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Welcome to the October issue of the 365 Days newsletter. In this Issue: Post your ideas, suggestions for books and interesting websites on the 365act website. |
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Many of the things this month are about the environment. Read, Enjoy. Act!
Because nobody needs a single glove, Do The Green Thing has come up with this idea. Single gloves picked up by people across the country are washed, paired and sold in gloriously sustainable “Glove Love”. Watch Glove Story narrated by Emma Thompson, see the Lauren Budd In Glove Love photos, see the moving Lonely Glove pictures and, for a mere £5, get yourself some Glove Love. www.dothegreenthing.com Stop Press: Glove Love, Green Thing's latest thing, is the stylish and sustainable union of the country's single gloves. Trouble is, our Glove Love pairs are selling out fast so we need more single gloves. If you have one or have seen one then please don't waste it. - grab it, send it to Green Thing and help make Glove Love. Gary Marlow wants to organise 30 fundraising events for 30 charities and raise £300,000. He is inviting people to donate “sums with a thirty” such as 30p, 300p, £30, £30.30 etc. He also has an ambitious plan to work with schools, which will take part in the "PennyforPeople". His target is over 60million people in the UK to raise £600,000. As he says, “Who knows if this can be achieved; but let’s plan big!” All marketing and PR will be around "What will you do in 30 seconds, 30 minutes, etc.” And once the challenges are in place, you can then send these to – you guessed it – 30 of your friends and contacts. Gary is planning on making this a mission for the next 30 years – by which time his daughter who was born this year on the 30th will then take over. Gary runs Global Tennis: www.globaltennis.co.uk Get Gary’s twitter : http://twitter/30430 Volunteer from home. Change the world in just your pyjamas. Help from Home has created a range of simple actions for you to undertake, from just a few seconds to a lot longer. Check out the website. There are lots of interesting things to do. Here are some: Contribute to Project Linus by creating a homemade blanket that gets distributed to children in hospitals, shelters, social service agencies, or anywhere that a child might be in need of a big hug. They have distributed over two million blankets to children in need since their inception in 1995. Time taken around 30 minutes. Don’t be a wet blanket; make one today. Webcam Watch: Spot the Loch Ness Monster. A webcam has been set up overlooking Loch Ness in Scotland, UK specifically to catch a glimpse of that ever elusive animal known as Nessie, The Loch Ness Monster. If you see something peculiar, click the 'Snapshot' button and submit your picture. Participate in the Rosetta Project: If you have any fine illustrated antique children's books, no matter what language they are in, then scan them in and pass them on to The Rosetta Project at Children's Books Online. Translators of the scanned in foreign language books are also required. Make a sick person or a senior smile: Postpals provides a list of very sick children, to whom you can write a card, letter, Email, sign their guestbook or even send a gift to them, all in attempt to keep them smiling during the course of their illness and hopefully, eventual recovery. Create a green roof for your home. Having a roof covered with growing plants brings lots of benefits: Reduction of Urban Heat Island: Research in Tyndale Centre for climate change suggests we need a 10% increase in green space in our cities to combat climate change. This is particularly relevant to the reduction in the Urban Heat Island [UHIE]. Green roofs are recognized to have a positive effect on reducing the UHIE Biodiversity: Green roofs can provide important refuges for wildlife in urban areas. Research in Switzerland and the UK has demonstrated that green roofs can provide important refuges for rare invertebrate populations. Water: Green roofs can significantly reduce the surface run off volumes and rates of rainfall leaving roofs. As a source control mechanism in the Sustainable Urban Drainage System green roofs can help reduce flash floods as a consequence of intense rainfall events. This will become increasingly important as a consequence of climate change. Green roofs also improve the quality of water and although the amount of water is reduced it is possible to rainfall harvest from roofs that have been greened. Thermal Performance: Green roofs cannot be given a U-value at present. However they have been shown to significantly reduce the need for air conditioning in summer and can provide a degree of insulation in winter. Sound Insulation: The combination of soil, plants and trapped layers of air within green roof systems can act as a sound insulation barrier. Sound waves are absorbed, reflected or deflected. The growing medium tends to block lower sound frequencies whilst the plants block higher frequencies. Protection of Waterproofing: The original green roofs in Germany stem from covering wet bitumen with 6cm of sand, which became vegetated. This covering was to protect the wet bitumen from fire. Green roofs have now been shown to double if not triple the life of waterproofing membranes beneath the green roof. Air Quality: airborne particles and pollutants are filtered from the atmosphere by the substrates and vegetation on a green roof. Amenity Space: in dense urban environments there is often a lack of green space for residents. Roof Gardens and roof top parks provide important green spaces to improve the quality of life for urban residents. Urban Agriculture: Urban Rooftop Food Growing – roofs, where strong enough provide a space for urban food growing. Although many large flat roofs may not have the loading capabilities to hold food growing some roofs will and the many balconies in are urban areas are ideal. It all sounds too good to be true. Check out the Living Roofs website: www.livingroofs.org
Green Rewards is a loyalty programme which offers members the opportunity to earn points for their everyday shopping, and use them to spend on ecologically based products, services and experiences. They offer products from a number of suppliers, large and small, who are dedicated to providing products which are both useful and fashionable, whilst at the same time helping to contribute positively to the environment. They also have a range of other ecologically based services including experiences, memberships, charitable donations and opportunities to offset your carbon footprint. When you join, you get a Personal Account which will detail all of the points you have earned and allow you to 'spend' these points online for products in The Green Shop. www.greenrewards.co.uk You can also shop at this Ghana-based e-store, which has lots of really nice stuff, including hand-painted barber signs with a range of different haircuts. A great purchase to commemorate some important event or to fill that space on your wall. You’ll also be helping the Ghanean economy: http://eshopafrica.com La Biennnale is an international art festival in Venice which takes place once every two years. These were two of the exhibits which had something of a social conscience:: 1. A collection of signs written by people panhandling for small change: PLEASE HELP! (New York) TRAVELLING. BROKE. HUNGRY. NEED SOME KINDNESS! ANYTHING YOU CAN SPARE HELPS! THANK YOU SO MUCH! (Liverpool) BROKE. STUCK. OUT OF LUCK. TRYING TO GET HOME. PREGNANT. HUNGRY. EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP & GENEROSITY (New York) PLEASE HAVE A HEART. THANK YOU (London) Make your own collection. Give a little help when you can. Engage in conversation; people on the street and in dire need may have intersting stories about their lives, and may welcome the warmth of sharing these with you. 2. Spot the weeds (by Jef Geys in the Belgian Pavilion) Draw a square of approximately 1 – 2 kms on a map with your home or workplace at the centre. Search for 12 plants within that square that definitely grow on the street (so-called weeds). Photograph the plant. Photograph the street name. Harvest the plant. Dry it. Mount it. Identify it and add botanical information from some encyclopaedia, including what it can be used for (medicinal or other purposes, for example, is it useful to a home less person with a toothache?). The exhibit showed a large number of locations. Just do this project where you are. Hamburgers are the Hummers of food in global warming! Producing meat, especially beef, is really energy intensive, and cows release a huge amount of harmful methane into the atmosphere. Emissions are created by the farmer, the abattoir, the transport in chilled containers, cooking, but also by the cows releasing methane. Simply switching from steak to chicken or going veggie could cut as much carbon as leaving the car at home a couple days a week. Nathan Pelletier of Dalhousie University in Canada studyies the environmental costs of food from field to plate.By looking at everything from how much grain a cow eats before it is ready for slaughter to the emissions released by manure, we are getting a clearer idea of the true environmental costs of food. The livestock sector is estimated to account for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions and beef is the biggest culprit.In the developed world beef accounts for just 30% of meat consumption, but is responsible for 78% of meat-related emissions. Producing a single kilo of beef creates the equivalent of 16 kilos of carbon emissions – four times higher than pork and more than ten times as poultry.Switching from beef to chicken cuts the carbon by 70%. Meat consumption is rising rapidly. It was once considered a luxury; now many people expect to eat it every day. The average meat consumption in the developed world is around 85 kilos a year of meat and 210 litres of milk (equivalent to 6 sausages, 2 chicken breasts, 4 meat sandwiches, 8 slices of bacon, 3 burgers, 3 litres of milk and 100 grams of cheese each week). The diet recommended by Tara Garnett of the Food Climate Research Network would cut this to 500 grams of meat and 1 litre of milk a week (equivalent to 2 sausages, 1 chicken breast, 3 slices of bacon, 1 burger, and 1 litre of milk or 100 grams of cheese each week). Meat production is growing all over the world, especially in countries like China and Japan. By 2050 it’s set to double. We would have to halve our meat-related emissions just to maintain current emissions levels. Technical improvements in farming and transport or buying meat produced locally will not be sufficient. Do this. Start by eating one less meat meal a week. Then see how far you can go. Check out the following: Atlas of Population and Environment at the American Association for the Advancement of Science: http://atlas.aaas.org Food Climate Research Network: www.fcrn.org.uk Sustainable Food Lab: www.sustainablefoodlab.org With the human population at its highest level and growing, Planet Earth is feeling an enormous strain. This makes it increasingly difficult to provide sufficient food, water and habitats for humans and nature. Most disturbing is the impact on children, with lifespans of some of the current generation expected to be shorter than that of their parents.Thousands of development, conservation and community organisations are working to address these pressures, but efforts are often fragmented, poorly funded and not to the scale required. Healthy Planet will encourage you to create positive change by taking small steps that will make a big difference. Take responsibility for making change! This is one of their activities and work towards a healthier planet. Become a Land Guardian: Approximately 12% of planet Earth is protected by law in recognition of its crucial role in providing the food, water, and stable climate essential for sustaining life. Unfortunately it’s often difficult to enforce this protection, which is where Land Guardians can help. By adopting protected park land, your money from your donation will be funneled directly to that territory, and the efforts in place to conserve it.You become a “Guardian” for the plot you’ve chosen. However, you won’t own it, and you can’t buy it, sell it or rent it. You are simple adopting it. Your donation will be channeled directly to that territory, and assist the efforts to conserve it. This is how it works: • Adopt land businesses in any of the 77,000 protected parks around the world. Do this for yourself or dedicate it to a loved one or a schools. • Google Earth provides satellite images of all the protected parks, including the one you have chosen. • Over 90% of your donation will go directly to the park you have chosen. • A plaque that you design will be designated for your plot and viewed online for as long as you serve as Land Guardian. • You can participate in forums by providing input on how your donation is spent, and receive updates on the projects you fund. You are encouraged to engage in conservation initiatives like mapping and monitoring from your home. There are also resource packs for schools to use our resources for free, including exploring, mapping and monitoring the world's 77,000 protected parks. Participating schools can adopt land as part of the Healthy Learning' programme. All the money raised by the school after any direct costs will be invested in the school (via a simple grant scheme for health and environmental education); the protected park or conservation project that has been chosen; and Healthy Planet towards its operations and campaigning. www.healthyplanet.org Stephen Lloyd suggests: Buy fairtrade rubber bands and other projects from the new Fair Deal Trading website: www.fairdealtrading.com Joe Feltham suggests the following: 1. Be inspired by Hans Rosling giving talks at TED conferences: www.ted.com/speakers/hans_rosling.html 2. Read David MacKay's book, “Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air”: http://withouthotair.co.uk 3. Check out the Google 10 to the 100th competition to find world-changing ideas which the Google Foundation will invest in. This is to celebrate Google’s 10th birthday, and a “google” mathematically is 10 to the power of 100. www.project10tothe100.com James Greenshields writes: I would like to introduce the new website for Inside Job Productions (IJP), the income-generating arm of Media for Development (MFD), which makes films and other communications aids whilst offering training and employment opportunities to offenders and ex-offenders. Working in partnership with Downview women’s prison in Surrey, the scheme provides prisoners on day release with the opportunity to help turn their lives around by enabling them to work as production assistants at IJP and thereby gain work and life experience which will generate increased confidence and new skills. www.insidejobproductions.org.uk Malcolm Tattersall writes: With regard to The Triple R's (Reduce, Reuse, & Recycle): I am very proud of our efforts here in Concord, New Hampshire. They recently started a "pay as you go" trash and garbage collection system. All recyclable materials are picked-up for free. Trash costs $2.00 per 30 gallon bag and $1.00 per 15 gallon bag. The waste stream has reduced to less than 10% of the previous volume. It’s amazing what folks will do to save a buck or two! Congratulations to Concord's Mayor, Jim Bouley for the excellent Pay As You Throw program! www.ci.concord.nh.us/GSADMIN/PAYT/c...siteindx=G10,13 And two more ideas: Green MAP Maps: The Green Map platform enables local communities to map assets and resource flows. A new book features fascinating illustrated narratives by local green mapmakers in countries. http://tiny.cc/PGTBX and www.greenmap.org/greenhouse/files/Green_Map_Impacts_09.pdf Chips that weigh as much as a car. The energy consumption of electronic devices is skyrocketing: the electricity consumption of computers, cell phones, flat screen TV's, iPods and other gadgets will double by 2022 and triple by 2030. And that's just the power needed to use them; more important is the energy required to manufacture electronic equipment. A handful of microchips embody as much energy as a car. Low-Tech Magazine has posted a long and detailed analysis: http://tiny.cc/X2dns and http://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883301157108f109970b-pi |
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