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The Engineering EcoWarrior

Sharing open, accessible and transparent articles on solutions to the causes and consequences of climate change, nature depletion, and other challenges needed for a sustainable society from an engineering perspective.

The Age of Plastic

This is why we need to reduce the amount of plastic we use and then to recycle ALL our waste plastic, not just the limited few.

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Plastic bags: it's not all about carbon

I recently read an article which discussed how we could tackle the problem of the 800,000 tonnes of plastic bags thrown away each year in Europe, an average of 191 for every citizen of the European Union. It highlighted the much smaller carbon footprint of disposable single use plastic carrier bags compared with alternatives. Part of the article described re-using plastic bags as bin liners rather than using purpose made bin liners and it had a nifty graphic . To a point, this makes sense but considering that many people use plastic bags for almost all of their domestic purchases, then to use every carrier bag once as a bin liner would require all that was bought to be disposed of in the bin. I know that there is a lot of waste packaging in groceries but it does generally compact down to a smaller volume than the original (unless you live entirely on tinned produce) therefore assuming that all plastic bags are re-used in this way is stretching thin...

Plastic Recycling

Look at the recycling logo on a plastic bottle or container. It depicts a continuous loop, a virtuous circle, if you like, of plastic being made into bottles then being recycled into new bottles then the whole process repeating endlessly. Nothing falls out of the cycle and nothing new is introduced. It is a bit misleading. It doesn't take much imagination to realise that energy needs added to the process at the very least - energy for collecting the used plastic, treating it and manufacturing the new bottles. Less obvious is the fact that very few food grade bottles contain material from recycled bottles. Plant has been developed to do this but at this time its use not widespread.

How Green are Green Fingers?

Gardening turns out to be very eco un-friendly ... The Independent According to an article in this morning's Independent, gardening is not very environmentally friendly but I think that it depends on your approach. This is my approach to minimising the negative effects of gardening: Compost I keep a compost heap for garden waste and vegetable trimmings which reduces the amount of waste being carted to a landfill site and produces a compost suitable for use as a soil improver. Personally, I find it too coarse for use as a potting compost so I use a commercial peat-free compost for potting and other general purpose uses. I have successfully grown potatoes in bags with a mixture of the peat-free compost and earth.

Here Comes the Rain - Part 1

Summer 2012 may be remembered for the Olympic Games. Or it may be remembered for the rain. From doom laden predictions of the worst drought for a generation in the southern half of Britain with disastrous consequences for farmers in the spring to torrential rain, floods and, yes, disastrous consequences for farmers in the summer. The burning question is whether this is just the natural variability of weather or whether underlying climate change has a hand in driving these weather systems. To investigate this question, I have studied some local weather records. My statistical skills are about High School level: mean and standard deviation of a normal distribution. Data for Glasgow Airport from 1959 to 2012 was obtained from the Meteorological Office website but the 2012 data was discarded as it is only provisional and represents an incomplete year. The data included monthly rainfall, sunshine and maximum and minimum temperatures and the focus of this study was the rainfall data. ...

Electric Cars

Glasgow is a compact city. Nowhere in the city is much further than 10 miles from anywhere else. It is perfect for electric vehicles(EVs) which typically have a short range. Pictured above are two of the forty electric vehicles being trialled by Glasgow City Council. The trial which began over a year ago is scheduled to run for three years. The vehicle fleet operated by the City Council comprises over 1200 vehicles of which over 350 are cars or car derived vans with the remainder including everything from small vans to bin lorries, minibuses and even articulated lorries. This is surely a welcome measure to reduce the city's carbon footprint and improve air quality. Or is it?

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