The Engineering EcoWarrior

Sometimes nothing beats a cool refreshing glass of the milk. But the White Stuff is not as innocent as it looks. In fact, its cool clean exterior masks a multitude of sins. Milk has hit the headlines recently in a battle between farmers and the processors which are imposing cuts to the price paid to farmers for milk.  This is leading to farm gate prices which are less than the cost of producing the milk .  This is not a new fight.  For several years the large powerful dairies, such as Robert Wiseman (now owned by Müller), have put downward pressure on the farm gate price of milk.  This in turn has driven “efficiency” measures in the farming sector, i.e. industrialisation of the process.  About ten years ago I spoke with a farmer planning to build a huge shed so that his cattle could be kept indoors all year round.  This was, he said, due to pressure to cut costs. It was necessary of his farm was to remain sustainable .  The surrounding pasture that t...

BMW accused of hypocrisy over opposition to European car targets | Environment | guardian.co.uk : BMW  is lobbying to water down European plans to improve the fuel efficiency of cars at the same time as trumpeting its green credentials as the  official car sponsor of the Olympic Games , according to internal documents seen by the Guardian. According to this Guardian article, BMW want to delay or reduce implementation of Europe wide fuel efficiency targets for 2015 and 2020.  BMW believe that premium  manufacturers (such as themselves) will be disadvantaged compared with manufacturers of normal cars. In other words people who can afford more expensive premium cars can afford the higher fuel prices and these wealthy people don't need to worry about climate change or limited supplies of oil.

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...

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.