Pollution and recycling
- Green mobiles
- When governments do nothing
- Dead smart
- Bin the bag
- The big chill
- Mobile madness
- The Great Smog
- Trading pollution
- Space: The new eco frontier
Green mobiles
Mobile users can now hand over their old phones for recyclingg. The Foneback scheme involves Britain's five main mobile phone operators - O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone - along with the Dixons Group, which includes Dixons, Currys, The Link and PC World.
The industry will recycle or reuse the phones. Preventing them being thrown away will save 1,500 tonnes of waste going to landfill every year.
Most phones will now be recycled, extracting gold, platinum, silver and copper. Phone batteries pose a particular threat to the environment. One cadmium battery could pollute 600,000 litres of water. When disposed of via Foneback, these metals are also reused - in the case of nickel into irons and saucepans.
Mixed plastics (those that contain metals and plastics) are sent to a specialist recycler in Sweden who incinerates the plastic and uses the energy to heat the local village. Other plastics end up as traffic cones or are used on horse gallops*.
You may also be able to help your favourite charity if it is a participant in Community Foneback, in which each participating charity receives £4 to £5 for each recycled phone.
*Source: Global Warning, produced by The Guardian in association with British Gas and Scottish Gas
When governments do nothing
Children in Malaysia and Borneo are not looking forward to the dry season.
The fear is that July and August will repeat the pattern of previous years, and see a choking brown fog cover much of south-east Asia.
The brown cloud is caused by widespread forest and ground fires and can reduce visibility to just 50 metres. Often schools have to be closed and hospitals are inundated with queues of people suffering respiratory illnesses and eye infections. Tens of millions of people are affected.
The heart of the problem lies in Indonesia, with unscrupulous businesses and farmers, who burn off the forests to clear the land. The smoke then drifts north to Singapore, Borneo and Malaysia.
This kind of forest clearance is illegal in Indonesia, but the authorities have taken virtually no action against the polluters. This may be because Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, lies south and west of the forest areas and is rarely affected by the smog.
Dead smart
Did you know that you can make a contribution to the environment, even after you're dead? Eco-friendly undertakers and cemeteries offer cardboard coffins or coffins made from bamboo, or wicker (woven cane or reeds). These have no metal or plastic handles and are kinder to the environment. Having a tree planted at your funeral or choosing to be buried in natural woodland areas are also green options that are now fashionable. Dead trendy we reckon!
Bin the bag!
How many plastic bags do you throw away each day, or stuff out of sight in a kitchen drawer? In the UK we use a mind-blowing 10 billion disposable plastic bags each year, yet only a measly 1% ever get recycled. The rest hoover up bags of energy (excuse the pun!) when they're first produced, yet wind up as unwanted waste in already groaning landfill or incineration sites. So what's the solution to this sneaky eco-menace?
The Co-op supermarket has pledged to switch within two years to degradable bags, designed to break down within three years (normal bags take 100 years to decompose!). But environmentalists reckon that's too little, too late, as these bags would still be free and dolled out to all-comers. Instead, they're calling for a more radical alternative - a bag for life, such as those already available in lots of supermarkets, which shoppers can reuse again and again.
Unrealistic? Possibly, but if bags cost money we'd remember to carry our own, reckon environmental charity Global Action Plan. They are calling on the UK government to 'Ban the Bag' by introducing a consumer tax on plastic bags. When Ireland introduced a similar 9p bag levy in 2002, it cut plastic bag use by up to 97% in some shops and whipped up public support. Now that's what we call bags of style! Source: Ergo magazine (issue 4) from Global Action Plan
The big chill
The UK has got a chilling fridge mountain piling up, with 6,000 'dead' fridges added to the heap every day. We throw away between two and three million fridges a year, yet our disposal system is struggling to cope with the load safely.
New EU regulations mean that eco-harmful chemicals contained within fridges - such as ozone-depleting CFCs found in both the liquid coolant and insulation foam - must be removed before fridges are disposed of or recycled. But the UK only has two mobile units capable of tackling the job. Permanent plants are planned, but are not yet racing to the rescue.
Until then, the best way to beat the fridge rubbish mountain blues is to make sure your family buys a green-friendly one next time you're shopping for a new appliance. Look out for sussed eco-labelling of energy consumption ratings which runs from A to G, with an A-rating for the most enviro-smart. Choosing an eco-cool fridge will not only help the environment but could also knock pounds off your home electricity bills, as they're far more energy efficient. Check out www.saveenergy.co.uk for a list of eco-cool fridges.
Source: Ergo magazine (issue 3) from Global Action Plan
Mobile madness
Around 1.3 million mobile phones are stolen each year, 600,000 are dropped down the loo and 400,000 somehow land up in people's drinks, according to a recent study by Continental Research. With customers trading up for fancier phones all the time too, new mobile phone production is a wasteful business. But by looking after your mobile a little better you could help reduce the production of mobile phones!
If you're getting rid of an old mobile phone check out the current schemes run by Oxfam and Mobile Takeback UK, which will make sure your phone's toxic parts are disposed of safely, or recycle them for charity.
The Great Smog
Do you know what smog is?
In 1952, 4,000 Londoners died in five days after air pollution became so bad that people could not see the ground beneath their feet. Many suffered breathing problems, and some died because they could not see where they were going and fell into the River Thames.
The Great Smog of 1952 brought London to a standstill. It stopped traffic and trains. Theatres and cinemas closed because the audience could not see the stage, and undertakers ran out of coffins.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, every major city suffered from smog. But London was the world's biggest city, with eight million inhabitants who used open coal fires.
London's smog was brought to an end by the 1956 Clean Air Act, which outlawed open fires using coal. London and provincial cities continued to have smog but it became less dangerous as people switched to central heating and smokeless fuels. By the mid-1960s it had disappeared.
However, places like Los Angeles and Beijing still have smog, caused by traffic fumes. Air quality in the UK is also declining again after years of improvement and last year's hot summer saw smog warnings in Britain. The National Society for Clean Air estimates that 24,000 people a year have their lives shortened by smog.
The Great Smog of 1952 was caused when cold air from the continent caused the warm, smoke-laden air from homes and power stations to cool and fall back to earth forming a blanket of dense smoky fog.
Smog - a mixture of smoke and fog associated with urban and industrial areas.
Sources: The Guardian; BBC; Manchester Metropolitan University
Trading pollution
Picture the scene. A trader in one of the world's banks is haggling with a client. She puts down the phone and punches the air - it's a deal. But what has she been selling? The answer may take some believing. She has been trading pollution.
It's all connected to an agreement made by the world's countries in the Japanese city of Kyoto in 1997. The aim was to reduce pollution and slow the global warming that results from too much carbon dioxide (CO2) in our atmosphere. Each country agreed a target for reducing CO2 emissions. Countries that do not meet their target can buy 'carbon emission credits' from countries that do. This means that the richer, polluting countries in Europe and North America pay poorer countries, which can help them make the change to cleaner fuels and technologies.
This deal was potentially a big winner for Russia, as its economic collapse reduced its industrial greenhouse gas emissions, leaving it with a huge number of credits to sell to other countries.
Pretty soon there was a thriving international trade in the credits, as poor countries 'sold' unused pollution credits and rich countries snapped them up.
The Kyoto agreement has now come into effect and Russia is a signatory. However, three of the world's worst polluters, the USA, China and India have not signed up, so it remains to be seen how effective the agreement will be in reducing greenhouse gases. Sources: The Guardian; Times newspapers; BBC; Environmental data interactive exchange; Christian Science Monitor
Space: The new eco frontier
You've got a new pal in space. Meet Envisat, the super-green satellite working overtime to ensure the survival of the planet. As you read this, Envisat is five miles above us, as large as a double-decker bus, busy taking the pulse of planet Earth.
Launched into orbit almost three years ago, it's the most sophisticated environmental monitoring device ever invented. It can detect pollution, count plankton, and even warn us of possible earthquakes or volcanic eruptions! Space is now providing scientists with vital information about everything from the size of threatened African gorilla populations to the thickness of Antarctica's disappearing ice sheets.
Source: Green Futures, published by Forum for the Future
