Recycle at Christmas...

As soon as Christmas is over countless Christmas trees are thrown out, be it traditional or plastic. Immeasurable numbers of cards join the trees, as well as endless rolls of wrapping paper. Disposing of all this extra waste not only effects the environment and is a needless waste of raw or recyclable materials, but is extremely costly for the community when there are other options.

Try buying a Christmas tree with it's roots attached. Look after it over the festive period and re-plant it in the garden so it can be re-used next year. Alternatively trees can be mulched and used in the garden, especially good on acid-loving plants. Plastic trees can obviously be recycled, but try packing it up and re-using it instead, cutting down on the demand for new plastic trees for next year!

Increased numbers of Christmas cards are being printed in the UK on recycled card and locally sourced materials. How about trying to make your own card and impressing family and friends with your skils?

Many charities and independent retailers, including The Woodland Trust, have been running a campaign to recycle Christmas cards. Recycle bins have been placed in stores such as TK Maxx and M&S to support the more trees, more good campaign.

It may be too late (or too early!) to buy your presents for Christmas, but just remember for next time; it's not the amount you spend, it's the thought behind it. Think responsibly and try to buy locally produced presents... buy cards printed on recycled material... re-use the tree and decorations from last year... turn the Christmas lights on an hour later than you normally would and try to recycle as much as possible once the festivity is over.

Finally, have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!

EDIT: Thanks to @NWF for making me aware of this site: "Recycling christmas trees"

Education for Sustainable Development

‘Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable – to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’

Our Common Future (The Brundtland Report) –

Report of the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development

The United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014) was initiated at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, where everybody present agree

d that sustainable development was nothing more than an interesting idea without education.
Education is a crucial tool for achieving sustainability. Most people would agree that the current economic trends are not sustainable and public awareness, education, and training are key to moving society nearer to being sustainable. Beyond this there is very little agreement. Is the meaning of sustainable development within reach? What do sustainable societies look like? How will they function? Why has the government not developed sustainability in schools? The amount of disagreement has handicapped efforts to move education of sustainable development forward.

‘Education for sustainable development is a life-wide and life-long learning endeavour which challenges individuals, institutions and societies to view tomorrow as a day that belongs to all of us, or it will not belong to anyone.’ (UNESCO, 2004:9)

An important distinction must be made. There is a difference between education about sustainable development and education for sustainable development. Education about… provides an awareness, whereas education for… is the use of education as a tool to achieve sustainability. The second is the type of education the government wish to use.

Sustainable development is difficult to define. What makes it harder is the fact that it is also continually evolving. One of the first descriptions of sustainable development was created for the Brundtland Commission and states:

"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of thepresent without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, p 43).The general thought is that sustainable development has three components: environment, society, and economy. The well-being of these three areas are linked, not separate.

It’s interesting that while we have such a problem defining sustainability, we can easily identify un-sustainability. We can make lists of unsustainable activities; inefficient use of energy, lack of water conservation, overuse of transportation, high amounts of consumerism… But we should not condemn ourselves over our inability to define sustainability; we should work around the problem.

Haigh (2005) stated that Geography was the best subject to teach a module in sustainable development. To a certain extent it is a good idea, as it involves major aspects of geography such as three main ones; environment, society and economy. These three aspects all draw upon traditional geographical techniques. However, sustainable development is such a large subject it draws on other subjects other than just geography and, in my opinion, needs to be a subject of its own, as citizenship now is.

References and Extra Reading:

• Haigh, M., (2005), Geography and the 'European Year of Citizenship through Education. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 29, 173-182
• Some Definitions of Sustainable Development
• Sustainable Development in Government
• A quite simple Encyclopedia of Sustainability

What can we do as individuals?

Sustainability is something anybody and everybody can be involved with. But do people really live sustainable lives? And if not, what can they do to improve this?

Being sustainable can be simple. For example, just by turning off a light as you walk out of the room is being sustainable. What else could people do? Things such as switching the TV off at the wall rather than leaving it on standby, turning the washing machine temperature down by a few degrees, and re-using bags when you go shopping rather than using new ones. These simple acts of sustainability will only make a difference if lots of people.

Recycling is being increasingly advertised in todays social circles, and is becoming a part of everyday life for people. This is a good thing as recycled material can be used more and more instead of producing and using new materials. Local councils are making it easier and easier to recycle, providing bins which are collected fortnightly.

As already stated, people are also being told to re-use as well as recycle, such as re-using a plastic back at the supermarket.

Another slightly more effective way of being sustainable is your choice of transport. Owning a car is almost the normal for people now, but owning a large un-economical 4x4 in the middle of a large town or city is not a good idea. Owning a smaller car will not only help with saving money (obviously but not using as much fuel) but will help the environment as they produce less CO2 emissions.

Another way for people to lead a sustainable life is to research their energy provider to find the most sustainable one. Eon for example use wind as an energy source, so the user will have much less CO2 emmisions. Alternativly homes can be fitted with their own wind turbine.

So, as shown, there are a lot of ways for people to become sustainable, i have named but a few. The main point here though is the fact that no one individual can only help the environment, but if hundreds of thousands of people start and continue, we will start to see a change.

Roadway USA

Just a little video put together after a 2 week road trip around Southern USA. Hope you like it!

If anybody wants to know the location of a specific place just leave a comment and the time on the video.

Any hints/tips/criticism would be appreciated to improve future videos

@Real_Earth

Shen Neng 1, A Sign of Things to Come?

The Great Barrier Reef is one of the seven wonders of the natural world. It’s nearly 2000 miles long and up to 40 miles wide in some parts. To put that into perspective the Grand Canyon is 10% of the length, at only 280 miles long. The Great Barrier Reef is not only the largest living thing in the world, but the only living body visible from space. It holds the world’s largest collection of coral, with over 400 different kinds, 1500 species of tropical fish, sea turtles, giant clams (over 120 years old) and so much more. And now it’s got an added feature of a stranded Chinese coal ship leaking hundreds of tonnes of oil.

Coral reefs cover just 1% of the ocean surface but account for 25% of all marine species. The Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia accounts for over 40% of all reefs around the world making it the largest coral reef system in the world. A 2004 study estimates that since the 1950s, twenty percent of all reefs worldwide have been destroyed, with no chance of recovery, and an additional twenty-four percent of reefs were under “imminent threat of collapse”.

So even before this most recent incident climate change, acidity levels, over-fishing, coral mining, and other types of pollution and human activity threatened the reef. Climate change, of course, has had one of the largest impacts on the reef in recent years though. Carbon Dioxide (CO2) dissolves in the seawater which in turn increases acidity, making it more difficult for coral organisms to grow and maintain their shells.

The ship which has crashed was carrying 72,000 tons of coal from Queensland to China for power plants in China, but this is not the issue. The ship could have been carrying nothing but flowers and it would have the same impact on the reef after the crash, as it is the ships fuel which is leaking on

the untouched reef. Although only a tiny amount of the 975 tons of fuel carried has leaked so far, there is the worry that if the ship is moved it could rapidly increase the leakage by either splitting the rip even more (A 3km trail of oil has already escaped). Australian officials have also warned the ship is unable to move unaided at present as the rudder and engine have been damaged.

The bulk carrier crashed into the reef at full speed 24km off its set course, well outside the authorised shipping corridor, which begs the question: Why? There has been an investigation launched to find this out but it’s also thought that this is the third major international incident involving its owners in four years.

The captain of the ship, responsible for destroying the beauty of an untouched wonder of the world, could be fined up to $250,000 whilst the owners of the shipping company have been fined a total of $1 million… If the reef contains 25% of all marine species does this mean the entire ocean is only worth $4 million? This is of course ludicrous! The amount put in place is simply to scare other shipping owners and to try and prevent this happening in the very near future.

But this could be a sign of what is to come. This is the third oil spill of its type in a year, off the coast of Australia, and as Gladstone is trying to increase into Australia’s major port the amount of traffic will no doubt increase.

Will the increased need for fuel and transport mean our oceans will suffer? Is there anything we, the public, can do to prevent such things happening again?

Earth Hour

First post!

Rather than blogging as such, this time i'm just posting something I've made. It's just a short amateur video showing before and after shots of various cities around the world during Earth Hour... Hope you all like it, let me know what you think and if it's popular there will be more videos! It is by no means professional so please forgive a certain amount of shoddiness :-)

http://twitter.com/real_earth