What a load of rubbish!

Until September of this year, I had no idea that household waste was collected every two weeks in Preston! Just think of the sheer quantity of waste that builds up in every household over the period of these two weeks.



Fourtunately, for those of us sitting around in piles of rubbish, the council is about to change the dates of waste collection to once a week.

On the downside, only those lucky enough to live in South Ribble will be able to take pleasure in such changes as of February - everyone else will just have to wait their turn until the change can be made in their area.

The scheme is costing a phenomenal £126,000; which will go towards either specialist food waste bins to be put out once a week or a bin for food, garden and non-recyclable waste. County Councils will be paying for this scheme. In any case, perhaps even in times like these a high cost for waste disposal is probably well deserved.
It's about time council money was spent on something a little more worthwhile.

However, does this mean that households will now take advantage of this weekly disposal and accumulate more rubbish than they need to? If so, this could cause more damage to the environment, meaning that non-recyclable waste could take up more environmental space.

South Ribble will test the best way to collect waste food before the opening of Leyland Waste Technology Park in 2010.

We can only look on in hope that this scheme will work and further areas in Preston and surrounding areas of Preston can benefit from this environmental change.




Story from LEP website: http://www.lep.co.uk/news/Weekly-rubbish-collections-could-return.4647548.jp

Please check in at gate 20 for flight 10759 for a further rise in CO2 emissions.

Taking a few planes a year is becoming the "norm" for many of us but booking a flight could seem to be more problematic if the choice in airports rises.

I mean, how many airports and extra terminals in this country do we actually need?! (Yeah, sure, thank god for terminal 5 and its fast and simple baggage system!)

Luckily, the Tories are here to save us from such dangers (as trying to book a flight at the nearest airport). They have recently opposed projects supporting the construction of a third runway at Heathrow and a second runway at Standsted. Despite organisations such as "Stop Standsted Expansion", the project had still been given the green light. During the process of accepting said project (in a letter to BAA), the Government has more or less ignored the climate change Bill, which is subject to change in a few weeks; obviously excusing such behavior. Greenpeace's blog picked up on an important factor of the ordeal: the Secretary of State confirmed that the letter to BAA to "share the Inspector's view that Government policy seeks to reconcile growth in aviation to meet the needs identified in the [Air Transport White Paper] with action to address climate change..." - I'm sorry but what action addresses climate change? Perhaps the Government feels the need to mention "climate change" in order to show that such a matter has not been ignored. Not only that but Stansted airport isn't the only airport getting an expansion - the Government are nodding their heads at the increase in flights at City Airport. Surely the amount of reasons given for expanding the latter airports could never explain the rise in CO2 emissions.

Another important wake-up call from the Greenpeace blog would be this: "If aviation keeps expanding at predicted levels, its emissions would wipe out our entire 2050 carbon budget if we adopted the 80 per cent target Brown is considering adopting."

We'll just have to watch this space as to how much of the climate change Bill will change in terms of the expansion of airports. Will the Government ever realise that one of the main factors needed to help in the budgeting lies in the expansion of airports?

"Stop leaving me on standby!"

It's very easy to ignore all climate change warnings - from TV ads to leaflets given out on the high street - and to maintain the attitude that "it doesn't affect me." The fact is, it does affect you and is affecting you. This advert is all about acting on CO2 and demonstrates that by leaving your TV on standby or the lights on, you're creating more CO2 emissions as well as making your bills more expensive:

Basically, all you need to do is make a few small changes to your daily life to avoid the rise in CO2 emissions.
You can:

• save your carrier bags and re-use them when you next go shopping
• boil the kettle with the right amount of water in it
• set the heating in your house to appropriate times
• buy energy efficient light bulbs
• recycle your rubbish - separate paper from tins etc

Rising CO2 emissions is also affecting you in terms of climate change. Fair enough, the British summer is renown to have a spot of rain but the past couple of summers have shown that climate is changing. Last summer showed no sign of summer at all, merely floods. Mike Hulme makes a good point about climate change in this article. I mean, sun and blue skys in October?! Weather and climates are no longer predictable.

Obviously only small changes can happen if everyone takes part in trying to save energy but it will still help to push the long term consequences of climate changer further away.

Let's face it, who wants a world like this:



or even this:



Okay, so the latter is a very extreme image of long term climate change but it's your wake-up call. Make the changes and stop climate change.