Earth Hour: Media Hype or Effective Awareness Building?

Image via Wikipedia

I enjoyed my Earth Hour at home with a warm bath and some pleasant conversation with my husband. It was surprisingly relaxing to spend an evening without lights, tv or computer, but did it really make a difference?

In the long run, spending an hour in the dark once a year is unlikely to significantly reduce my carbon footprint, or impact climate change in a meaningful way. So does this mean its all just media hype?

Of course not! Earth Hour is about building awareness about climate change and how each of us can make choices that can help to reduce our impact on the planet. Its about how collectively we are powerful. Its about making us think about the things we do.

Earth Hour was a reminder for me about how much I take for granted. Lights that turn on at the flick of a switch, television, my computer, constant hot water, a hot drink in minutes, smoke free cooking (well most of the time!) . . .

For a quarter of humanity this is sheer luxury. Some 1.6 billion people live without electricity. In developing countries some 2.5 billion people are forced to rely on wood, charcoal and animal dung to meet their energy needs for cooking. Indoor air pollution resulting from the use of solid fuels claims the lives of 1.5 million people each year, more than half of them below the age of five: that is 4000 deaths a day.

Earth Hour made me think about the way my family and I consume resources as we go about our daily lives. There is a huge global disparity between the haves and the have-nots:

The 12 percent of the world’s population that lives in North America and Western Europe accounts for 60 percent of private consumption spending, while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 3.2 percent (The State of Consumption)

By choosing to consume less - whether it be electricity, chocolate bars or petrol - we do something to even things up. By choosing to consume less and donating even a portion of the savings we make to charities that address global poverty we are doing even more.

What did Earth Hour mean to you?

Don't worry, there's plenty more where that came from!

There are times when an argument put forward is so glaringly flawed, breathtakingly idiotic and utterly without common sense that it defies belief. This I believe is one of them:

“Besides, the whole concept that we’re “running out of room” to put our garbage and/or have landfills is absolutely ridiculous. If you took every man woman and child currently living on the Earth (6,706,993,152 as of July 2008) and moved them all to Australia we’d each still have roughly a third of an acre of our own private land (Australia is roughly 2,967,909 sq mi. There are 640 acres in a square mile which means there are 1,899,461,760 acres in Australia. Divided by the Earth’s population, we each get 0.28 acres). That would leave the entire rest of the planet empty. Do you not think we could fit both recreational area as well as vast amounts of landfill space on all of North America, South America, Africa, Europe and Asia? Of course I’m not suggesting that we undertake such a ridiculous plan, but it should clarify that the Earth has plenty of empty land that could be used for waste disposal.”

Morgan Hill Review

I am flabbergasted that any sane person would put forward such a ludicrous suggestion. Even with the caveat at the end of the paragraph. In fact, that makes it worse “the Earth has plenty of empty land that could be used for waste disposal”.

I don't know of any vast tracts of empty land that could be better used as a landfill. Image via WikipediaPerhaps the beautiful Fiordland National Park in New Zealand. Its full of sandflies and really doesn't serve any useful purpose.

Image by nunavut via FlickrThe Sahara desert, I guess, really isn't the most productive area, we could do without that.

Image by Ron Layters via FlickrOh, the Grand Canyon – you wouldn't even have to dig a hole there!

Honestly, have people become so deeply disconnected with the land that they only see it as having value if it is under cultivation, making money, or directly and measurably benefiting the needs of humankind?

The whole idea that there is “plenty of empty land that could be used for waste disposal” calls to mind the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. If we continue to squander the planets natural resource as we are, if we pay no mind to the mindnumbingly vast quantities of waste we produce as a result of our consumption, then sooner or later we will find ourselves sitting in front of a pile of dirty dishes.

Nature is not here to serve us. It will continue on perfectly well long after we are gone from the planet. However, we will not fare so well if the earth's eco-system becomes irreversibly changed and can no longer sustain the conditions we need for our continued survival. Its in our best interests to consume wisely, to live lightly, and to value the environment in and of itself.

Choose Your Impact: The Great Nappy Debate

:Image by imcountingufoz via FlickrI recently read an interesting blog post "The Scoop on Poop" that brought to my attention an independent study by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in the UK comparing the environmental impact of reusable, cloth nappies to that of disposable nappies. Actually, it drew my attention to an article in the TimesOnline that referred to the study as the study itself proved elusive.

It was interesting to note that according to the TimesOnline the researchers drew the conclusion that reusable nappies have a much higher carbon footprint than disposable nappies unless "parents adopt an extreme approach to laundering them."

By extreme, they meant "parents would have to hang wet nappies out to dry all year round, keep them for years for use on younger children, and make sure the water in their washing machines does not exceed 60C."

Hmmm, as a mother of two and user of cloth nappies, that actually doesn't sound in the least extreme. I hang the nappies on the line all year round as a matter of course (or indoors by the fireplace in winter). My nappies were mostly hand-me-downs from my sister's kids and have lasted quite well through my two - with still at least a year or so to go. We don't use a hot wash to wash them and we don't use bleach or NapiSan or the like.

In New Zealand, where I live, there are added considerations that weigh in against the disposable nappies as well - and up their carbon footprint. There are no disposable nappies manufactured in New Zealand - so all brands available here are imported, which means additional transport costs.

But ultimately, should this report prove to be the definitive word in the cloth vs. disposable debate I would still choose reusable nappies.

According to the study, the main environmental impacts of disposable nappies are in their manufacture - that includes the raw material production and waste management - whereas for reusable nappies the impacts relate mostly to the washing and drying of the nappies.

While I have no say in how disposable nappies are produced, I can make choices that will mitigate the environmental impacts of cloth nappies:

• I can choose to make my own cloth nappies
• I can choose to use organically grown fabrics as much as possible
• I can choose to wash in cold water
• I can choose to dry pail rather than soak in chemicals
• I can choose to use an energy efficient washing machine that goes easy on the water
• I can choose to line dry the nappies
• I can choose to keep them for any subsequent children I may have or hand them on to someone else who needs them . . .
  

All these choices available to me mean that I can lower the environmental impact of the cloth nappies I use, something I just can't do with disposable nappies.

Personally, knowing what goes into making disposable nappies and the chemicals involved in their manufacture, I am less comfortable with these impacts on the environment and I remain convinced that my cloth nappies are kind to the environment in ways that matter to me and that disposable nappies are not.

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