Eco Worrier - Times Online - WBLG

For eco poetry reading, click below.

Today is a happy day for oxygen starved city workers. I can’t say that I’ve seen them myself but I have been reliably informed that London’s Fenchurch Street station now has three new additions. Elm trees (you can see one above). Plus a swish new wooden seating area. Look closer and you’ll spot climate change poetry carved into the sustainably-sourced wooden benches. Anything to get the message out there, as they say.
This is part of a Lloyd’s project called Trees in the City launched, in conjunction with the charity Poet in the City, with the dual purpose of making the Square Mile greener and bringing poetry to children. The Whitbread-shortlisted poet Mathew Hollis and the controversial Patience Agbabi, once writer-in-residence at Eton College, have offered up their verse and will be holding poetry workshops at schools in East London over the next year. Here is Hollis reading The Need. For Agabi’s Tsunami, click here, and here’s a full list of the poems you can download. Let me know what you think.

Top tips for a green move

My head is hung low this week. I’ve been a very naughty eco-worrier. Caught in the tumultuous process of moving house – in other words heaving vast quantities of stuff that I haven’t the heart to throw away from one location to another – I have managed to send more stuff to landfill in a few days than I would normally in several months.

Such were the quantities of junk that I had to sort out in a short space of time, I couldn’t make the careful decisions that I normally would. Usually I maintain little piles of CDs that go to The Laundry and all sorts of odds and ends, from unwanted kitchen appliances to fashion throwbacks, are gathered up to be distributed among various friends and family. As a final resort, they go to a charity shop. But not this time. As the black bin bags multiplied outside our house, I felt ashamed, very ashamed.

Gervase, the eco-sceptic boyfriend, remarked wryly that if I didn’t insist on keeping stuff for so long, I wouldn’t end up in this situation. In other words, if I edited my possessions more rigorously as I went along, it would all be fine. But he's quite happy to live in a sparse minimalist place. I am not. I harrumphed, saying that I was simply abiding by the second rule of being green: reusing (the one that comes after reduce and before recycle). We were very definitely on eco-argument territory (click here for more details).

Now - you'll be glad to hear - I’m embarking on a period of sofa surfing at friends houses as our new place isn’t quite ready. Surely that’s a green way to go. Not sure how sustainable it is, though. My friends will eventually get sick of their roaming house guest and her tendency to supervise their recycling regimes and wage campaigns to install compost bins.

(below are my five top tips to a green move)

Get with the program, Eastenders

Excuse me while I indulge in a bit of why-oh-why. Sorry, but why else would you become a journalist. Here’s my whine. We are a nation in love with soap operas. Hollyoaks, Corrie, Eastenders, you name it thousands of people watch it. Perhaps not you, but probably someone sitting nearby right now is musing over the latest twist in a TV drama. Over half the UK population follow at least one soap, apparently. So why has there not yet been a green thread written into one of these programs? The Archers excepted. I can’t help thinking that a storyline involving someone going green in their home, or a teenager learning about climate change at school, would bring the message home to people who might otherwise feel unconnected to eco-stuff.

A flash of light

Aha, an answer to all of you who claim you don’t use energy-saving light bulbs because they are so bulky and unattractive. Let me introduce to you online lighting shop tp24 and its LI low energy bulb. It is exactly the same size as a conventional bulb but it claims to last for 8,000 hours. It is one of several bulbs that make up its Kyoto Low Energy range. Exciting stuff, I hope you'll agree.

To see how much effort it takes to power one non-energy saving bulb, watch Newsnight’s Ethical Man making this point. Here (I hope, if my file downloading is up to scratch) you can watch him sweating on the Rinky Dink, the world's only mobile bicycle powered sound system (pictured above in Hyde Park).
I don’t suppose I should be wafting you over to the antics of a rival eco-journalist but I have faith that you will return to me…

Thank you...

...to everyone who has contacted me to offer up their homes and horrible habits to our eco-auditing project. It’s great to see such enthusiasm for embarking on eco-friendly measures in the home. Eco-auditor Donnachadh McCarthy and I are in the process of working out what kind of building would be most useful to work with and feature as an example to others. Bear with me… I’m just sorry that we won’t be able to visit all the people who have emailed me. I hope that you find other ways to get involved with making your home greener, if we don’t choose you. To help, can I recommend the book Save Cash & Save the Planet? It has categories on energy-efficiency, DIY and gardening, as well as lots of interviews with people who have done things that have made their lives a whole lot richer, as well as greener.

Swishing anyone?

On the same thread as below, I officially became a swisher last night when I attended my first 'swishing' party - another word for clothes swapping. Hosted by Futerra, a gaggle of girls rocked up with old clothes that we hung on a couple of giant rails. There was wine, bagels and lots of eyeing up of each others frocks. When the swishing officially began, we were allowed to grab anything that we wanted. Just imagine. Free clothes. And jewellery. And shoes. To take away forever... I left wearing a whole new outfit and a huge smile (sorry, that''s so cheesy). Here's some info about how to hold your own clothes swapping evening.

The photo here is of Elizabeth and friend from the Ethical Fashion Forum. The best thing I heard over the evening was a Futerra employee telling me that the company keeps a rail in the office for staff clothes that are no longer wanted. What a terrific idea! Although I'm not sure if anyone in my office would be seen dead in my wardrobe mistakes.

Everyone has their green sins and one of mine is clothes

I don’t buy much stuff from the high street but I do rummage in second hand shops on a weekly basis. Actually, to be completely honest, if I spot just the thing in Zara or Topshop, I rarely hold back. So I’m keen to take the Wardrobe Refashioned Pledge - launched by a website that stylishly combines craft and thrift - to abstain from buying commercially manufactured new clothing. I'm especially pleased that it doesn’t forbid charity shop shopping.

Below is the pledge...

Would your home like a green makeover?

We’re looking for households in the UK to take part in the Body&Soul Building Makeover. To demonstrate how energy and money can be saved with a few simple measures, we will be looking at how the structure of your home can be made more carbon-friendly, as well as other ways to green up on the inside. Would you be happy to open your home to an eco-auditor? Do you mind having your carbon sins uncovered? Willing to have a picture of you and your family taken in front of your house, and have a go at some green recommendations? If so, get in touch below, or email me at ecoworrier@thetimes.co.uk (please include details of what kind of house you live in).

Lentil-munchers laugh too

Did anyone else smile at the spoof advert in The Times today? On one page, a fictitious airline, Spurt, says: “flying is your patriotic duty, here’s what those muesli-munching eco-terrorists don’t tell you.” On the facing page, a penguin announces:  “I might only be a penguin but I know a global disaster when I see it melting beneath my flippers.” (See the double page advert here.)

Nice to see some humour amid depressing headlines about the state of the planet. Green pressure groups are often accused of worthiness but here they are, tongue in cheek, making us smile with a penguin spokesman and a fictional Sir Montgomery Cecil - who sounds like something out of Gosford Park. Aware of how cynics see eco-campaigners, the alliance behind the ads - including Greenpeace, Airportwatch and RSPB - take a welcome break from straight-up doomsaying. And full marks to them

The Mouth Revolution and other green titbits

Much impressed with a couple of websites that I stumbled upon this week. Better deal with this bizarre You Tube video above first. Welcome to the Mouth Revolution - all about stopping filling your face with crap. It's a little yukky, but hilarious. Flagged up by Futerra, a communications agency which gives out advice on getting across green and social issues, from encouraging action on climate change to raising consumer demand for ethical fashion, it was made by a film production company in the States.

Am I the last to hear about Delocator, which finds you non-corporate coffee shops nearest to any given postcode? Fantastic idea. Only drawback at the moment is that if you live in London, it seems to bring up almost all of them. But I love the idea of actively resisting Starbucks and hunting down an independent version. Bet the coffee tastes better.

Then there's Inhabitat which brings us the mantra 'green design is good design; good design is green design' - nice one. And Great Green Goods which has some beautiful beads and other stuff made from recycled goods. Although it focuses on what's going down on the other side of the pond, we can take inspiration over here.