www.everythingsgonegreen.co.uk

Back in December we brought you news on the advertising campaign by energy supplier E.ON called Reduce your Carbon Footyprint. To summarise, it’s all about getting English football fans to do their bit to reduce their carbon footprint by taking the coach and car-sharing to football matches, specifically the FA Cup. Football & energy suppliers? That’s a strange mix. So what’s in it for E.ON then? Well, E.ON sponsor the FA Cup which is next weekend. Not only is the campaign increasing their brand awareness but it is also creating the sense that E.ON really care about the environment. It’s an attempt to boost their publicly-perceived green credentials.

We were sceptical, we usually are. We’ve even been sceptical about our own champions of green energy Ecotricity, but only by questioning do we understand the answers. Upon publishing that story we received word that, despite a very public campaign to prove that E.ON is going green, they are forging ahead with plans to build a new coal-fired power station in Kingsnorth, Kent.

According to the website (”Stop Kingsnorth, no to new coal”) the new Kingsnorth coal-fired power station would belch out as much CO2 in one year as would 200 years of the the FA Cup.

Hypocrisy, madness, Greenwash?! What is the world coming to? No, don’t answer that!

For more answers on E.ON’s Kingsnorth coal-fired power station go take a look at the spoof site http://www.carbonfootyprint.org/

Protesters from Greenpeace, some dressed in ape suits, have demonstrated at the premises of Unilever in both London and the North West of England.

Unilever, the global Anglo-Dutch company with interests in food, drink, cleaning products and personal care items, is a major user of palm oil in many of its products. Formed back in 1930 as a merger between the British soap makers, Lever Brothers, and Dutch firm Margarine Unie, the company amalgamated to pool its resources as both products (soap & margarine) relied heavily in the use of palm oil.

Recently rain forests have been destroyed in Malaysia & Indonesia to make way for palm plantations to fuel the world’s burgeoning desire for products that happen to use palm oil. As a result many orang-utans have been displaced and killed; some species of orang-utan are on the endangered species list, with the Sumatran orang-utan being critically endangered.

The Greenpeace protests at the Unilever HQ in London and the manufacturing plant in the Wirral, Merseyside, have involved some 50 protesters, highlighting the need for Unilever to urgently introduce sustainable methods of palm oil usage.

Unilever does chair the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil which aims to “promote the growth and use of sustainable palm oil” but Greenpeace fears the slow progress of the group. Whilst the RSPO discusses ways to be sustainable rainforests are still being cleared to make way for the production of palm oil.

Unilever states that it is leading the way to find sustainable palm oil solutions but this could simply be just Greenwash.

It’s been on facebook, and now Google have turned the lights out. It’s Earth Hour, tonight 8pm-9pm GMT or whatever time that equates to in your part of the world.

All you have to do is turn off the lights and “see the difference you can make”.

It’s got to be better than E-Day which was an abysmal failure.

Remember it was E-Day yesterday? Well, E-Day was actually a 24 hour period from Wednesday into Thursday.

The whole point of E-Day was to reduce demand for energy by switching off unneeded devices, turning things off standby mode (mobile phone chargers, electric toothbrushes, PCs, TVs, Sky digiboxes, etc) and make an impact on energy use in this country just for one day!

And what happened? Well, E-Day seems to have been an unmitigated… DISASTER!

OK, that’s a bit strong, but did we reduce our demand and use of energy? Did we f***!

Official figures from the E-Day site show that energy demand actually went up. OK, it was a cold night in some parts of the country but it was a pretty poor result.

Despite the effort that went into this action it’s a disappointing result to a great idea.

One comment on the BBC website made us chuckle even though it was a tad on the sarcastic side; it went a little something like this…

“Maybe they should have used more energy in promoting E-Day”

Yeah, right… very funny.

The organisers of E-Day had expected a drop of something like 2-3% in energy demand whereas energy use actually went up by 0.1%. The 2-3% figure is apparently the same as if two whole coal-fired power stations had been “removed” from the national grid. That would have been quite some saving.

Let’s hope there’s a bit more interest in the next E-Day and we can all make a bit more effort, aye?

After the little town of Modbury in Devon banned carrier bags last year, it has taken a long time for anyone else in England to catch up.

In fact nobody has caught up yet, there are just schemes to deter shoppers from using the dreaded polluting plastic bags, of which a staggering 13 billion are given away free every year across the country. Taking around 1000 years to decay, it’s no wonder something needs to be done about the “white trash”.

Step in Marks & Spencer, the forward-thinking, environmentally-friendly eco-warrior of big-name high street retailers, you know, the guys who bought us Plan A (Because there is no Plan B).

Well, OK, Marks & Sparks haven’t quite gone the whole hog yet but they are going to charge shoppers a whole 5 new pence to buy a carrier bag in future. And the future is not now, the future is 6 May 2008. And for a month before the levy comes into place, those nice people at Marks & Spencer will be giving away long-lasting placcy bags that discerning shoppers can reuse.

So what’s bought this about? Well, M&S ran a trial in 50 of its stores where they charged a mere 5 pence for their plastic carrier bags and demand for the oil-derived receptacles fell by 70%. Seemingly the scheme had a great impact and the 5 pence “tax” made shoppers think.

It’s all part of M&S Chief Exec Sir Stuart Rose’s commitment for the chain to reduce their waste to zero to landfill, as detailed in their Plan A. So come on all you other big name stores… where’s your plans to charge for carrier bags?

Just to remind you folks that it’s E-Day today…

From 6pm make sure you turn off those lights you’re not using, turn off the TV when it’s not being watched, don’t leave those devices on standby (PCs and printers) and let’s see if we can use a little less energy, aye?

Or are we preaching to the converted?

Basically, if this is successful there will be less demand, less consumption and less energy wasted. Think of all those PCs that are left on overnight, all those machines on standby, all those offices and buildings lit up at night, needlessly consuming electricity.

E-Day lasts for 24 hours from 6pm on Wednesday 27th February until 6pm on Thursday 28th February.

The National Trust has a novel idea for environmental work this leap year with it’s own Green Leap Day.

All of the Trust’s 4800 staff are being encouraged to take February 29th off and focus their efforts into green projects. The idea is that staff will work on going green at home with numerous simple household tasks such as:

• Changing lightbulbs to energy-efficient lightbulbs
• Draught-proofing windows & doors
• Insulating loft spaces
• Building a compost-heap in the garden
• Organising the household recycling
• Fixing up environmental transport, making sure bicycles are fixed

Staff who have already gone green are being encouraged to help out in community projects such as at their local schools.

The whole idea revolves around people actually getting up and doing work for the environment rather than merely talking about it… So we’d better get on with some work then, shouldn’t we?

Ed - This might not be ideal for every business but what a great idea - if only other big organisations had the foresight and the balls to do their bit for the environment and not just on 1 day in every four years either, but at least it’s a start!

Even the FSB, the Federation of Small Businesses, are on our green bandwagon, but unlike the greenwash brigade they’re genuinely into the “go green, shop local” mantra.

Joining forces with Friends of the Earth, the FSB are urging shoppers to shop local. As Christmas approaches, many people will be embarking upon out-of-town shopping sprees and the wisdom behind the FSB/FOE campaign is to cut down on unnecessary car journeys, cut carbon emissions, get that local service and keep the local high street thriving.

Local shops are far more likely to stock local produce and focusing on local retailers will help to keep local communities more sustainable.

John Wright, the FSB National Chairman, is hoping shoppers will support their local small shops to ensure that they are still in business this time next year, especially with the decline of many small independently run retailers in the last few years.

Richard Hines, Real Food campaigner at Friends of the Earth, added that the supermarkets are “putting the squeeze” on independent retailers. By shopping local first he’s hoping we can go green and support our local communities.

As John Wright said:

“Even if we don’t have a white christmas, there’s no reason why we can’t have a green one.”

Yep, it’s Buy Nothing Day tomorrow (Saturday) in the UK. Tonight I shall visit my local brewery the Hog’s Back Brewery in Tongham, Surrey, to spend a few shillings on locally produced real ale, so once that silver is spent I shan’t be contributing to the cult of rabid consumerism for a whole day.

Spread the word, tell your friends, send them a Buy Nothing Day postcard “Shop Less, Live More”

Modbury in Devon, population just 1553, has today banned the plastic carrier bag.