Free range food: What is the price of freedom?

You can’t help but to have noticed that more and more supermarkets are starting to stock free range and organic produce. These previously speciality foods are slowly making their way into the mainstream and its about time too. Organic produce has been around for donkey’s years but it has taken such a long time to build up the amount of support it has got now. But it’s still not nearly enough, which is why the TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has launched his chicken out campaign to raise awareness of the poor conditions of most of the chickens in this country. Really there is no excuse for us to be keeping animals in these kinds of conditions. I’m sure most peoples’ excuse for not buying free range is that it’s too expensive but then it boils down to personal choices. I believe that everyone (within reason) can afford free range. By cutting down on luxuries such as alcohol, cigarettes and takeaways you can easily save the couple of pounds that would make the difference between intensively farmed chicken and free range. But then sadly a percentage of people in this country will not care or just won’t bother to think about it.

Low energy light bulbs – the great mercury shock

Like many people these days I’m keen to reduce my carbon footprint and do all the usual energy saving stuff. Changing your tungsten light bulbs to energy saving bulbs is one of the easiest ways to make a difference without breaking the bank. So I, like most people, found the recent news that these ‘planet saving’ light bulbs are in fact fairly toxic rather shocking. It’s now come to light that low energy light bulbs contain mercury and need to be disposed of by the council and good luck to you if you break one! I’m familiar with the recycling of electrical waste legislation and I know that new electrical goods have to have an ‘end of life’ strategy incorporated into their design. And this is why I’m so confused about this whole light bulbs mess. Why isn’t there any information on the box about how to dispose of them? Are they really better for the environment when they contain mercury? And most worrying of all; are people going to switch back to the old style energy hungry light bulbs because they are afraid? At a time when people are switching to organic produce and avoiding parabens in toiletries it’s surprising that something labelled as green can be so deceptively dangerous.

Nightmare before Christmas shopping: an ethical dilemma

This ethical shopping thing of mine has been going really well so far, until now. When it comes to the crunch, it’s actually really difficult to keep my morals whilst Christmas shopping. Some people are easy to shop for, some are happy with a charity donation or a charity sponsorship of some kind, whereas others are a little more complicated. I have found a few good ideas such as t-shirts from THTC, the RSPB shop and charitygifts but it’s a struggle to find exactly what I’m looking for. I might get a solio solar charger for my gadget obsessed techie friends.

Overall, my ethical shopping hasn’t been too problematic as fair trade and organic produce is becoming more and more main stream. Primark even have organic t-shirts but £4 they are hardly likely to be fair trade or anywhere near it. I have even seen TVs made of wood from sustainable forests for sale! So things are looking up. But it does seem that at Christmas all the environmental considerations seem to go out of the window. I know that I’m going to have to give in and buy a few things which wouldn’t normally fit in with my shopping rules but I don’t really have a choice. For once my morals are going to have to take a back seat whilst I buy stuff to make people happy. I’m sure I’ll be able to make up for it in the New Year. Maybe in the New Year I’ll extend my shopping rules to food. I have started to buy more organic and fair-trade food despite the huge price tags they carry so it is something I’m thinking about. Either way, I will definitely find a way to make up for my bad spending. Maybe I should spend a day without electricity and sit in the dark and think about what I have done.

Green washing for a white Christmas

It amazing me how at this time of year the press like to jump on the eco bandwagon and talk about having a ‘green Christmas’ when in actual fact, this time of year is a nightmare for the environment. I’m not just talking about all the trees being cut down and covered in tacky bits of tin foil (although all that plastic and nasty chemicals can’t help), I’m not talking about the huge amounts of wasted energy powering the Christmas lights all over the world or the waste of wrapping paper that gets used once then dumped into landfill. I’m talking about all the money spent on useless presents that no one really wants. Parents spend up to £500 per child at Christmas. I’m not some scrooge who wants to cancel Christmas or anything but a little bit of sensibility would be nice. I’ve seen parents take their kids to toys-r-us with a trolley and say ‘what do you want?’ Now that’s not what Christmas is all about.

I know it would probably be a disaster to the economy but what would happen if people only bought presents for friends and family that they knew that person would really like? What if we stopped buying toiletries, perfume and DVDs and bought meaningful presents that people would treasure rather than add to the already dusty collection of stuff that will get used/watched once if you’re lucky? I hate Christmas shopping, not for the usual reasons but because seeing so many people milling around looking for something, some generic ‘that will do’ gift for some aunty they haven’t seen in years, is such a waste of time and money. I don’t know what has caused this need to spend either. Perhaps it’s just the commercialisation of Christmas these days; fifty years ago kids were pleased with an orange for Christmas. Whatever the reason, it has spoilt Christmas for me. For me, Christmas has never been about presents but has always been about having sausages and bacon and a turkey for lunch.

Animal rights and human wrongs: ignorance to animal welfare

I’m currently reading an old book by Konrad Lorenz, one of the founders of the science of animal behaviour but I’m struggling with it. I’m not struggling with the content so much as I’m struggling to respect this great thinker due to what I suppose you could call ‘cultural differences’ or perhaps ‘ethical differences.’ You see, Lorenz kept a whole menagerie of animals in his house from song birds to lemurs and nowadays we would condemn such practise but in the 50’s issues of animal welfare were very much only beginning to be considered. In one chapter on pets he describes which birds are best bought from dealers or taken form nests to be kept as ‘interesting pets’. My edition of this book, printed in the 70s however, does contain a warning of the legality of the trade of some of the species he mentions. So it’s not all bad. At least in England anyway, we have same laws to protect our wildlife from the pet trade, however inadequate they maybe, it’s a start.

The sad thing is, 55 years after this book was written we still have a trade in exotic pets. Even Lorenz comments that with higher species the trade is ‘ethically dubious’ and since then the UK has introduced the Dangerous Wild Animals Act (1976). But since the introduction of the internet the trade has found new ways of doing business. Whilst browsing the other day I came across sites offering an array of animals for sale from sugar gliders to zebras, without so much as a disclaimer of the legality of the trade in certain species. Even the more well know sites such as eBay and youtube seem to have a rather laissez-faire attitude towards animal welfare laws with pelts and skins from cites listed species being advertised for sale on eBay and videos of pet tigers being taken for walks on youtube.

I wish I could end this rant on a lighter, positive note but I can’t. Even so called scientists aren’t doing us any favours. Recently a new pet cat called the ashera went on sale. The cat is a hybrid of the domestic cat and the serval. This dog sized cat is a beauty but how could any self respecting scientist believe it’s a good use of time and equipment to create a designer pet at the expense of genetic diversity of a rare cat? If only the time and research had been put into the conservation of this species instead of creating the feline equivalent of a prada bag.

Offsetting your guilty shopping

There are times when charity shops and ethical shopping don’t measure up and you end up in a chain store when you didn’t want to be. Things like pyjamas and underwear you just can’t get elsewhere (there are some ethical retailers such as Green Knickers but they tend to be a bit pricey). So every now and then these unethical purchases have to be made. (I’m sure there are hard core environmentalists who would argue that you can live without these things but personally, I’d rather not!). Anyway, I got thinking about these unavoidable purchases. If you can offset the guilt and carbon from flying, perhaps you can offset your unethical spendings with charity donations? For example, buying something that isn’t fair trade could be offset with donations to charities that promote fair trade and fight child labour. It’s just a case of working out how much. I spent £11 on new pyjamas yesterday, which if I was offsetting my carbon emissions from a flight would mean about a 20p donation which I think is far too little. I think between £5 and £11 is fairer, so I’ll find a charity online and make that donation today. I feel so much better now; I suppose that’s the major selling factor for these offsetting schemes!

The curse of the carrier bag

Everyone knows that plastic carrier bags litter our streets, get stuck in trees and can kill sea birds that mistake them for jelly fish. Even advertisers have picked up on this with car adverts promising that their car saves plastic bags (seems odd when you phrase it like that), Sainsbury’s keeps giving away their ‘bag for life’ bags and many supermarkets offer free ‘bag for life’ bags if you bring in some carrier bags to be recycled. But the problem runs much deeper; you see just recycling these bags isn’t enough. We need to stop making them, we need to stop giving them away to people in shops and we need to stop using them. I recently read an article in favour of the plastic bag. One of the arguments was that paper and canvas bags are useless when it rains or your food leaks but Oxfam have some great new bags made from recycled plastic. And the best thing about proper bags is that they don’t rip and they don’t hurt your hand when you’re carrying something heavy. As a commuter on the train I find canvas bags so much better than carrier bags. For a start you can fit so much more in them, put them on your shoulder and they don’t make your veg sweat either.

Plus, the best thing about canvas, recycled and jute bags is that you can buy them from charities which means that you will be helping the environment and your money will be going to a good cause too. Unfortunately, there is one thing which prevents a huge number of people from taking their own bags to the shops – apathy. For some people, using a little bit of forethought and actually remembering to take a bag or two with them is just too much like hard work. And the shops don’t help matters either: you actually have to stop the shop assistants from putting your stuff into a plastic bag. Even in shops like superdrug that are supposed to ask every customer if they want a bag, more often that not they just put your shopping into a bag. My favourites are these jute bags from the Wildlife Trusts and the RSPB.Of course, I rarely go into shops anymore and when I do I proudly say I don’t need a bag, I have one already.