John's Weird World

Books per se are not that green.  They use lots of resources in their manufacture, are printed in one place and have to be carted all over the place and are heavy.  Most are only read once and then sit in a bookshelf... OK, bookshelves are a way of sequestering carbon, but really we should share our books and use libraries more... but I am going to suggest you go and buy a good book. (And when you've read it, lend it to friends!)

I am very fond of Kate Lock, whom I first came accross as a columnist in the York Press, and soon met as she was having some problems with her compost and she asked a volunteer York Rotter to come and sort it out.  It turned out that she was on some kind of mission to be greener and that my assisting her meant that I would appear in the book she was crafting.  That book is now on sale and I have spent a good few hours of my holiday immersed in it..   'Confessions of an Eco-Shopper, the true story of one woman's mission to go green' (ISBN 978 0340 954676, Hodder & Stoughton 2008) is an excellent read, with everyday challenges such as having a veggie-box delivery and wondering what to do with unknown veg,  growing her own herbs and salads, ethical fish suppers, dispensing with the bleach and using vinegar instead, experimenting with 'green and reusable' sanitary protection, finding out if fair-trade tastes as good as 'ordinary' teas and coffees.  Kate put a lot of effort into researching the book, trialling all-sorts of products and lifestyle changes.  Of course my favourite 'Isle' (its arranged like a supermarket!) is the one on rubbish and recycling, where we follow her path from non-composter to happy and successful rotter, even trying out a wormery and 'Bokashi' to recycle her cooked and meaty foodstuff wastes.

I read the book cover to cover, and learned a lot.  It is really good to read a female approach to living a greener life... so many commentators are male, and they tend not to write about clothes, cosmetics or sanitary-wear.  So I am going to shamelessly plunder some of these topics for future blog posts.  Although Kate thanks me for helping her with her composting, I'm sure she will see this as a 'fair swap'!

I get the feeling that it's actually Gordon agreeing with me... has he been reading this blog?  Well, maybe, but I was pleased that the issue of wasted food was raised at the highest political levels, at the G8 Summit in Japan.  Many people were not pleased at Brown's 'advice' and the fact that the group had a huge multi-coursed meal with associated..... WASTE!!!

What will you do when there's less oil?  How will you or your children live?  How will your community cope?  Life won't just stop when the price of oil reaches a certain point, and that figure, that 'line in the sand' won't be the most expensive this raw material will be.  Expect oil to keep getting more expensive, and everything which uses it or the energy it provides.  Factor in climate change, and the uncertainties in these scenarios, and the future is looking somewhat tough, for some: bleak.

But for some people, it looks like a challenge, a series of opportunities for humanity to evolve and progress.  A grassroots movement is underway called Transition Towns, and as many of these aren't actually towns, they're districts, cities, islands and even forests, the label may be better known as 'Transition Initiatives'.  These communities are preparing for the double whammy of post-peak oil and climate chaos by going local, 'powering down', generating renewable energy and strengthening community links.

There are already many activities, groups and initiatives which are in their own way working towards a transition towards a post-oil world.  Groups as diverse as cycling campaigns, allotment societies, 'breast is best' groups, ban plastic bag activists and those brave     climate camp people all know that we cannot go on with 'business as usual'.  We have to prepare, to start building resiliance to cope with what's coming. 

York has just started developing a 'York in Transition' process.  I couldn't get to the first meeting as I was talking to members of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health about the same issues of too much carbon dioxide being emitted and some of the solutions, but I attended the second meeting this week.  I am one of the optomists who sees the opportunities and challenges we have to rise to, I'm not the 'it's too big to deal with, I'll be dead soon, let's go down the pub to seek oblivion' type!

This week in Community Care magazine I have a column about Britain's favourite hobby, gardening. An essential part of any garden is making compost, and this is my favourite pastime, so much so that my wife says I have 'OCD', Obsessive Composting Disorder'.  I've been obsessed by it and related subjects since childhood... I used to put food items in glass jars and watch the various bacteria and moulds develop over days and weeks, and I've always liked mushrooms and creepy crawlies.  Since coming out as a 'green' in my early 20's I've known that home composting is the best way to recycle all of the stuff which goes smelly in your dustbin, to save energy with reduced bin-lorry weight, to reduce landfill space, to reduce pollution from landfills, to help biodiversity by creating habitat and food, to help trap carbon in soils, to help fertilise soils to grow healthier plants, to reduce the need for peat which should stay in peat bogs, to reduce the need for fertilisers which use fossil fuels in their manufacture, to help reduce rainwater evapotation from soils and not need irrigation.... I could go on and frequently do.  I even did my dissertation on composting!

So, armed with all those reasons to have a home compost heap or wormery, here's my 'short guide'.  Good compost needs three things, the right mix of materials, the right amount of air and the right amount of moisture.  That's all.  Get those right and biodegredation WILL happen!  Biodegradable materials are any which have come from living things recently, any plant materials or animal materials and their products.  There are a few exceptions, including rubber which has been vulcanised with sulphur (tyres and inner tubes don't rot, although natural latex rubber like balloons and marigold gloves do, eventually) and some plastics made from oil now have an additive which allows them to 'oxo-biodegrade'.  Rotting is the natural breakdown of complex materials into simpler ones (water, carbon dioxide, humus) by the action of bacteria, fungi, and other organisms such as worms.  I find the whole process almost magical!

As home composting is so beneficial and saves the local authority lots of money in landfill charges, most councils are subsidising compost bins, many with WRAP as their partner, and this website also has a good section on composting, one of many guides available.  So get a cheap compost bin, or make an enclosure using pallets, or just have an untidy pile in one corner of your garden.  Throw on a mixture of green/sappy/moist/'nitrogen rich' materials and brown/dry/'carbon rich' materials and wait.  Rainwater will help keep it moist, the browns will help it keep aerated, and turning it over and mixing it will help speed the process.  Your compost is finished when the materials look nothing like what you put in... it ia a brown, crumbly soil-like material.  This can be 'top-dressed' on soil to suppress weeds and conserve moisture as a mulch, or riddled and used to add to potting composts; I mix it with leafmold and loam to grow my tomatoes and cucumbers.

Many websites and books advise on not composting cooked food, meat etc, but this is just because rodents find these foods even more delicious and may find their way into heaps containing them.  It is possible though to make your heap rodent proof, or to process these materials using Bokashi or a wormery so they can be recycled too. Search the web for many suppliers of composting products, or for designs for home-made versions.

Last week, researchers at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that Carbon Dioxide levels had hit a new record high, of 387 parts per million (ppm), as measured by their research outpost in Mauna Loa, Hawaii.  This may not mean a lot to people less obsessed by CO2 levels than me, but it is significant, since the NOAA people say that the rate of accumulation is increasing, and is over 2ppm greater each year.  This is the highest CO2 concentration for 650,000 years, a level that humans have never experienced before.  This means that in just 6 or 7 years, the level will rise to 400ppm, a theoretical 'line in the sand' over which many scientists think that our climate will descend into chaos and become much more unpredictable and violent.

Regular readers may know that I started York Rotters, which is a 'Master Composter Scheme', training volunteers in the art of home composting, and enabling them to go out into the community to spread the word, to help their peers to start composting or to learn how to compost more successfully. One of the activities we do to engage peoples' interest and to get young people involved is to participate in the World Worm Charming Championships, York Heat.

A good way to eat at least your 'five a day' portions of fruit and vegetables is to have some of them dried... it's also an excellent way to preserve certain vegetables and fruit if you have a glut or manage to get a job-lot of cheap items or 'buy one get one free' deals. Dried food doesn't have as much 'goodness' as fresh, as some vitamins are lost, so I am not suggesting substituting dried fruit for fresh, but having some can be an enjoyable change or an addition. I mainly eat my dried fruit in my home-made muesli, but my children, who haven't graduated to muesli, have dried fruit instead of sweets (they have some sweeties too!)

Many people now understand the concept of embodied energy, ie the amout of fuel resources it has taken to make or grow something and to get it to the consumer. However, the concept of embodied water is just becoming known. This may be called 'virtual' or 'embedded' water and it is the amount of fresh water used to grow or manufacture something. Water is just as important to us as fuel and energy, if not more so, and to understand our true use of this much under-rated resource can help us behave more ethically.

I do not celebrate or do anything special for St. Valentine's Day. I do remember sending and receiving Valentine's cards when a teenager but since I've been married, and have been aiming to consume as little as possible, it just looks like another way for big business to make money, often at the expense of the environment. However this year I have been approached by a friend doing a media studies degree who wants to interview me about my views or experiences of the day, so as it approaches, I have been unusually aware of all the advertising and activity connected with it, confirming my cynical view.

Recently we've been bombarded with messages about obesity, how any processed meat can increase our cancer risk, food miles and carbon footprints, and there's so many cookery programmes on the box.

So, we can deduce that food, especially your 'five-a-day fruit and veg' is important! Now is the time of year when we can invest a little bit of time and money on getting some really good, fresh, local vegetables later in the year. It's time to plant some seeds and fruit trees or bushes, if you have space.

Some of you will have noticed that is 'Organic Fortnight', a time when producers and retailers celebrate and promote products grown without artificial fertilisers and pesticides... and hopefully persuade even more of us to choose to buy organic.

One of the most satisfying, healthy and green things I do is to grow some of my own food in the garden. I'm more of a composter than a grower, though, but I do manage to cultivate quite a few annuals (tomatoes, potatoes, climbing beans, squashes) and perennials (one of my favourites is blackberries) and I look after some fruit trees.

Not only does growing something connect you directly with the Planet, but if you grow edibles it reduces your reliance on bought food, and you are guaranteed it's fresh. There's nothing quite like picking sweetcorn and getting it into a pan of boiling water within a couple of minutes, and eating it just 5 minutes later.

You don't even have to have a garden, a pot of home-sown basil on a window-sill will be just as satisfying... and nearly everyone has access to a reasonably lit window-sill. For those with yards and no soil, a container or pot will enable you to try courgettes or beans, or salad leaves or even the humble spud. Once you have grown something successfully, you get a real buzz and want to do it the next year, and with many people it becomes an important part of their life. For those wanting to be really green, it is a central feature and can take over their life in a beautiful and positive way.

It is not too late in the season to start, although you won't have time to grow peppers from seed as they need putting in much earlier. But I reccommend planting some herbs, a squash, pumpkin or outdoor cucumber, and climbing French beans, which are far better than Runner beans, especially in a dry season. Spending a few moments organising this now will hopefully give you much satisfaction over the year, and should result in something delicious and edible... and be part of your attempt to live a greener lifestyle. Good luck!