cardiff University.

TRADE OFFS

The world’s most popular shoes are trainers—and trainer production is incredibly carbon intensive, accounting for 1.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. (To put that into context, global air travel is 2.5%.). That’s where Trash Planet comes to the rescue. Their shoes are made from recycled, recyclable and vegan materials. The mesh and laces are 100% recycled, made from upcycled plastic waste collected through ocean clean-up initiatives. And the leather look? It’s made from corn. The soles are made from 75% recycled rubber with 25% natural rubber and the whole sole can be recycled. And when the shoes are all worn out, you can send them back to be recycled and get £10 off your next pair.

They’re pretty snappy too.

My favourite product this year is a laundry detergent Tru-Earth Eco Strips. They come in a small paper envelope containing enough detergent for 32 loads of dirty clothes. That means they eliminate huge plastic jugs and the 100s of lorries driving 1,000s of miles to deliver them, thus reducing transport fuel consumption and carbon emissions by 95%. So they save enough truck fuel and CO2 equivalent to taking 27 million cars off the road for a day—or planting nine million trees. The laundry slips themselves dissolve in the washing and the paper packaging can be composted. So when the washing is done, there’s nothing left! And they do a great wash that smells wonderful. They’re so slight, they come through the post.

GREEN SHOPPING

Fast fashion is an environmental disaster and only 1% of clothing is ever recycled. Instead of buying mountains of clothes, it’s better for the planet if we buy fewer pieces that can be worn for many years. But when it comes to shoes, if they’re worn out, there’s nothing for it but to get new ones. Which is why 20 billion (yes, billion) pairs of shoes are dumped into landfill every year.

In the eternal war against drafts, open fireplaces are a real problem. They look lovely but at least 25% of a room’s heat goes straight up them. That’s why, if you aren’t using them, the Chimella was invented. It’s designed just like an umbrella. You stick it up the chimney, hit the button on the handle and it opens up to block those drafts. When you want a fire, it’s dangling there reminding you of its presence; then you just collapse the umbrella with another button push and remove it. Simple. Tidy. And a great relief knowing money isn’t going up the chimney day after day…

UP THE CHIMNEY

The alternative is the Chimney Sheep. It’s a little cheaper and is made with lovely Herdwick wool. It comes in a variety of sizes, so you need to be careful to measure inside your chimney accurately. Looking like a huge woolly bath plug, it comes with a long handle so you can’t forget it’s up there.

Make it stand out.

POLLINATORS

A keen FarringtonGreen team is planning a big event in June to encourage the cultivation of pollinator plants. This is in response to research carried out by Bristol University, showing that it was urban gardens that were a dependable food source for pollinators through the year. In other words, contrary to what most people imagine, where pollinators are not thriving is in our countryside! 
Why does this matter? We need pollinators to move pollen from one plant to another, and in doing so make seeds and reproduce. They are the transportation system that sustains food, trees and flowers. Without them, none of those survive. So they are essential to our lives. Yet pollinators are in severe decline—especially where we live, right here in the countryside.  

If this interests you and you’d like to be part of making Farrington Gurney a great habitat for pollinators, please email.

Swaffham Prior is a village in Cambridgeshire, comprising nearly 300 homes, all heated by oil because the village has never had a gas supply. But at the centre of the village now is a large energy centre that looks a bit like a barn with large steel cylinders and huge pipes; this is a thermal store powered by ground and air source heat pumps. The pipes that run from it can supply all the heat (1.7MW) the village needs.  

WHAT KEEPS ME CHEERFUL?

This is the first heat network of its kind in the UK. It came about because residents started to worry that nobody would buy an oil-based home, anticipating huge future costs. This solution gives residents independence from a volatile energy market and allows them to budget because members are charged a stable price for the energy that they use.

Cambridgeshire County Council owns the network and manages it. From January to March, the price was lowered to help with the cost-of-living crisis. The Council estimates that the annual bill for a 3-bedroomed terraced house will run at approximately £1,375 and prices will change just once a year in line with the Consumer Price Index. There are no connection charges for residents who want to join.

Energy networks like this could be set up anywhere in the country. What do they need? Funding from local authorities: the network cost £11million to build, of which £3 million came from government grants, from loans and of course from paying customers. But they also need community involvement since they can’t be cost-effective unless a large proportion of the community supports them. And that includes being patient while roads are shut down as all the pipes are laid.  But it shows what people can do when they decide they have to get away from fossil fuels.