Apple Day

Today was not only the day we changed the clocks but it was also Apple Day. Changing the clocks seems to herald the start of the dark nights but Apple Day draws are attention to the fact that soon most of the fruit will have gone off our trees for another year.

What we often forget is the huge variety of apples that this country enjoys. There are hundreds of varieties. Some are ready to eat in August whilst others are still not quite ripe. There are eaters and there are others that are much better cooked. I was reminded today that we used to have apples wrapped in pastry served with custard. Whatever happened to them as I have not had one for years nor have I heard of them for years.

Around Erdington they are plotting all the places that there are apple trees and are trying to identify all the varieties. Some are in peoples gardens others in allotments and even waste ground. Lets hope they find some long lost variety that can be restablished.

If you have to buy apples during the coming months, look at the variety and try and find out a bit more about it. Is it grown in this country? Is it grown in the Midlands? Could it even have been grown in Birmingham? Remember the more local it is the less carbon used to get it to you.

Quiet

Last Sunday I woke up realising something was different. It took me a little while to realise what it was. There was no traffic noise. We can normally just hear the almost continuous traffic on Pershore Road. It is one of those things you notice when it is not there.
The reason for the quietness was that all the roads around here had been closed for the half marathon.
The previous time I had had the same sensation was on September 11th 2001. I was in the States at the time. All aircraft were grounded for several days and again it was quiet strange looking up into the sky and seeing no vapour trails. The sky was suddenly perfectly blue and clear.
Both of these instances have shown me how much we take pollution for granted whether it is noise or just vapour trails across the sky.

Simple advice

It is good that everyone is handing out advice on saving energy now that the cooler weather is beginning to show up. The Mail has just featured two people giving such advice including our own Luke from the Northfield Ecocentre.
However it is the simple things we must do first in order to keep warm and also save energy and money.
· Draw the curtains as soon as it gets dark. Tuck them behind the radiators.
· Ensure the curtains are lined.
· Stop the draughts.
· Make sure the hot water tank is insulated and set at a temperature that is not too high.
· Put foil behind the radiators to reflect heat back into the room.
· Turn heat off in rooms that are unused.
· Set the heating timer so it is only on when you need heat. There is no point heating the house when you are out or snug in bed.
· Put on a sweater rather than turning the heat up.

The list above is not exhaustive so add your own in the comments below and I will add them to the list.

Getting Colder

We have all noticed the nights drawing in and getting cooler. It will be soon time to be tempted to put the central heating back on. However do you really know how much it takes to keep you warm? If you do not know how much energy you are using how can you judge whether you are making a saving. The Campaign 10:10 is asking everyone to reduce their consumption by 10% by 2010.

Now is a good time to start trying to find out how much you energy you are using. There are two key things you need to do. Read your electric meter and then read your gas meter. The electric meter reads in kilowatt-hours but the gas one probably reads in cubic feet or cubic meters. This means that the two readings are not comparable in energy terms. To convert cubic feet of gas to kilowatt-hours multiply by 31.3 or if it is in cubic feet multiply by 11.12 if it is in cubic feet.

I suggest you then take readings about every fortnight. To see how you are progressing it is easiest to convert the readings to KWH per day. You will find, as the winter gets colder the figure gets higher and then starts reducing in the spring. If you keep this up then next year you may be able to see whether you have made a reduction. Perhaps you can find a way of drawing a graph of your usage. At the Ecocentre we keep records of our electricity, solar panel, and heat pump performance. You can see them here.

If you can borrow an energy meter from somebody then you can compare electricity use day by day or even minute by minute. They display the energy you are using and it changes as appliances go off and on. Some energy companies give them away as special offers or they can also be bought.

Next time I will make some suggestions for actions that can help save home energy.

Food for Thought

I have just been reading that Michelle Obama is concerned that she cannot get local food around the White House. Having lived on takeaways whilst campaigning she is keen to have good local food introduced into their kitchens. Perhaps the next thing is a Farmers Market in the White House grounds.
However around Northfield there is not quite the same problem as Tom Baker has found out. He lives in Cotteridge and is compiling a directory of locally produced food which is well worth a look at. Tom goes one better and instead of buying bread he bakes his own in an earth oven he has built for himself in the back garden. He is also very keen on cooking and is hoping to set up cookery classes to help ween people away from packaged precooked food.
Buying local and cutting down on packaging is one of the things we need to do to cut down on our carbon footprint and make us more self sufficient.

Local Food

Why do people buy fruit and vegetables from abroad when at this time of the year there is so much local produce available?
A walk in the countryside or even down an urban canal towpath will reveal backberries galore all waiting to be picked. Mixed with some local apple what is better with custard! For later in the winter some blackberry jam or jelly is reminder of the past summer.
A stroll round the market will reveal that most local produce are in abundance at present. Runner beans are dripping off the plants and courgettes and sweet corn are being sold by the bowlful. All are lovely cooked straight away but make ingredients for other things that keep. We have just made and stocked up with chutney because we had more rhubarb and victoria plums than we knew what to do with.
Bringing food in from faraway countries at this time of the year is producing carbon dioxide that we are trying to reduce so lets ask ourselves “is it really necessary” before we buy.

Ministers to act to reduce food waste?

It looks like the Love Food Hate Waste campaign is gaining support, with Ministers saying that supermarkets' buy-one-get-one-free offers should be scrapped and replaced with half price offers.

It is estimated that cutting out unnecessary wastage would be the equivalent to removing one fifth of traffic from the UK's roads.

It was only a few months ago that Birmingham City Council pledged their support to the Love Food Hate Waste campaign as a study by revealed that £10 billion pounds worth of food is being thrown away each year.

WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme) state that we throw away one third of food we buy each year, roughly £420-£610 dependant on the household.

One of the reasons behind the readiness to throw unused food away is due to the lack of knowledge on the subject, as most people believe that food waste is a benign substance and that it just rots away in the landfill, so perhaps this move will bring the problem to the public’s attention.

Love Food Hate Waste also have their top ten tips on how to reduce food waste.

Bottled Water

Have you heard that the town of Bundanoon in Australia has banned the sale of bottled water because of the concern of the environmental impact.

They had a public meeting to vote on the matter and 300 people turned up and only one person voted against the ban.

This follow on from Leeds University students who voted to ban bottled water at the end of last year During the academic year 2007/08, Leeds University Union sold 180,698 bottles, making water its top-selling product. Without those sales, the Union will forfeit £32,940 but they still felt it was worth doing.

Environmental activists argue tap water uses 300 times less energy to create and distribute than bottled water and produces much less waste.

Environment minister Phil Woolas joined in the criticisms of bottled water, arguing it was "daft" for Britons to consume six million litres of it when tap water is safe and cheap. "It borders on morally being unacceptable to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on bottled water when we have pure drinking water, when at the same time one of the crises that is facing the world is the supply of water,"

Bottled water is a comparatively modern thing. Twenty years ago it was a very small market. Perhaps we should all consider whether we really need to buy a new bottle. Could we not just fill up an existing one if we need to carry a bottle around with us.