The kitchen drawer: Environment

Zero rubbish and wriggly worms - you can do it!

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:52:00 GMT

Wriggly worms live at the bottom of my garden. Oh yes! I am talking about recycling worms, NOT earthworms. Did you realise that there might be a difference?

And why am I interested?

Well, in mid-March, Woman’s Hour on Radio 4 featured readings from a blog called ‘The Rubbish Diet.' The blogger, identified as ‘Almost Mrs Average’ lives in the borough of St Edmondsbury in Suffolk, which threw out a challenge to local residents to reduce their household waste to zero during the week of March 10th-17th.

She did it. The only item she had to throw out for the dustmen at the end of the week was a sticking plaster, which you can see on the wheel of her black wheelie bin. She used to throw out 3 x 50 litre bags of rubbish a week.

Her story so inspired me, that I went online immediately to order another compost bin, a bokashi bin and a wormery. More on these a little later.

I’m annoyed enough that my local council is hyper-selective about the types of plastic waste it will take. The environmental department accepts only plastic milk cartons and drinks bottles.

What about all those plastic containers for meat and vegetables and dairy products? As far as Charnwood Borough Council is concerned, they’re fit only for the landfill.

I tried writing to the council to complain, but ended up with a reply from a Junior official, tantamount to ‘The Computer Says No!’

Shepshed Recycling and Household Waste Site, run by Leicestershire County Council, has come to the rescue. It is infinitely more progressive than the borough council.

I’ve already cut my black bag rubbish output by more than half, mostly by recycling all that other plastic into a special skip at the Recycling site.

You can sort your booze bottles into different coloured glass skips at the recycling centre, whereas the council dustmen just tip the whole lot together into the collection lorry.

I diligently wash my milk bottle tops and aluminium foil when I can, and put it all into a sack for aluminium waste.

The site accepts old rags, although I prefer to put unwanted clothes out in those plastic sacks for charity collections.

This year, I’ve also discovered Freecycle. Freecycle is a worldwide network which enables you to give away the stuff you don’t want in your home, but somebody else locally, does. Since Len cleared out the loft 3 weeks ago, we’ve given away an old microwave oven, unwanted music cassette tapes from the 70s that we haven’t listened to in years, a box of VHS tape with Rosie’s recordings of 'Most Haunted,' and a Sky digibox.

Back to Shepshed Recycling Centre. All the garden waste – lawn mowing, weeds, tree clippings, plunges into the composting skip.

You don’t have to take all your vegetable waste to the recycling site though. You can do that at home. Hence the compost bin, the bokashi bin and the wormery.

What’s a bokashi bin? Bokashi is Japanese for “fermented organic matter.” I use the bokashi bin for all the stuff that won’t break down easily in a compost bin or wormery, such as bones and cheese and that chilli that you made last week and nobody’s had time to eat. Food waste basically. Just tip the waste in, cover it with a layer of wheat bran specially treated with molasses and composting micro-organisms, press a cover over the top, like a shopping bag, replace the lid, and leave it to ferment.

Once your bin is full, and honestly, it doesn’t smell, leave it for 10-12 days, then tip the contents into the compost bin to finish off decomposing. One word of caution, the bokashi liquid made in the process, does smell totally vile although it’s supposed to be a superb fertilizer.

Vegetable trimmings, banana skins, rotten fruit, egg shells, those hard bits of cauliflower and bread, paper and cardboard for roughage can all go to the wormery. Remember those recycling worms?

Worms love vegetable waste. They eat it and poo it and it’s their poo that makes a lovely rich compost for the garden. There’s loads of advice on the web on how to set up a wormery. It seems to be a favourite activity for schools to do.

You can even get wormeries specially designed to treat dog poo.

I leave you with the image of me chasing around my patio at 1am one wet April morning chasing the worms that had managed to escape from their box. They are now strictly confined and chomping happily away at my vegetable waste.

You too, can enjoy wriggly worms.

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This is the text of my Level 4 speech prepared for Toastmasters International - Competent Communicator.

The rising cost of food

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 08:29:18 GMT

Last May, I wrote about Agflation, the phenomenon by which the switching of crops to biofuels would diminish the supply of basic foodstuff and drive up the price of food.

It's happening. Today's Financial Times from London warns of an increased risk of malnutrition because of growing shortages in wheat, corn and soya, which feed not only people but animals which provide meat.

A farming programme on BBC radio broadcast that a farmer had had to destroy half his herd of rare breed pigs because he couldn't afford to feed them. Even the meat was wasted because there was no demand for it at that time of year.

Wheat prices rose 25% in just one day yesterday, because Kazakhstan announced export tariffs to prevent sales overseas which would enable prices and supply to stabilise within its borders. Russia and Argentina already have similar export controls.

Coupled with drought in Australia and poor harvests in the US and Europe, supplies of wheat are declining.

The FT remained upbeat about longer term adjustments to the market although there will be short-term suffering. The World Food Programme is having to contemplate cutting its food aid unless it receives higher donations to meet increased grain prices.

Nevertheless, the FT called for the repeal of subsidies which have moved four per cent of global coarse grain production to biofuels. "The environmental benefits of maize biofuel are ambiguous at best and it should not be favoured over growing maize for food."

Cheaper solar power helps enterprise in India

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 08:32:30 GMT

Powering on this Monday morning, a New Scientist story caught my eye on my Google home page. "Affordable solar power brings light to India".

UNEP, the United Nations Environmental Programme, is subsidising a scheme whereby local banks offering loans to low-income Indians in Karnataka claim re-payment at 5% interest, and UNEP pays the difference between that and the normal 12% interest rate on the loan. The scheme works with five selected vendors of solar panels, especially chosen and trained by UNEP.

UNEP's intervention has made electricity supply affordable for many low-income households and small businesses, but ends in May 2007. It has assisted 16,000 Indians since inception in 2003.

From an economist's point of view, the take-up of the technology and the benefits engendered by the scheme contributes measurably to development if the idea becomes self-sustaining and subsidies disappear. There are signs that this is happening. Jyoti Painuly, senior energy planner for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), told New Scientist, "Two vendors have told us that they are now selling 70% of their solar systems in cooperation with banks outside the programme."

Friends of the Earth are not so sanguine. FoE executive director Tony Juniper said "But in the end it won't go far enough or fast enough without the active involvement of governments."

Economists have mixed feelings about government intervention and regulation, so we shall have to see. If you read The Economist, you will know that it has a healthy regard for the power of a free market.

It's a heartening story amidst all the political mess that's going on in the world. You can read it at New Scientist too.