Recyling gets strange

A friend sent me this article in the International Herald Tribune on how someone got fined for not closing his bin, setting off a bit of a local protest. Somehow every day we're finding new happenings with green living. Just the other day there was a local competition to see who the "greenest" person was. Anyway, I think it seems good and all to encourage efforts like recycling and sometimes you need to give people a push, but found some of the things said in this article was pretty amusing, perhaps not in a good way.

exerpts:

The situation:
 "Many now collect trash every other week, instead of every week. They limit the amount of a household's garbage and refuse to pick up more. They require that garbage be put out only at specific times; reject whole boxes of recyclables that contain the odd nonrecyclable item; and employ enforcement officers who issue warnings and impose fines for failure to comply."

The behaviour it begets (sow good neighborly relations at the same time!):
"As regulations get more stringent and enforcement more robust, there have been reports across the country of incensed residents shouting and throwing trash at garbage collectors, illegally dumping and burning excess garbage and even surreptitiously tossing trash in neighbors' garbage cans or stealing those cans.

"It's like something out of 'Mad Max,"' Paul Nicholls, a resident of Cannock, near Birmingham, told The Guardian newspaper recently, describing the free-for-all in his town at garbage-collection time. "Every man for himself, scavenging for an extra bin.""

What you have to do to throw away your garbage (get fit at the same time):
 "My bin's always full," said a 62-year-old Whitehaven resident, who says that he can get five bags in there if he jumps on them vigorously enough."

The possible future (big brother style):
"Under one plan, people's garbage cans would be fitted with microchips, enabling local councils to record the weight or volume of garbage per household."

Easy vegetarian

Realised there were some really easy veggie dishes I could manage that don't even require me to heat the wok:

1. Grilled mushrooms - just add olive oil, basil, garlic and grill. Optional other herbs, black pepper and whatever other seasonings you fancy but prob x necessary
2. Ready made Kimchi - just buy at supermarket.
3. Taiwanese toufu - buy at major supermarkets, cut and add chilli and soya sauce

Feel free to suggest more...:)

Oh, any more able to sign the pledge? Looks like we may not make this one! ;p

Bookmarking

Dear all readers,

I've started a bookmarking group at ma.gnolia.com here:
http://ma.gnolia.com/groups/greenissues

I'd like to invite all to join. Basically you can add relevant links there so we can gather interesting eco-articles, keeping a list of those we have discussed here on the blog or haven't had the opportunity to. Do join and add on to it. There is also a place for discussions on the group page. See you there.

Fish, etc.

Clownfishes at East of Eden
Originally uploaded by takau99

Last week, Arts Central was broadcasting "Blue Earth" (I think it was on Tuesday, getting forgetful these days). Anyway, they made some interesting points that we should take note of:

a) if we are keen on protecting land animals, protecting rainforests and other natural spots on land, then why is there no movement to save and protect the seas?
b) recreational fish (ie. the exotic fish you see in fish tanks) are being caught illegally in some countries using cyanide. These fish are rushed to importing countries and usually die within a few weeks due to the effects of cyanide. The most devastating effect of the cyanide is that it suffocates the coral. The documentary said that you can ask the shop owner whether the exotic fish were caught with cyanide; my take is that wouldn't it better not purchase them at all?
c) fishermen who fish for specific fish or crustaceans are doing a lot of damage to the ocean's ecosystem. Actually, unsustainable fishing is damaging, full stop, but the documentary got me thinking about eating prawns. Apparently, prawns live on the ocean bed (I think lobsters and crabs do as well) and in order to catch them, the fishermen use a large net that rakes the bed and catches anything and everything. Yes, just for a few prawns. I can't remember the exact figures, but it was roughly x times more kg of non-specific catch to 1 kg of prawn.
d) on the same topic, because of the large drag nets used by fishermen, a lot of young fish get caught and die before being tossed back into the sea.
e) it seems like the solution is either to create nature reserves in the ocean, or fish farming. According to scientists, the nature reserves can co-exist with fishermen as the push the abundant sealife beyond the reserve's borders. Fish farming is very intensive as you still need to get food (sometimes fish that is eaten by the poor) to feed the fish, and some use drugs to make the fish healthy.

Hmmmm......this is difficult, shld I eat meat, vegetables, fish? Everything definitely has an impact but it's a matter of how much. My take is that if I eat in moderation, could I still be able to do my part in reducing pollution and climate change? No gluttony? Buy only what you need and not what you want?

(posted on behalf of Agy)

Green detergents

A test of six green dish soaps | By Katharine Wroth | Grist | The Bottom Line | 17 Jun 2008
I'm currently using the Dishmate - Apricot.

Buying books?

Stumbled across this website whilst looking for a book that is out of print and which I knew I had to buy online. Interesting project that combines a goal of world literacy with environmental causes. The books can be slightly higher than at Amazon but if so they will tell you. I've bought the book I was trying to find and will update on how things go, and if all goes well, I may start buying from here instead. I especially like that you can buy used books and also that each book's shipping is set at roughly S$4 (US$2.97).

Conflicts and "green noise"

Remember all the conflicting signals we're getting - like using disposable so as not to waste water or using ceramic so we don't dispose? Well, we're not alone. Just read this New York Times article (and more people oughta send me their links or we'll only get NYT ones! ;p)And seems like people are burning out and overwhelmed with all the information and conflicting signals, such that it's even called "noise". True true, is it that I'm seeing A LOT more things on being green or is it because I have been more interested? hmmm...well, I certainly didn't notice that green section on Amazon the last time I visited...did you?

Wall decals

Received these in the mail. Purpose is to remind us to save electricity, by turning air conditioners to 25C or above and to change to energy efficient lightbulbs. Interesting idea and 34 got straight on it (more for the novelty and fun of it actually).

My Vegy Bake...

Okie, Sweeteepye reminded me to put up a photo of my vegy meals. This one's the vegy bake, but only 1/4 portion as my son and I had already gobbled some of it the previous night. I had it with some brown rice. Anyway, my son loves this, and he usually hates spinach & mushrooms!

(sorry about the close up; the lcd screen of my camera has died)

So, here's the recipe! It's from a tofu recipe book I got from the library. As you can see, it's all in cups! I'm not a cup fan (Brit trained) but you can just estimate!

Ingredients:

12 oz tofu

3 eggs (beaten)

1.5 tbsp all-purpose flour

1/4 cup onion, chopped; 1/2 cup of chopped spinach leaves or any other vegetable; 1 can of thinly sliced mushrooms

2tbsp margarine

1.5 cups of shredded cheddar cheese (I used about 180g)

1 cup half and half ( I have no idea what this is, but I used water instead)

1/4 tsp salt; dash of pepper

a) Place tofu on paper towel and dry

b) mash tofu; add salt & pepper and the flour

c) Melt margarine in a pan on low heat; add all vegys; cook until tender; remove from heat

d) Heat oven to 350C. Mix water with tofu and beat until smooth.

e) Add eggs to tofu mixture and beat until smooth

f) Add cooked vegys and mix well. Add cheese and stire

g) Coat baking dish with thin film of oil & sprinkle with flour

h) pour mixture into dish and bake for 35-45 min or until fork comes out clean!

i) enjoy with a salad or brown rice.

less meat but not no meat

So far so good on the pledge. Tho' I ended up eating naan for two days straight. :)

This article at the New York Times is going in a similar vein with ideas on reduction of meat. A different slant though, was that instead of eating "vegetarian" in reducing meat, you can eat meals with less meat, like instead of a 200g, make it 100g (of meat). It makes sense too, as it just spreads over the reduction over meals. However, guess for practicality the pledge just is simpler to say one meal devoid, as it might be difficult to ask for less meat in certain dishes, or might not make sense and I for one wouldn't know what 100g or 200g of meat looks like. But anyway, the article provides some tips and links to recipes!

Local eco-groups now draw sponsors

The interesting in "greening" seems to be gaining from strength to strength. I'm hearing it everywhere, with at least 1-2 articles a day on this issue of green living, sustainability, recycling, global warming, plastic bags, etc etc. So, perhaps not so surprising but yet good news that Local eco-groups now draw sponsors (sent in by deadorblack). Seems a lot of companies are wanting to associate with this cause. Let's hope it doesn't lead to bad greenwashing.

Agy's vegy diet so far....

Here's my one vegy meal a day diet so far, well sometimes two vegy meals (excluding bkfast which is just bread and milk). It can be done and it doesn't have to be plain!

Mon lunch - whole wheat pasta with pumpkin and black beans (left overs from Sun dinner)
Mon dinner - vegetarian lasagne (good old tomatoes, aubergine and cheese topping)

Tues lunch - vegy lasagne from Mon
Tues dinner - okay, I had to have some meat. I had roast chicken, steamed fish and baby spinach

Wed lunch - economy rice with loofa, beans and cabbage. Surprisingly, it was nice but I did feel a little peckish at tea time! Cheap also! It came to $3.
Wed dinner - vegetable bake - spinach, mushrooms, mashed tofu and egg backed together with a nice cheese topping ....hmmmmm

For mommies out there, the vegetable bake and vegy lasagne are my son's favourites :-)

The Official Meatrix II: Revolting - dairy

This is pretty corny at some parts, but the part of how the baby cows are fed is also really scary. I mean, it does make sense, how else are the baby cows getting fed when the humans are taking all the milk? This is a hard issue for me personally as although I don't take milk my girl does and she simply loves it.

Vegetarian Society's SEEDS

VSS VCD Vegetarian Society (Singapore)
A free resource from the Vegetarian Society. I had the previous version (with a different cover) and it was interesting. I even lent it to my friends and did a "home screening" (yes, some of you remember?) ;p I've not yet seen this one (2006) but the one I had was a good introduction to some reasons to go vegetarian, including animal welfare, health and environmental issues.

One part, "Meet your Meat" is available online.

The Official Meatrix I

Was introduced this video long time ago. Cute spoof to show the state of farming conditions.

So how are we with the pledge?

Vegetarian BLT 7, originally uploaded by Dulcedo Blog.

Looks goody goody, even tho I really dislike tomatoes. ;p The greens look tempting. Ok, at this point some of you non veggies out there are vigorously shaking ur heads. I should know, after putting up the pledge, several people have said "I can't do it!", "it's too hard!", and "I seriously need to consider". On the other hand, others said, "no problem", "very doable", "done", "so chicken" (oops, forgive the anti-pun).

Some even told me they could do this in a pinch but the plastic bags one was just too too difficult for them. ;p

Tell me how you're getting on ya?

awwww, are we done with plastic bags yet?

Orange bag, originally uploaded by ..george.

Ok, so you thought we were but here I am with another post. :) Considering articles like this one (Phasing out plastic bags: A dissenting voice) we may be on this topic for a long while more.

Actually, during my promotion and discussions of the plastic bag pledge, quite a few issues came out. I haven't blogged about them as yet because I wanted to do a lot more research on them and perhaps find a solution to propose, but then again it think it's beyond me. Am inspired to post today because of two recent forum articles, "Who says burning plastic does no harm?" and "The truth about plastic bags: they are a menace to the environment".

Firstly, a lot a lot of people asked me, "How am I supposed to bag my rubbish tnen?" and even, "Didn't NEA say we needed plastic bags to bag rubbish?". To this I did write a comment on the plastic bag pledge page , basically to say I am thinking the possible "solutions" (some not really outright solutions) to this would be that we may have to change our way of disposal somehow (logistics), we recycle more to reduce the need for plastic bags as rubbish bags (like in Korea for example, see the video) and for our food and perishables, we compost via normal composting or using worms - vermicomposting (which I would admit would not be practical for most flat dwellers). I guess with a few things here and there like swapping, bartering, freecycling, etc. we may reduce our waste to nil, which I have heard at least one person managing to do, though now I've lost the link to that story. And of course, we can consider using biodegradables, although unfortunately, like biofuel these may be made from crops and then we go on to another contraversy.

Another thing brought up was "what's the big deal about filling up the landfill, don't we incinerate?", well, that was brought up too in the forum article I mentioned, Who says burning plastic does no harm? Yep, in the end, we still need landfills. Also, burning releases carbon and burning of some plastics (even incinerated) also releases carcinogens.

And then, how about this hype thing going on? Well, quite a lot of discussion has been done on plastic bags on this blog, see "Are we wasting precious time on plastic bags?" and the debated proposed Australian plastic bag ban

Our new pledge, on eating less meat, has a debate in similar vein - i.e. "what does it help?" Even, "it makes things worse". So much so it boggles the mind. How about the forum article yesterday saying it doesn't solve world hunger? wow, solving world hunger is an ambitious project and I don't think anyone actually claimed that vegetarianism would in fact solve it once and for all, if in the first place everyone did turn to it (personally, I think that's when pigs fly? or perhaps when there are no pigs left in this world, rather). This problem involves, as hinted in the comments of that article, economics, politics, social/behavioral, science, etc...too simplistic to think it solves just by switching.

Then, what is it we're doing? It's just doing what we can, as individuals, in our own capacity.

Love ur private transport but feelin' the pinch?

Interesting - Some learn to make biodiesel with recycled cooking oil. What a description - cooking but on a grander scale! ;p Wonder if people are worried if it harms their cars. And wonder how much mileage you can get. I would agree, it doesn't seem like it'd be able to provide everyone's needs though.
Thanks to deadorblack who sent it in.

Here we go!

Strangely, though me and Agy thought about this, we didn't post it up till now as Agy took the weekend to do the writeup, and then today we were surprised that this issue is the talk of the town actually!

Thanks to deadorblack for these two forum articles on the issue of meat and global warming:

Vegetarianism can help in food and climate crises
70% of grain in US goes to meat industry

A peek...

humane society vegan ad, originally uploaded by Elaine Vigneault.

A peek into our next pledge shortly coming up, read this NY Times article...(two issues with one pledge - animal welfare and global warming. Neat :))

Exerpts:
“You just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist,” - Mr Prescott (PETA)

“Our mission is to protect animals, and global warming has become an animal welfare issue,” - Mr Shapiro (HSUS)

"...I guess the environmentalists recognize that it’s a lot easier to ask people to put in a fluorescent light bulb than to learn to cook with tofu.” - Mr Ball (Vegan Outreach)

The other culprit to declining shark population

While doing some reading the link between declining shark populations and Asians (well, mostly Chinese) eating sharks fin as a delicacy, I stumbled across a Discovery Channel article about how some European countries are responsible for the decline of one species of shark, the spiney dogfish. The report states that the shark is used for example in fish and chip shops in the UK (in place of cod, which is already low in stock) and packed as "salmon" in France.

So, shouldn't we target everyone who eats shark?

Green Campaigns...

NTUC FairPrice spends over $10,000 a month on green campaign - another one sent in by deadorblack, with this comment: "who cares how much they spend. shouldnt it be how much they save (e environment)?". She also wonders if the senior management of SMRT (of the Go Green, Go Public Campaign) "walks the talk" by taking public transport....(think no need to wonder).

'Bring Your Own Bag Day' campaign gets positive response (??)

'Bring Your Own Bag Day' campaign gets positive response. Deadorblack added though, that in The New Paper, responses from the public were more negative, as it was reported that some consumers actually dumped their food at the counter. deciding not to buy at all when they found out they had to  'donate' 10 cents for each plastic bag. Other said it was a hassle and troublesome and they would avoid shopping on Wednesdays.

Well, this whole thing reminds me of something else I read on Slacktivism, which is defined as "the act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem." According to the article, Slacktivism "refers to ersatz acts that people perform that they have somehow come to believe are full of meaning, like slapping a magnetic ribbon on your car to "support the troops," wearing a colored rubber wristband to "fight cancer," or refusing to buy gasoline on a certain day to protest high gas prices, instead of, say, actually changing your lifestyle to use less gas."

And included is an example of this plastic bag issue and how retailers are involved. I think again, it relates to my previous post below on the forum letter on having supermarkets step up to reduce plastic bag usage. The forum letter was titled "Green campaign losing steam". I didn't point this out earlier, but I don't think the "green" just refers to plastic bags and why are we supposing that the retailers have the responsibility in this?

     

Pledge successful!

Our pledge has reached its target, finally. :)
But you can still sign if you've not done so, as the deadline has not been reached, and we encourage you to do so still.

last one!

My my, the last one is a toughie! We've 19 people, one more to go to fulfil the numbers we were hoping for the pledge. Of course, more people can sign than just 20. It will just state that we have gone how many percent over 100%. :)

Envirosax and Reisenthel Review (by Coboypb)

greenBags, originally uploaded by hollyloo.

Foldable bags are easy to carry around in my bag. I got my first foldable shopping bag from a friend as a birthday gift. The folded Reisenthel bag is kept in a small pouch when it’s not in use.

I bought the Envirosax bag for the design and it can be carried on my shoulder unlike my Reisenthel bag. Reisenthel does have other types of shopping bags similar to Envirosax. Envirosax material feels slightly thicker and has attached buttons instead of a pouch to keep the folded bag in place.

Both bags are great for holding light items. I have tried using both bags to hold heavy stuff and they are clearly not made for heavy shopping as my fingers/shoulder will feel uncomfortable after a while. Well, we get the same numbed painful feeling from carrying plastic bags of heavy items.

Foldable bags are definitely useful in helping us reduce our reliance on plastic bags. Perhaps the next step after using foldable bags is to sew my own shopping bags.

Green campaign losing steam

This online forum letter, Green campaign losing steam, seems to be just in line with our pledge and previous recent posts of reusable bags. However, I tend to think that we cannot expect the onus to be on the supermarkets to encourage change. Basically they may not save much on asking customers not to take bags as it's already been factored in their costs from way back (and anyway plastic bags are probably still quite cheap to make despite the rise in fuel prices) so the motivation is lacking. In fact, being too forceful with the message may actually alienate their customers which would be turned off at not having a plastic bag so it could be to their own harm. The culture is rather ingrained and I don't think everyone is yet convinced that it's necessary to do anything about plastic bag usage. On the other hand, I see that reusable bags are making quite a good trade, maybe sometimes I think too good if people are buying and not using them.

What do you think? Where/with whom should the onus lie?

And, I think to quantify all this talk about plastic bags, they are not the be all and end all of the environmental movement.

Related posts:

• Weirdly confusing eco battles
• Green in the Office
• Plastic bag ban?
• Are we wasting precious time on plastic bags?
• Australian plastic bag ban
• Plastic, Paper and alternatives

Pledge experiences

We asked those who signed the pledge to send in their experiences in carrying it out. Thanks to Faith for the below contribution:

I started out today and I survived day 1 without taking a plastic bag though I went shopping! yippee! But I really think I will need a sturdier and bigger bag or more bags if I want to go totally plastic bag free! Went to world book fair and bought quite a few items unexpectedly. Managed to squeeze into my orange bag and the last item had to go into my backpack, luckily I carried my backpack today! :)
 
The difficult part is when I need to get food. Worried about spills in my bag should I need to stuff them in. It gets tougher travelling with a kid and stroller. A few times I was tempted to just request for a bag so that I can carry my stuff with ease! But yeah, I resisted the temptations! Hee hee.
 
okie that's only for day 1. I hope I will persist for the days to come and it becomes a habit to just pull out my recycling bag :)

Next on, maybe getting friends to also pledge, or convince a friend to switch over. I think the hardest is to convince older folks?

Send yours in at greenissuessg@gmail.com