Carbon footprints and other stuff.

I have been sitting here drinking my coffee and browsing around and I have found a couple of interesting things. Marks & Spencer have a new website all about how they intend to cut their carbon footprint as a business. You can see it here: http://plana.marksandspencer.com/index.php?action=PublicHomeDisplay

It has their pledges of how they intend to improve their business practises plus lots of information on recycling. It also has a link to the WWF foot print calculator and a competition to win a "Lily Bag". This is a 100% organic cotton bag featuring the super model Lily Cole on the side.

A lot of the shops are now selling "proper" shopping bags in an effort to try and get us all to stop using plastic carriers which are such a pain and end up in their millions in land fill where they virtually never decompose. Here is what Marks & Spencer have to say:

The problemLandfill space is limited. We cannot go on dumping rubbish in large-scale pits indefinitely.
Plastic bags are a particularly thorny issue when it comes to landfill sites, because nobody is sure how long they will take to degrade. Estimates range from 100 years to a thousand! But plastic bags don't just contribute to the landfill problem. They also litter beaches, choke marine life, require crude oil for their manufacture and cost energy to transport.

What you can doThe best way to reduce rubbish going to landfill is to produce less of it. A simple but effective action is to refuse to use free plastic bags and instead carry your shopping in a reusable Bag for Life or a proper shopping bag like the Lily. Refusing a plastic bag seems like a small thing to do, but collectively our actions make a big difference. If everyone in the UK stopped using plastic bags and switched to a reusable bag, each year we'd save enough plastic to tie around the earth 103 times.

I know that I have talked about this issue before, but now that I am getting my own collection of bags, I really am getting much better and usually remember not only to take them with me, but to use them! I have got some quite nice ones and they are all different. I even have one that folds right down to fit into a handbag. My favourite one was from Asda and was black with the pink breast cancer awareness "Think Pink" logo on the side. It has mysteriously disappeared........Saskia???

Here are 2 of my bags. One is shiny black plastic with tiny white hearts and the other is a canvas bag from sainsburys that has the slogan "plastic ain't my bag".

 

I will probably get the Lily bag and also Next have a really strong looking denim canvas one. They are worth it if they stop me using plastic ones, after all, I don't want my grandchildren to be buried under tons of plastic!

I used the link from the Marks & Spencers site to go to WWF and check my carbon foot print. You can do it as well, just go here:http://ms.footprint.wwf.org.uk/

It's quite interesting. My carbon footprint is 12.98 tonnes per annum (Equating to an Ecological Footprint of 5.20 hectares) or another way of saying it,2.89 planets. I don't think that is very good. The website says:

You're living as if we had 2.89 planets to support us. Although you are below the UK average, we obviously only have the one!

It's Eco tips for me personally are: Buy more seasonal food Did you know that although we can get most of our needs from food grown in the UK, we import more than half of the food we consume. Buying locally-grown, seasonal food would mean we could reduce our food miles, use less packaging to preserve fresh produce, and not least help us reconnect with the annual patterns of seasonal produce. The other tips are: Walk instead of using other modes of transport. Turn down the heating in rooms which you are not using. Avoid over-packaged products

It's really interesting and I would like to know what other peoples carbon foot print is.

The other interesting web site that I have been looking at is the Playtex Moon walk. The moon walk is a midnight walking marathon wearing your bra!! It is in aid of breast cancer. One of my favourite charities so I was really interested. It began in 1996 when one woman Nina Barough got 12 of her friends to walk the New York marathon in their bras. From there it has become a fully fledged charity now in it's 11th year. For the history and some great photos see here: http://playtex.togetheragency.co.uk/moonwalk/page.php?ref=history

It is taking place in London at midnight on 17th of May. All participants, female and male will be wearing their customised bras! All money raised will go to Breast cancer research. To sponsor one of the Playtex staff members or if you live in London to volunteer as a helper then go to the home page:http://playtex.togetheragency.co.uk/moonwalk/index.php

Unfortunately all places to actually join in have now gone. I have registered on the web site for next year though as I thought it could maybe something I could do. You can enter individually or as a team with up to 10 people.

Me, Coralie, Verity, Saskia, Lisa, Julie, Carly, Wendy....... That's a team of 8 already! You don't even have to be female so I could organise a male team too! I bet my friend Ed would be up for walking around London in a customised bra! I am going to give serious thought to this as it would be fun. I'm sure my cousin Wendy would be happy for us all to crash at her house!!!!