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How different cities responded to December's winter smog
Paris introduced free public transport; Madrid restricted cars; Londoners were advised to take less exercise
Winter smog returned to our cities in December. Modern smog is less visible than Victorian pea-soupers but a thin brown layer could be seen on the horizon as still weather trapped the air pollution.
Paris had ten days of smog at the start of the month; the worst pollution for a decade. Emergency actions to reduce the health impacts included free public transport, reduced traffic speeds, lorry bans in the city centre, a ban on wood burning and four days of alternating bans on cars with odd or even number plates.
Continue reading...Make a fresh start with your fridge in 2017: apps to reduce food waste and save money
I have never been good at sticking to New Year’s resolutions. Whether it’s to floss my teeth more or to join a gym, I just don’t manage to keep them up. But this year I am setting myself a better goal – one that will save me money, time and be good for the planet. I’m going to start using a meal planning and pantry inventory app.
If you barely have time to scribble together a shopping list, let alone browse recipes or check cupboards before leaving the house, then meal planning apps are a great tool to help manage shopping, cooking and eating.
They have a range of features that help you track what’s in your pantry and fridge, import recipes, create meal plans, generate shopping lists, and sometimes all of the above. They take a bit of time to set up, but once that’s done they can make your life a lot easier.
Why plan meals?It doesn’t sound very sexy, but planning meals and knowing what’s in your fridge and pantry when you go shopping is a great way to reduce food waste and save time and money.
Globally, one-third of edible food produced is wasted. This puts a strain on scarce resources such as land and water, and generates significant greenhouse gas emissions.
If food waste were a country, it would have the third-highest emissions after China and the US.
Menu planning also means fewer trips to the supermarket and less impulse spending, as well as helping you use leftovers more efficiently.
So what are these apps?To get you started, I’ve put together an overview of a few useful apps that I came across during my research. Results of a recent survey by MenuForMums in the UK found that 90% of members saved time and money (and by default reduced food waste) by using its online meal planning service.
1.) Pepperplate is a mobile app that helps you to compile and organise your recipe collection, create meal plans, generate shopping lists and cook the recipes that you want to try.
Recipes can be imported by pasting their URL from the web or by entering them manually. They can then be used to create meal plans and interactive shopping lists which allow you to tick off items as you go and share with others. When cooking, Pepperplate will walk you through the recipes, complete with cooking timers. Other similar meal planning apps are BigOven and AnyList.
Recent research has shown that Melbourne wastes 200kg of food per person a year.
Food waste image from www.shutterstock.com
2.) Cloud-Freezer helps you create shopping lists like Pepperplate, but focuses on inventories rather than meal planning. It allows you to keep track of the items you already have in your fridge, freezer and pantry, including expiry dates so you can plan what you need to eat first to reduce food waste.
Items can be added to shopping lists from a library of previous entries, moved between shopping lists and inventories, and between the inventories themselves (for example, if you move something from the freezer to the fridge to defrost). The app has a barcode scanner function connected to user-driven databases to help you enter items quickly. There are similar but less sophisticated cross-platform apps called GrocerEaze and Out of Milk.
3.) MealBoard offers the most features and could be life-changing if you take the time to set it up. It’s a combination of Pepperplate and Cloud-Freezer because it enables you to import recipes, plan meals, generate shopping lists and do inventories. Integrating these features turbocharges your ability to organise food activities because it automatically populates shopping lists with what you have to buy, taking into account what you already have at home.
This could save a lot of time and effort, and prevent a lot of duplicate shopping. If you’re prepared to do that, it’s a powerful tool. Another cross-platform app, FoodPlanner, boasts the same features as MealBoard.
So if you have some spare time in the holidays, after recovering from your food coma and before you join that gym, maybe take one of these apps for a trial run. Between Christmas leftovers and forgotten items in the back of your pantry, you may not need to shop for weeks.
The time you save might make it easier to stick to all your other resolutions, and your wallet and the planet will thank you for it.
Seona Candy is a research fellow on the Foodprint Melbourne project, which is funded by the Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation. Project partners include the City of Melbourne and the peak bodies representing the local government areas in Melbourne's city fringe foodbowl. She has previously received funding from an Australian Research Council Linkage grant on the project ‘Modelling policy interventions to protect Australia's food security in the face of environmental sustainability challenges’ (LP120100168), a collaboration between researchers at the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL) at the University of Melbourne, Deakin University and Australian National University. She is currently also receiving funding from the Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living for a project investigating urban innovations for post-carbon resilient cities.
How colour-changing cats might warn future humans of radioactive waste
Plans for a new fleet of UK nuclear power plants are under way. Last month, for example, Hitachi and the Japanese government confirmed a plan to construct 5.4 gigawatts of generating capacity at UK sites. But what about the waste? And what happens when, in thousands of years, our descendants – who may not read any current human language – find a store, and put themselves in danger?
A panel of scientists and linguists asked this question in 1981 when the US Department of Energy commissioned them to find a method of ensuring that whatever is left of humanity in 10,000 years’ time is warned off the sites we’ve been filling with radioactive sludge.
Continue reading...Thawing Arctic is turning oceans into graveyards
Something is happening to the floating sea ice of the Arctic, other than the well-documented retreat in its surface coverage each summer. Scientists are finding that Arctic sea ice is getting younger and thinner, which is set to continue in March, when US research reveals the winter maximum, and September, when it reveals the summer minimum, making it more vulnerable to a catastrophic and unprecedented break-up.
Nasa researchers have found that the thicker multi-year ice, which has survived several summer melt seasons, is being rapidly replaced by thinner, more ephemeral one-year ice formed over a single winter. This change makes the polar region increasingly vulnerable to storms that could smash their way through the final remnants of thinner, one-year sea ice, making a completely ice-free summer in the Arctic increasingly likely.
Continue reading...The eco guide to taking action in 2017
All too often environmentalism is about stopping doing something, but maybe it’s time to be more active and start doing something instead?
I wonder if Nike would loan me its famous brand slogan as a motto this year. After all, Just Do It is much more motivating than Just Don’t Do It – the traditional ethical living response…
Until now. Who can fail to be cheered by the way the Divest movement has just done it? Starting only four years ago with a smattering of universities, the Divest-Invest network recently reported that the value of organisations committed to ditching their holdings in fossil fuels is now greater than the value of all listed oil and gas companies.
Continue reading...As British tourists take to the seas, giant cruise ships spread pollution misery
From the upstairs windows in Colin MacQueen’s house there isn’t a view of the sea but he can clearly see the ships. Docked in the port, less than half a mile away, they tower over the roofs of flats and houses. “They are colossal,” he said. “These cruise liners are much bigger than the container ships. They use as much fuel as whole towns.”
The view is pretty spectacular. But it’s what he cannot see that worries MacQueen. Like many cities across the UK, Southampton has such poor air quality it breaches international guidelines, and while the government and local authorities are looking to take action on cars, maritime fuel – the dirtiest and most polluting of all diesels – is on no one’s radar. Not only do the giant cruise liners churn out pollutants at sea, they also keep their engines running when they are docked in places like MacQueen’s home town.
Continue reading...How warming seas are forcing fish to seek new waters
Rising sea temperatures are pushing shoals hundreds of miles from native grounds
Scottish fishermen have uncovered an intriguing way to supplement their income: they have added squid to the menu of marine creatures they regularly pull from the sea. A species normally associated with the warmth of the Mediterranean, rather than the freezing north, may seem an odd addition to their usual catches of cod and haddock. Nevertheless, squid has become a nice little earner for fishing boats from Aberdeen and the Moray Firth in recent years.
Related: What will be the big environment events in 2017?
Continue reading...Prince William charity urges UK to back ivory trade ban
The environment secretary Andrea Leadsom is under increasing pressure to make good on a Tory manifesto commitment to ban the UK ivory trade after China announced it would close down its domestic ivory market.
Conservation organisations, including a charity championed by Prince William, say that by allowing the trade to continue the UK is fuelling the annual slaughter of thousands of rhinos and elephants. A recent study suggested that the UK is now the third-largest supplier of illegal ivory items to the US.
Continue reading...Ecuador’s leading environmental group fights to stop forced closure
NGO Acción Ecológica responds to the government’s attempt to close the organization down
Members of one of Latin America’s most well-known environmental organisations, Acción Ecológica, are fighting for their survival against a controversial attempt by Ecuador’s government to shut them down.
The move by the government came six days after violence between soldiers, police and indigenous Shuar people opposed to a proposed giant Chinese-run copper mine in Ecuador’s south-eastern Amazon region, and just two days after Acción Ecológica had called for a Truth Commission to be set up to investigate events there. The attempt to close the organisation has sparked severe criticism from UN human rights experts and outrage from numerous civil society organisations in Latin America and elsewhere.
Continue reading...China's ivory trade ban: how to make it work
Elephants will only be safe when decisive action is taken against the ivory traffickers who have been operating under the cover of the legal trade
China’s decision to ban all trade in ivory by the end of the year has been widely hailed as a game changer by environmentalists in China itself and across the world. There is no doubt that this is very welcome news.
Many commentators have also pointed out that this new Chinese policy is also motivated by self-interest. China has rapidly growing economic and political interests in Africa and hopes to improve its image on the continent by responding to pressure from its African allies to reduce demand for ivory among Chinese consumers. If protecting elephants is in China’s self-interest—and if African leaders care enough about them to put pressure on China to change its policies—that is also welcome news.
Continue reading...Prey silence for the peregrine falcon
Udale Bay, Cromarty, Highlands Rapid wings took the peregrine high, and it wheeled, looking for any movement below
The tide was starting to ebb as I raised two of the windows in the RSPB hide. This meant I could not only see the mass of birds on the saltmarsh but also enjoy the music of their various calls. They seemed to be trying to decide just when to leave for the mudflats and the food that would be exposed for them by the departing tide.
Curlews walked around looking superior on their long legs, drake wigeon whistled in their inimitable fashion, and the black and white plumage of the several shelduck stood out in contrast to the brown and grey camouflage of the waders.
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Moving Pictures
Alone, China's ban on ivory could make life worse for elephants
China has ordered all its legal ivory carvers and traders to get of the business by the end of the year. But it will have to do more if it really wants to stop poaching
China’s ban on ivory trading and processing has been hailed as a monumental step on the path to saving elephants from extinction. But if China does not simultaneously tackle its much larger illegal trade in ivory, the ban could perversely make it more lucrative for the poaching gangs who massacre Africa’s elephants and ship their tusks to Asia.
The number of legal businesses being shut down is relatively small. The plan, announced on 30 December by China’s central government, will close “a portion” (the Guardian understands it will be roughly half) of its 34 licensed carving factories and 130 retailers before the end of March 2017. The rest will be forced shut by the end of the year.
Continue reading...'Elephants are not the only victims': the lament of China's ivory lovers
For years China’s ivory carvers and collectors have been blamed for elephant poaching. Now their government is banning the ivory trade. How do they see their future?
In a tiny workshop at his home in the Tai Po district of Hong Kong, 84-year-old Au Yue-Shung shows me an ivory carving he has been working on for months. Measuring just 5x10 inches, Nine Sages in Mount Xiang depicts the 9th-century poet Bai Juyi and eight of his peers in full creative flow in Henan province, far from the imperial court that Bai once served. The point of the story is that the sages tried to maintain their integrity by staying close to nature and art, and away from the ugly politics of the time. This is a piece that Au created for himself rather than a client. It is his statement about life after going through many ups and downs.
Born during the Japanese occupation of China in the 1930s, Au joined Guangzhou’s Daxin ivory carving factory at the age of 13 as an apprentice. With only one year’s formal education and with no one caring to teach him, he taught himself drawing and carving in his spare time. Unable to afford drawing paper, he drew on toilet paper. His gift was soon recognised and by the late 1960s he had become a key carving artist at Daxin. Later, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, he decided that he had had enough of the political and artistic repression.
Continue reading...History of Australian farming: the 1960s
'Larsen C' iceberg about to break off Antarctic shelf – video
Scientists predict that a giant iceberg is about to break off from the Antarctic shelf after the sudden expansion of a rift which has been growing steadily for a decade. Several ice shelves have cracked up around northern parts of Antarctica in recent years, including the Larsen B that disintegrated in 2002
Continue reading...Best of A Big Country
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