[link= http://www.lowimpact.org/ ]Low Impact Living Resources[/link]
Low-Impact Living Initiative (LILI) is a non-profit organisation whose mission is to help people reduce their impact on the environment, improve their quality of life, gain new skills, live in a healthier and more satisfying way, have fun, and save money.
Excellent resource for factsheets, workshops and appropriate links.
RE: Reducing... your impact on the environment
There's one thing about people in a nation such as the UK trying to help slow or stop global warming which haunts me a little bit ...
It's creditable for anyone to reduce their environmental impact, and nations such as ours are quickly becoming aware of the need now. There's certainly nothing wrong with individuals trying to do their best. But the effect of our entire nation is negligible, especially in terms of what the future holds. China and India each have about one fifth of the world's population, and are developing at lightning speed, going through the same sort of industrial growth and polluting output that we did in the 1950s-1980s, but in mega-proportions. (Meanwhile the USA is also a major polluter and is doing b***** all to stop.)
I recently read something like, that if the UK stopped all carbon-pollution today, that lack of pollution will be made up again merely by China's industrial growth over four months! I'd like to think that if we can't have much of a real effect, then perhaps what we do will have a moral effect, inducing other nations to emulate us and take our lead. But it ain't going to happen in the foreseeable future. The USA still takes no notice, and China and India now want their share of the industrial pie. (Individual for individual, you can't really blame them, and global warming for the individual Indian is hardly an immediate concern.)
So what we do is as much as anything perhaps to soothe our conscience. And yet it all gets out of kilter: tax is hiked up on our flying - and does anybody really believe this is to stop pollution, and not, well, er, tax? - while the effect is still tiny so long as these giant nations are growing and doing nothing about their own polluting.
I wish this wasn't true, but so far it is how it is.
V
RE: Reducing... your impact on the environment
Theres loads of issues that come up for me when I think about recycling. I recycle as much as I can, I dont eat much meat, I try and use ethical products and products that cause limited damage to the environment.
I dont know if I make a difference however, because so much harm is being done elsewhere and people are still suffering in the world. For example, I bought some gifts at Christmas where you pay a charity money and they tell you to what project the money is going, its to help people out of poverty. However, I think that not everyone in that country or neighbouring ones are poor.
Its all politics, this is very simplistic but people should not be starving while other countries are weathly and obscenely wealthy.
On a local level, I live in a flat, I dont have a recycling bin, I take what I can to the recycling centres, however, on 2 occasions last week, both sites were full. And what really grates on my nerves at the minute are large supermarkets doing the green and recycling drives, hand back your cards. Its lip service as far as I am concerned.
These 2 supermarkets have been criticised for making cheap clothes for us by people in India who get less than the basic wage. So how on earth can these stores blow their own trumpets for their recycling initiatives while farmers and people who produce goods for them are being paid a pittance to keep prices low?
Trying to undo mans greed wont happen by putting your bottles in a recycling bank and thats me speaking as someone who does recycle.
Tax on flights is revenue for the Government no more, no less as far as I am concerned.
RE: Reducing... your impact on the environment
I can only repeat the same opinion I have before when the carbon-emission / pollution subject comes up. So long as humanity uses fossil fuels, the problem will grow and grow (as the nations I mentioned grow industrially). Wind farms and solar power are all very well, but you're not going to see the majority of humanity switching to that IMO.
Like many people I obviously give the subjet much thought. And whether this belongs on the science forum or not I don't know - to me it does - but I believe there are totally different sources of power "out there" but either not yet discovered, or not developed or comprehended. "A Dweller onTwo Planets", a book from the 1800s by Phylos, tells in much detail about "power from nowhere" or more accurately what he called power from "the Night-side of Nature" known to and used by people in very ancine times, now forgotten by history. It's literally power from an aspect or side of nature that our science hasn't yet discovered. Unlimited power with zero pollution. Cold fusion may or may not have been real, but it's along those lines.
To me this is going to be the solution - the discovery of a workable, cheap, brand-new power-source of a "New Age" type. I have full faith that such power-sources do exist, and just ned to be discovered.
V
RE: Reducing... your impact on the environment
"Modern life" as we know it is not sustainable. There are however some people who, from beyond the depths of their soul feel moved to harmonise with the natural flow of the universe regardless of whether or not everyone else follows suite, regardless of whether or not the world would end tommorrow.
Trin
x
"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree"
- Martin Luther King Jr