PP22: A chilling prospect

Almost ten years ago now there was a mini media storm about Internet fridges and all the amazing things they might do. The idea flopped, yet their time will come, and the government should do all it can to encourage their revival. The reason being that they have the potential to significantly reduce the amount of food we buy, then don’t eat in time and end up throwing away. I am guilty of this all the time and I would estimate that I throw away around 1/3 of my shopping bill directly in the bin. A quick web search gives me the figure of £8bn that we annually throw straight into our nearest landfill. The Guardian suggests this is equivalent of one in three of our shopping bags.

All it takes is a little planning and imagination and this shocking waste can be cut dramatically. Yet I don’t know anyone that is actually any good at doing these things on a regular basis.

Internet fridges could do all these things for us. By either making us scan in all our items or better yet, using RFID to recognise what is lurking at the back of the fridge our very clever fridges could suggest recipes for us that will use what we have. They could also store meal plans for us and order in the ingredients required. We could end up downloading the ‘Jamie Oliver’ application and creating all kinds of pukka meals with the ingredients we find waiting on our doorstep when we get back from work.

Supermarkets should push this technology now and make sure it’s their delivery services we are using. I envisage some Microsoft style court action over the right to use a ‘Sainsburys’ fridge’ to buy from the Tesco’s website and so on. What’s more, the wide scale uptake of new fridges will cut emissions anyway because the older style fridges are like having mini coal power stations in your kitchen. Getting funky new ‘ifreeze’ technology or whatever, into peoples homes should be considered something of a priority. The savings to be made are staggering in scale and promise to greatly benefit those on lower incomes.

Getting this technology into their homes is the trick. An incentive to the industry could come in the form of a subsidy, or small grants to those that want to buy them. Local councils could offer vouchers for new fridges in exchange for a household handing in their old one for a safe disposal. Bring on the interactive fridge.

PP21: Bottled

Now this isn’t strictly an environmental issue, but I want to write it down all the same. I support the police in their recent request that glass bottles for beers and alcopops be replaced with plastic ones. Now for many people this may seem like the nanny state gone totally mad - now they won’t even let us use glass! What next? Will they take our writing pens away and give us pencils? Should we put the stabilisers back on our bikes?

I thought it was total insanity when I first heard about it. But I have come round to the idea after realising that the savings to be made are substantial. Glass bottles can of course be used as quite an effective weapon during bar brawls and drunken fights. The ambulances, the ambulance staff, the extra A&E waiting times, the patching up of casualties and long term physical and psychological effects of injury all make for a pretty large bill. Add to this the time the police and courts spend dealing with these extra assault cases and I think you’ll agree that we pay a very high price for the luxury of enjoying glass bottles. (I’d also like to factor in the price of punctured bike tyres!)

Sure, fights will still happen and other things will be found as weapons. But I think the risk of injury will almost certainly go down. To argue otherwise is like saying that Americans might as well be allowed to keep their guns, because they will just find other ways of killing each other. We know that to be false since every single piece of evidence suggests otherwise.

Plastic bottles, while admittedly made from crude oil, can be recycled just as easily as glass ones and they also weigh less, allowing them to be distributed with greater ease and with less green house emissions. So long as we perhaps also insist that these new plastic bottles must be made from a certain percentage of recycled materials then I think we can offset many of the downsides. I see it as a simple switch that can save a lot of time, money and effort. And cuts and bruises.

PP20: The magic milkman

I remember a day when people laughed at the prospect of buying milk from your supermarket. Why would you? You have the milkman for that, that was his job, you had been ordering from him for decades, so why change? Not only that but the supermarket milk came in those thick plastic containers that you couldn’t use again. At least with your milk bottles the empties were collected for reuse.

Oh those were the days. Unfortunately with the increase in access to personal cars and the loss leading antics of the supermarkets many people abandoned their electrically powered milkman in favour of buying milk at the supermarkets. It seems a great shame that we have lost a system that in so many ways was good for the environment. It’s time the government stepped in and gave the struggling (but slowly recovering) milkman a boost.

Money should be made available to facilitate their recovery and better yet, to get local farmers talking to the distributors to arrange the delivery of other locally grown fresh produce. I suggest offering to abolish VAT on all milk delivered on electric milk floats and in reusable milk bottles. This should make milk delivery a significantly cheaper option than buying it from your supermarket, which should help stem the rising cost of living that many of these green policies, at least in the short term, seem to bring. There is of course no reason why supermarkets themselves can’t get involved in the scheme either and the increased demand should create many new delivery jobs (which might give the now redundant Coinstar repairmen something to do – see below). There is also a social benefit in having a local milkman. It is an unfortunate fact that many elderly people in our society live in almost total isolation, and as daft as it sounds many of them used to look forward to seeing the milkman. Often he (or she - in the 21st century I am sure Britain could handle a milkwomen) is the only person looking out for some people.

I can only see large net benefits from encouraging milk deliveries. It is also a token gesture of friendship towards Britain’s farmers. Which is good because I intend to well and truly batter them in future proposals.

PP19: Penny pinching

This is another quick fix designed to nibble away at the edges of our excessive consumption. We should phase out the one and two penny piece. Since their introduction over 6.5 billion one-penny pieces have gone missing from circulation and millions more have to be made each year just to keep their levels constant. Add to that that they are quite simply an inconvenience for many (a poll in 2004 indicated 25% were in favour of getting rid of them, with 14% admitting they threw them straight in the bin) then I can’t see a justification for continuing this chronic waste of metals. With the rising cost of raw materials it is also becoming increasingly costly to produce coins, even after the 1992 switch to a copper plated steel base.

The downsides I admit will be the near bankruptcy of ‘Coinstar’, the company that makes the coin converting machines in supermarkets, and at least an initial decrease in the money given to charities. However it still seems like a worthwhile exchange, charities will be able to replace these lost revenues by using just a little imagination, and a little extra competition for our charitable donations can only be good for the not for profit sector. Many also fear that rounding to the nearest five pence would cause an inflationary effect. I can’t deny that this may well happen, but I’m sure it won’t bring us to our knees and the convenience factor is probably more than worth it. In 1984 we got rid of the ½ penny without too much fuss and New Zealand, Australia and a handful of European countries have successfully phased out their own pennies in recent decades without ill effect.

This would have to go hand in hand with incentives for banks to speed up the roll out of the much talked about cash free swipe card, whereby your credit/debit card could be used to make purchases under £5 without requiring a pin. Much like an Oyster Card all you would need to do is swipe it over a sensor when you buy your morning paper or cup of coffee. The wide scale adoption of this technology could further reduce the need for minting coins of all types, and dramatically reduce queues in shops. Why would anyone be against saving everyone, from consumers to retailers to the treasury, their time, money and effort?

PP18: Bio-fuels

I have just come back from an interesting lecture on the environmental impact of bio-fuels (ha –listen to yourself). But no, it was – very interesting.

It confirmed all my suspicions. Bio-fuels are a complete and utter disaster. The EU jumped on the bandwagon because it wanted to be seen to be doing something and the US loves them so much because it is a source of fuel they can obtain without the need to invade anyone. Yet we have all blindly stumbled towards them as some sort of magical solution to all our environmental (and homeland security) problems. Unfortunately in our enthusiasm no one thought to check to see if they actually any good. And they’re not – not at all. In fact they are far, far worse than using fossil fuels as we currently do.

Let’s look at the options. With oil all we need do is pump it to the surface, ship it, distribute it and then burn it. With bio-fuels we need to cut down millions of acres of rainforest, cover the land with fertilisers, harvest it, ship it, distribute it – and then burn it! It is a complete red herring of an environmental policy and one that might cost us dearly. And this goes without mentioning the impact it has on global food prices. Hungry Africans now have to compete with hungry fuel tanks.

The professor giving the lecture did suggest that a handful of sources did indeed provide ‘better than fossil fuel’ outcomes. One of the best sources was from waste oil produced by industry. He was talking about the oil used in deep fat fryers in fast food chains up and down the country. That this oil can be burned to run vehicles is no secret and has been done on a limited scale for a while now.

So firstly Britain should opt out of the EU’s disastrous 10% bio-fuels target and instead provide tax incentives for companies to collect, process and distribute waste bio oil. We are talking about such low quantities that it can actually be mixed with normal fossil fuels and burnt in conventional engines with no problems. And that is exactly what should be done.

PP17: Talking rubbish

Now this one is a doddle. When I was in Canada I noticed that all public bins had little sections around them where you were supposed to deposit your used bottles and cans. Rather than throw them in with the rest of the ‘trash’ you could leave them there for the tramps to pick up – throw in their trolleys – and cart down to the nearest recycle centre to claim their 5C reward. For some reason it made paying the homeless to clear up your junk kind of cute. So long as you didn’t think about it too hard.

So it is with great sadness that in the UK I frequently see our public bins overflowing with plastic bottles, drink cans and newspapers. It drives me mad – why!? Why would anyone with a head on their shoulders throw these items in the bin? Why don’t they stash them in their bags and take them home for recycling like the precious items they are?

So while I don’t want to adopt the Canadian system of giving 5C for each bottle/can - or provide economic incentives for homeless people to become impromptu street cleaners – I do want to see a new ‘hybrid’ litterbin. Just divide the bin in two and have one half reserved for recyclable items. Sure some rascals won’t play by the rules – but who cares? We’ll live and the system won’t come crashing to its knees. At a stroke we could dramatically increase the quantity of items recycled in the UK and reduce the need for landfill. Not only that but by giving people the opportunity to ‘do the right thing’ (e.g. put something in the correct bin) we can further increase environmental awareness.

Easy.

PP16: Proximate commuting

This should become part and parcel of a large companies yearly self-assessment. Proximate commuting involves simply sitting down and studying how far workers have to travel to get to work – and asks if they could not instead work at an office or store closer to home. For example a study in New York showed that only 4% of the cities fire-fighters actually worked at their nearest fire station. A simple reshuffle could cut down on commuter hours for the benefit of all. It really is not that difficult to do.

Of course there should be no law saying that an employee must work at the nearest available location because social and professional commitments may motivate a person to want to work at a particular place. Yet where possible the option should be there for an employee to take. Of course it might be the case that 96% of New York cities fire fighters all live in the same small suburb and they can’t obviously all work at the same suburban fire station.

But the idea is hardly unworkable and there are certainly savings to be made.

PP15: Graduation trees

This idea is, unusually, all my own. That is also why it is so naff.

Upon graduation from high school (at 16) I think every student should take part in a tree planting ceremony. The concept hopes to kill two birds with one stone. Firstly it could bring about a rapid increase in the numbers of trees in the UK (approximately 600,000 a year), which while of debatable environmental benefit are at least pleasing to the eye. Secondly it is a symbolic gesture of commitment to the environment and to the future. Children will have literally invested something in the earth and have a stake in its preservation. The student and the tree will grow and mature together.

This shameless gimmick of an idea is, I hope, actually far more substantial than it at first appears. I am increasingly of the belief that small influences and gestures can actually have quite a large psychological impact on people. Perhaps I have read to many books that stress the dramatic impact of an individual’s immediate environment. Whatever the strength of these arguments I think this policy is worth a go.

And if nothing else a shameless gimmick may be a welcome relief for many students after two years of GCSE study.

PP14: Yellow buses

Once again we can see that America has all the best ideas, and has done for a while now. The school run in Britain puts an estimated extra billion car journeys onto our roads each year, which works out at an additional 2 million tonnes of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere. Environment aside it is a major cause of congestion with the school run being responsible for 20% of all rush hour traffic. Predictably then it also makes the roads much more dangerous and it is estimated that each year 40 deaths and over 900 serious injuries occur thanks to the increased traffic. This is despite ‘safety’ being listed as the primary motivation behind parents who drive their children to school.

Evidence from the United States suggests that the yellow buses also have significant psychological benefits for the children. Giving them the ability to catch up with their friends on the way to school (as opposed to during their first class) makes them calmer and more settled when they arrive. The buses are also specially designed to maximise safety and would therefore have to be purchased new, and the scheme would not merely commandeer existing coaches and buses.

Yellow school buses in Britain have already been piloted by several councils and with encouraging results. The program has not been taken any further simply because it involves a large amount of money to be spent. Purchasing the new buses, training the drivers to deal with children and providing a regular free service does not come cheaply. A nation wide scheme for primary school buses is estimated to cost around £184 million a year. However the overall savings to society (by removing the costs listed above) are calculated to be around £458 million.

Well worth doing, I think you will agree.

All stats were taken from a report by the Sutton Trust and can be found here.

PP13: Green ISA

This is a Tory idea, which I wish to steal. A green ISA. This would be a tax-free savings account, which invests savings into environmentally friendly companies. Green companies have repeatedly recorded above average growth rates and hence are already a reasonably attractive bet to many investors. However as the world economy leaps, stalls and staggers – as I suspect it will do in the upcoming decade – the new and untested eco-industries could be the first to see their funding dry up.

By introducing this tax free ISA we could simultaneously encourage people to save more – and free up more cash to fuel this vitally important industry.

PP12: Illuminating figures

According to the (admittedly self interested) Coventry based electronics manufacturer ‘Advanced LEDs’ the UK lags far behind in the global trend of replacing traditional high pressure sodium street lights with LEDs.

Light Emitting Diodes produce a brighter, whiter light and use 40% less electricity than a conventional bulb to do so. Not only this but they also require far less maintenance, with a LED street lamp typically only needing maintenance every 5 years compared to the 18 months required today.

Towns and cities in Canada have found that they can make large savings after the initial investment. For every thousand 60W street lamps installed it is claimed (by the industry) to result in the saving of C$100,000 a year. Furthermore a European industry consortium claims that a 700W conventional street lamp produces 2 tonnes of CO2 a year. Not all street lamps are this big, but there are approximately 7.5 million street lamps throughout the UK, and so the savings to be made are substantial (and surprising when compared to the figures for the air industry below). Whatever the figure there can be no denying that this is something well worth doing. County and City Councils across the country should immediately make their installation a priority. Central government should assist, perhaps by providing an interest free loan to the councils or some other sort of allowance. I have no idea about the actual ins and outs of government/council funding but whatever the situation, something needs to be done to allow the councils to immediately go and out purchase these time, energy and money saving devices.

With a spot of luck this will also lead to a stop in County Councils turning lights off at night to save money. I’ve always thought that unless very well thought out this idea was a bad one, lights are put in place for our safety so turning them off seems a little silly. Although dimming lights, as they do in Rome, seems like a prudent measure and can (apparently) lead to up to a further 40% saving.

PP11: Tow policy

This is an idea that I first heard proposed by Sir Richard Branson as his Virgin Atlantic airline scrabbled around hastily to find a way of reducing their CO2 emissions which did not involve giving up on the enterprise all together. He suggested simply towing aircraft to their ‘starting grids’ rather than having them power up their engines and reach them under their own steam. The fact that once at the grid the aircraft would then go on to emit countless tonnes of CO2 high into the atmosphere is of course the real problem, but until someone somewhere invents a zero carbon passenger jet I see no reason why this idea should be sneered at. Branson predicts that this policy could prevent 2 tonnes of CO2 from being emitted per flight. A little research found that the average UK citizen emits 9.6 tonnes of CO2 a year – so for every five flights leaving from the UK’s airports we have effectively reduced our collective yearly CO2 output by one person. Hurah!

Considering that as of July 07 there were 60,776,238 of us this is of course trivial in the extreme. Yet a little more research finds that approximately 230,000,000 flights are made to and from the UK and every year – so the numbers soon start adding up. It is a policy that can be made immediately and at relatively little pain. And hence I see no good reason why it shouldn’t be introduced in all UK and EU airports, and indeed, in all airports around the world.

Thanks to the good work of the Messiah Branson trials are already going ahead and I should imagine this policy will soon see the light of day even without any input from national governments. But the sooner it’s introduced the better.

PP10: Water wastage

Bottled water. When it was first introduced many thought it was a joke – why would anyone pay for something they have already paid for in their homes? Well, they clearly underestimated the power of marketing didn’t they? Bottled water now makes up 20% of the entire soft drinks industry in the UK and 50% in the rest of Europe.

European water is perfectly safe to drink, despite what many (typically older) people may tell you. The environmental impact of pumping fresh water from its source, manufacturing billions of plastic bottles, transporting them across the globe, distributing them across a nation and then after its five minutes of glory having the bottle dumped in a landfill - is disastrous, to say the least. The bottled water industry protests that it accounts for just 0.03% of the UK’s total carbon emissions. Even assuming that this isn’t a highly conservative figure, it still sounds to me as if this is a perfectly valid target. It is pure convenience that makes people wait in line to purchase the stuff from their local supermarket rather than spend 5 seconds filling up a bottle from their tap before they set out. Therefore I am afraid to say; that in my current eco-nazi mindset, that is one convenience we are just going to have to sacrifice.

So how could you regulate against 20% of the soft drinks industry? An outright ban would be the most effective and I honestly don’t feel it would be too drastic an action either. Yet to allow for the mirage of continued consumer choice, a high tax might be more appropriate. The new law would have to be written carefully to avoid manufacturers simply going out and adding ‘a hint of cucumber extract’, or something ridiculous, and claiming their product was a soft drink just like any other. To facilitate the death of bottled water the government should use some of the money raised to pay for drinking fountains in public spaces.

This should also come as part of a wider policy on global water security. Such a policy would ideally include tax incentives for the water purification and desalination industries (which might also go someway to offsetting the jobs lost by battering the bottled water industry). Again, the undemocratic axe wielded by Brussels should be sought to make this a European wide policy.

PP9: Junk the junk mail

A UK study in 2006 concluded that 550,000 tonnes of paper go into producing 21 billion individual items of junk mail each year. Junk mail, or direct marketing as the profession likes to call, is a complete waste of resources. Not only this but each year £70m worth of junk mail is delivered to the wrong address, two thirds of the public are said to object to it and complaints against it are skyrocketing. Such a chronic waste of paper and the carbon produced in its delivery surely cannot be justified on something so unwelcome. Worse, much of it actually comes from overseas with South Africa, the Philippines and Barbados being three of the larger sources.

There currently exists an ‘opt-out’ service which is said to effectively reduce the junk mail you receive by 95%. It is free to register with them and I advise you all to do so. This scheme is purposely under promoted because the industry body, known as the Direct Marketing Association, have quite predictably fought tooth and nail to prevent its wide scale adoption. To hell with the DMA, their industry is a wasteful and unwanted one and the government shouldn’t be afraid to confront them.

Yet I still don’t think this goes far enough. Just because an industry supports many small marketing firms and provides a massive boost to the Post Office doesn’t necessarily mean that it is worth keeping. I propose an ‘opt-in’ system whereby it is illegal to distribute unsolicited mail to homes unless they have volunteered for the dubious honour.

Once again this is a cheap and nasty policy designed to prevent one of the world’s smaller environmental catastrophes and won’t by itself solve very much. Yet I feel it is one of the many thousand small steps required to get us further to towards sustainability. If it could also be pushed through Brussels then we could eradicate it through Europe – which would be putting the tyrannical power of Brussels to some good use I feel.

PP8: Coffee cup wars

Our government continually tells you what’s bad for you doesn’t it? You shouldn’t smoke. You shouldn’t drink. You shouldn’t really drive. You can’t eat microwave meals. Your not even allowed to use plastic bags from supermarkets anymore. What ever next?

Well, given that the government is on a roll I think it should move onto the coffee cup. Every day I see hundreds of cardboard cups (with their plastic lids) littering the streets or piling up in bins, destined for landfill. A former classmate of mine used to get strange looks because she insisted on carrying with her a thermo cup which she would hand over to the guy at Starbucks and insist he use. While carrying around a bulky cup and having to clean it out yourself could be a burden too far for many people I think this may be a sacrifice worth making. The government should have a quiet word in the ear of one or two of the nations largest coffee chains and suggest to them, much like they have with supermarkets, that they might want to think about changing their policies – or else. It doesn’t even have to be a national government; an ambitious city council or local mayor could apply pressure and provide funding for pilot schemes too.

The selling of thermo mugs in coffee shops along with a small discount, say 5p, on each purchase made using one would do wonders for the image of the first brand to adopt it. Others would almost certainly follow suit.

Now this policy isn’t going to save the world, but unfortunately it appears that magic bullets are few and far between, and this would almost certainly be a hopeful shot in the right direction.

PP7: The free (or subsidised) distribution of energy trackers

The car company Nissan has noted how when drivers are provided with a fuel efficiency gauge on their dashboard they typically reduce their fuel consumption by around 10%. That is actually a huge margin when it comes to fuel conservation and especially so given that it is achieved so simply. Nissan has promised to include such gauges on all its new cars.

The idea of this policy is to ensure that every household in the UK has an energy consumption display to allow people to see how much electricity they are using. The awareness this generates, as people run around the house switching things off standby mode to see the effect, can be staggering. As green policies go I see this one as being relatively straightforward, cheap and effective. If it could produce an effect similar to that with drivers, then it is surely well worth it.

Households could be sent a government issue one or perhaps be allowed to claim back a certain amount if they decide to go out and purchase a more fancy one of their own. The exact details can be worked out by people far clever than I, but I can’t see it being unworkable. This is a horribly simple idea, but like all simple ideas, it might just be one of the most effective.

“Rules of engagement: A life in conflict” by Tim Collins. 2005

Tim Collins, an ex-general in the British army made his name on the eve of the Iraq war. He addressed his assembled regiment, the royal Irish, about what was about to happen. The troops knew that the war on which they were about to embark was a highly controversial one. At the time the media frenzy and dodgy intelligence had also installed in all of them a great fear, and indeed expectation, of imminent chemical or biological reprisal attacks as they crossed the border. Collin’s compassionate and insightful words were designed to reassure his men. Purely by chance they were recorded by an embedded female Daily Mail journalist and from her they were distributed around the world. In comparison to the gross displays put on by some of the American commanders (one of who came out to sounds of MC hammer and instructed his armoured division that it really was hammer time) Tim Collins’ words struck a note around the world about as he reflected on the absurd necessity of conflict, and of the honour and respect due between men caught on opposing sides of political lines.

Cont...

PP6: Education 1

A great man once said 'Education, education, education'. It is a shame therefore that education isn't really something I would attribute to his otherwise glowing, if debt ridden, legacy.

As far as I can tell education in Britain is awful. I honestly believe that our schools suffer from a fascination with new funky teaching methods imposed by a top down curriculum that stifles innovation. New methods that I strongly believe don't work. Now I have been told by someone close to me, and who is well versed in these new methods, that I say this only because I am one of those rare people that learn best by being told how things work. Once told and I have had time to digest the idea on my own, with only a pencil and a piece of paper for company I tend to remember it.

I don't require three weeks of throwing crap out of classroom windows, designing posters and making role plays in order to understand the basics of gravity. My hellish memories of high school are just that - glitter and glue in place of substance.

I also have major hang ups about the quality of universities here in the UK and think they could learn a lesson or twelve from the excellent American system. But, to cut a long story short I shall list three or four simple policies I am sure need adopting.

1. Make new Grammar Schools. Sure they're not perfect in terms of getting poor kids into good schools cos middle class parents can always coach their kids to pass tests. But tough. Some will get through and we need fresh blood to enliven the nations talent pool.

2. Foreign languages in primary schools. The older kids get the less they can take on board new languages. So bag em when they're young. The Government is already doing this in some schools. Good on em.

3. The GCSE and A Level needs to compete with other programs like the IB. Therefore they should be restructured to include compulsory voluntary work. This would also be a great opportunity to teach kids what the word oxymoran means.

4. A back to basics program for 11 - 14 year olds. Hire a full time organiser for every university. Give them an office in the university and give them a budget to go and recruit x many students looking for part time work. Send each of these students off on a crash course weekend somewhere to learn the basics of English and Maths and how to teach these basics. Send them back to their universities and have them teach for an hour after school hours at a local school to kids between 11 and 14 (any older and undergrads might start illicit relationships with their students and bring the whole program into disrupte). The difficulty I suspect will be geting kids to attend, not getting volunteers from the universities. An incentive would therefore have to be devised. Perhaps by offering a certificate upon completion of x many sessions, with the unis logo on it, we might get ambitious kids interested. The underlying principle is to provide extra tuition to school kids in the basics of english and maths that are missing in so many school leavers (myself included). Once again this will be a scheme mainly adopted by middle class kids with pushy parents. But so what? All the government can do is provide opportunities. If broken families or low aspirations prevent kids from taking them then that is another problem all together beyond the scope of this post.

5. National Citizen Service. I know, I know, when the Tories first announced this I balked. I was outraged that this outdated model was to be brought back. Since then however I have come to thick of the scheme as a top idea. Having just completed an intense two week training course I have come to respect the value of crash courses. A crash course in being an active citizen seems like a very good idea indeed for both the individual and the country.

I could really go on forever. But must now stop. Anyone reading this could make my day and add additional points in the comments section. :)