Food Waste

 I've already written about a lot of things on Food Waste, because if you search up food waste on my main blog, you get about a gazillion blogs! However, all of them aren't exactly on food waste, they're on how to help or another problem, and since I learnt about food waste in my Geography class, I thought why not write about it. It's going to be a lot of statistics and facts, so get ready😁.

To begin with, a statistic that we always hear is a third of all food is wasted or lost every year, and about 7.3 million tonnes of food waste ends up in landfill every year. And did you know that rotting food releases 3.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gasses when it is in landfills? You may be wondering why compost isn't the same, but it's because food in landfill breaks down without oxygen (or: anaerobically) consequently creating greenhouse gasses. I learnt this weird but interesting fact in my geography class: if uneaten food was a country, it would have the third highest greenhouse gas emissions, estimated at about 3.3 billion tonnes of it. However, if food is recycled it creates biofuels, which is created from biomass and since 'bio' means 'life' and 'fuels' is a substance that creates energy, you can sort of infer that biofuels are sustainable fuels (unlike fossil fuels). 

When food is wasted, there are other things wasted too. For example, oil is wasted through packaging and transport, and so this means food miles wasted too because lots of food is grown out of the country so if you waste it, you waste everything that took part in making it. Did you know it takes 100 gallons of water to create a loaf of bread? That's counting the growth of the ingredients and product miles.

And then there's the amount of money wasted too.  Wasted food costs UK families around £700 every year, and businesses have to pay millions per year to have their food waste collected. The amount of people who are worried about their next meal is terribly huge, but there is still loads and loads of food waste.

Well, thank you for reading my blog this week. I hope you found it interesting! See you next week. 

Violet

         xxx

The Part Rivers Play in Plastic Pollution

We all know that there is loads of plastic in the oceans, whether that be something as small as micro-plastics (less than 5mm) or as large as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (3 times the size of France). But, I mean, how does it all get there?

It could be someone just throwing their plastic in the sea, or it could be the wind picking up littered plastic. But one of the main ways are rivers. Basically all rivers flow into larger bodies of water, like the sea, so anything flowing freely in them will end up there. At first, it was thought that only the ten biggest rivers in the world that did this, but now studies show there are at least a thousand more. Boyan Slat, CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, says: 

"On one hand, it shows that the problem is actually much more vast than we used to think - it's not ten rivers, it's a thousand. But on the other hand, it's still just 1% of all the rivers in the world, so I do think it is a manageable problem." 

The Ocean Cleanup has a river collection project that will collect plastic before it enters the sea (it is currently working in 3 rivers: Cengkareng drain, Indonesia; Klang, Malaysia and Rio Ozoma, Dominican Republic and they are hoping to have it operational in 10 rivers by the end of the year) and they believe that if they can get 10 rivers, they'll be able to get 100 and then be able to get 1000. 

(Here are the videos that I watched to get this information: Do you know where plastic in the ocean is coming from? and The Newsround version of the last video) 

Do you know what the most polluted river in the UK is? It's actually in Greater Manchester: the River Tame. It has more than 130 plastic particles in one gram of sediment. There are more than 3 million microplastics coming from the outfall into the river, and then they settle in the riverbed - where they do the most damage. This means they are increasing the chances that the microplastics will move through the ecosystem. Researchers say that because of how much plastic is in the riverbed, you can see that untreated sewage is being released regularly, and the sewage creates its own ecosystem which encourages more microplastics to 'gather'. (The video I watched is here and is very short and interesting).

So: ways to help. Individually, we all need to stop littering. My family went on a beautiful walk yesterday next to a rapid river and there were parts of the walk that were quite high up on a hill, but there were still litter ruining the view. Our part is to recycle, reuse and not litter but I think it's more up to the larger companies to stop creating as much plastic. Microbeads (microplastics that are man-made for specific purposes, like to go in personal care products) were banned from 2018 in the UK, and lots of other countries, but not all. There are other organisations, like the aforementioned The Ocean Cleanup, who are helping a lot so all we have to do is make sure no one gives up in trying to help.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you learnt some things from this post and nothing was confusing😁. See you next week!

Violet

         xxx

Mental Health Awareness Week!😇

In the UK, Mental Health Awareness week took place from the 10th to 16th May, and you may think what has that got to do with the blog I write? Well, the theme this year is nature and since nature has a lot to do with what I write about, of course, I decided to do a post about it. 

There were Five Ways of Wellbeing this week, which were: Connect, Take Notice, Give, Be Active and Keep Learning. I'm going to focus on Be Active, Take Notice and Keep Learning. The reason I chose these is because they can be a bit more focused on the environment around us. 

Be Active

You probably know that keeping active can lower depression and anxiety rates and releases hormones that will make you happy. But I know how hard it sometimes is to get up and out of the house, even though you know you'll probably feel accomplished and positive afterwards. For our family, it helps that  we have a dog, Felix, because without him we probably wouldn't have gone on as many walks even just to get fresh air. However, I know not everyone has a dog so what I like to do is think of the beauty you could see even if you just go for a walk to your local park. This leads me onto the next way of wellbeing...

Take Notice

In this situation, take notice means to be curious and take stock of the surroundings we're in. It helps you savour the moment, to be grateful of your surroundings, and observe the smallest things. I find it quite amazing how relaxed or free I feel when I'm in nature, and I absolutely love the thought of running through trees or watching birds swim in lakes. You do see a lot if you really observe, and there's many crazy bugs that I have seen crawling up trees. If you like photography, there is many a place even in you local area that will be picturesque and lovely.

Keep Learning

Last of all is Keep Learning. This may not sound very inviting to you, but it doesn't just have to be learning about something you don't find interesting, it could be picking up an old skill you have, maybe trying a new recipe. You could use both Keep Active and Take Notice to go to somewhere nice and create a piece of artwork, or you could - as I mentioned before - try a new recipe you've been recommended. A recipe book my mum uses is called One Pot, Pan, Planet by Anna Jones and it contains loads of recipes, including ways they are better for the environment. Also, if you do want to learn some books that I really like and recommend are The Inner Life of Animals or The Hidden Life of Trees, both by Peter Wohlleben. They are non-fiction and the former gives you loads of really interesting information about all types of animals, and the latter (which I finished reading only a week ago) tells you what trees do in their lives. For example, did you know that a tree will migrate to an environment more suited to them, so if a climate rises they will probably move north (their seeds being picked up by the wind or other animals) and if the north's climate changes too much they will move again. However, since the climate is changing drastically in lots of different places, they will soon find it hard to find an environment with the right conditions. 

Anyway, thank you for reading my blog! I really enjoyed writing it because I got to say a lot of things that I like, and I hope you are able to read the books I recommended!

Violet

         xxx

Environmental Pledges ✍

 I realised I haven't actually done a tip in a while, because the past few blogs have been facts and information about different things. So, today I thought I'd do something a little different.

The definition of a pledge is, as a verb: to solemnly promise to do or give something. You've probably heard of it and may have already made a few yourself, so I say we should make some about the environment and making it better. 

Here are a few that I have made (some aren't official, like I haven't written them down, but I have still done them). You can use them too or create some of your own!

• To stop buying single use plastic - whether that be plastic bags, straws or bottles, I've stopped buying them for over two years now. This is probably a very popular one, since it's the problem most people know about, and so it's likely you know how this can help. But ways it can help anyway is reducing water pollution and helping animals that are dying and becoming endangered by the plastic they are consuming or becoming caught in. 
• Instead of using these, you can use paper/bamboo/metal straws, metal water bottles, tote bags or those bags you can see in the supermarkets that hold loads of heavy things. 
• To stop buying disposable coffee cups - I did actually only make this pledge not so long ago, because whenever we get takeaway hot drinks from a café, I always feel so guilty holding my cup. It may be made of sustainable materials, even made from a recycled material, but I still know it's something I'll only use once and then I'll throw away; so I decided to stop buying them. 
• Some alternatives are having something like a KeepCup or something like it. I wrote a blog about it (and many of the things I'm talking about in this post) here. However, currently you may not be able to use those, so you could go like me and just not buy anything. You may not want to do that though, so instead you could make some crafts with them, and you can find some funny ones here!
• To write my blog every week! I have been doing this since November 2019 so it's going well, and the reason I do it is so people can learn about some recent environmental problems in our world and know how to help in an easy way. You could easily do one too!
• To buy less things in general. This is just so I can reduce the amount of plastic packaging I buy and the amount of product miles I contribute to. 
• To help, you can buy things that have already been used, like going to a swap-shop or charity shop, and give some of your stuff away for other people to use so they can help as well. I find buying books that have already been read (or going to the library) just as satisfying as buying new books.

These are only a few, and there are obviously many more you could do - for example using beeswax wraps or getting food that is locally sourced - along with finding out how you are helping the environment. 

Thanks for reading this blog and I hope you find a pledge you can commit to!

Violet

         xxx

The News About Aerosols

In the news this week, I read a story about the harmful effects of aerosols.  Examples include: hair spray, insect spray, shaving cream, spray deodorant, spray paint and all products (maybe spray or foam) that are in pressurized containers. Do you know how many of these and other examples you own? Because a new study published by Science Daily shows that aerosol products now release more damaging VOCs (volatile organic compounds) than all the vehicles in the UK. I've explained in one of my past blogs, but volatile organic compounds are chemicals that have short- and long-term effects on health and are also released from fuels in a car. They are usually emitted as gasses from a solid and a liquid. 

In high income countries, researchers found that per year, each person uses 10 cans of aerosol. The whole world has also increased the number of disposable aerosol cans that we buy each year; and it's a shocking 25 billion cans. This consequently results in 1.3 million tonnes of VOC pollution released into the air. Quoting from the article I read from Science Daily: "In the presence of sunlight, VOCs combine with a second pollutant, nitrogen oxides, to cause photochemical smog which is harmful to human health and damages crops and plants." (Photochemical is a chemical reaction produced by absorbing ultraviolet, visible light or infrared radiation.) There are already so many different problems for human health to do with pollutants etc, and this is just adding to it. Right now, 93% of all aerosol cans contain VOC pollutants.

However, I'm not sure everyone knows about the changes and swaps you can make to stop buying aerosol cans. Instead of the deodorant, you can use roll-on or, even better, buy an environmentally friendly one. I have a natural balm from The Clay Cure which has lasted for a very long time, however natural deodorants are usually quite expensive and so just using a roll on one is fine, and still better than the spray. There are many aerosols that can be swapped for more solid forms, and making these small changes can have a positive, major effect on inside and outside air quality. 

To read the full article, click here.

Thank you for reading this blog, and I hope you will be able to swap an aerosol you have for a more eco-friendly version. See you next week!

Violet

         xxx