I’m back!
It’s been a while since I have posting anything on my blog but I have been thinking about how I can both get the most enjoyment out of it and also hopefully inspire others.

I think the way I write postings from now on is going to be a little different as I have personally found that, the scientific aspects of issues I would like to share with the world, are difficult to bring across in the medium of a blog and are perhaps better expressed in another type of format. I have come to learn that the best blogs are ones driven by passions and people’s personal experiences so that is what I will be focusing on from now on.

So I welcome you on a new journey with me and I would love to hear from you if you have any thoughts or comments on things you hear about not only from my blog but in the general world of green living and sustainability.

Here’s already a little sneak peak into some of the topics I plan to blog about soon:

* Green Smoothies (The life changing fruit, vege but most importantly greens smoothies, convenient, easy, fun and life changeingly healthy!

* Transition Towns

* Chicken keeping in an urban garden. (Coming soon to my garden)

* Happy Cow vegetarian network.

* Aloe Vera – one of the world’s most medicinal plant.

* Tea from the garden

* Window gardens

* Permaculture (This one may be at a much later stage as I am i the early days in learning about this.)

and much more….
By the looks of these topics you may have noticed that they are relatively light hearted and the will hopefully prove to be fun and inspiring.

To keep posted feel free to sign up to the newsletter which I now will be sending either once a month or once a fortnight.

To compliment the Willie Smits video clip below, this video brings to light the problems of palm oil production and was part of a succesful Greenpeace campaign, back in 2008, confronting the multinational corporation, Unilever,  who then was the biggest “single buyer of palm oil in the world”, but is now working toward “clean[ing] up the industry that’s behind so much forest destruction.”

There is a significant chance that the orangutan, one of our closest relatives, could become extinct within the next 5 years because of human activities and consumer patterns. The biggest threats are deforestation and habitat loss due to an increasing rise in monoculture palm oil plantations. Palm oil is a product used in over 1 in every 10 supermarket products (and in most cosmetics, as it is used to make glycerine). It is seldom listed as palm oil on ingredients labels and is often disguised as ‘vegetable oil’.

For more information about the plight of the orangutan and what you can do to help please visit the Orangutan Page on www.wildlifelines.org and view the clip below.

For a taster, here’s a clip on the issue of Garbage:

If you haven’t yet seen the Story of Stuff, I highly recommend you view it below, it’s a highly inspirational free, online, short animated film about all the ‘stuff’ in our everyday lives, where it comes from and how it impacts on the environment.

If the world is to continue eating fish, without creating a total crash of ocean life, then solutions such as these are increasingly important to ensuring a sustainable future for ourselves, our oceans and all the species that live on Earth.

See also my previous postings about the state of our oceans and ocean species:

* Are our oceans in peril?

* Whales and dolphins in captivity.

This open and honest method and form of environmental policy making is an inspiration and great example to all councils and governments around the world. Despite the final results and legislation which may result from this document I believe the very fact that that DEFRA have published this a document, with openness and a request for public opinion, is a positive step in environmental policy making.  We have been given the key but it is now our responsibility to open the door.

If you yourself are a UK citizen I would highly recommend reading through the document and sharing your opinion. This is an aspect of environmental decision making where people power matters and together we can demand a better world, a thriving and healthy environment and a sustainable future.

If you are not a UK citizen you may also like to submit your opinion and/or encouragement. I personally encourage anybody, anywhere in the world to demand from your local councils and governments a open, honest and inclusive system of environmental policy and decision making.

The deadline for responses is 30 October 2010 so don’t delay. This is our chance to be heard and make a positive impact for our environment and future.

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“This document aims to encourage debate about how best we can protect and enhance our natural environment, and the valuable services we derive from it.
We are looking for a wide range of views on all of the issues set out in this document, or any others that you think we have missed. ” – An invitation to shape the Nature of England.

As promised a quick posting about re-usable sandwich and snack bags.
Out of interested, and while trying to find the re-usable snack bag I read about a couple of years ago, I ran a simple internet search and to my pleasant surprise I found dozens of sites dedicated to re-usable snack bags.

For example one of the first examples I found was Reuseit.com which has many different styles and varieties on offer!

And for those who are feeling creative there are many online tutorials on how to make your own sandwich bags/wraps such as this one on Craft stylish.com.

So ditch the millions of meters of plastic wrap and switch to a reusable version. Not only will you be doing your bit for the environment but you and your family will have the most stylish lunch wrap around. It’s also a great talking point and tool to inspire and encourage others around you to do the same. Imagine how many millions of tonnes of non-degradable, plastic wrap would no longer be going into landfills, if every colleague at your work and every kid in school switched to such a funky reusable snack wrap. Its always so inspiring that such little changes in our daily lives can ultimately have such a great impact.

Finally, though slightly off the topic, but worth a mention as it is also related to recycling and reducing waste, I recently found a great website called Recycle This, it’s a community site full of tips and ideas on how you can recycle those odd items such as wine bottle corks, old video tapes etc.

I was please to see the amount of paper bags floating around Ireland on a visit last year but have recently been diving into the world of the paper bag and it turns out the environmental impact is far greater than one may initially think, as a section from an article in The Independent states:

“Yet, in many ways, paper bags are much worse for the environment. Paper bag production emits more than three times the amount of greenhouse gases that plastic bag manufacture does, according to a Scottish government report. An estimated 14 million trees a year are cut down to make them. The result is a very sizeable carbon footprint. Even when they’re made from recycled paper, the process still uses 91 per cent more energy than plastic recycling. In addition, paper bags are anywhere between six and 10 times heavier than lightweight plastic bags and, as such, cost more to transport. And if not recycled, they take up more room in a landfill site”

So the answer to the bag issue?  The best and most true environmental solution to the insurmountable waste build up by plastic bags and the high environmental impact of paper bags is to switch to re-useable bags.
Pop a simple material bag in your handbag, backpack, briefcase, or car boot or if you do have a few plastic bags lying around keep them handy and use them over and over until all life is gone from them.

While recycling may be better for the environment than dumping into landfills, re-use is by far the best way to go, cuts back on not only the energy used in the recycling and transportation process but also in the production of that item in the first place!

The GiiA Blog is currently undergoing some maintenance and thus there will be no daily Green-up tips over the next few days.

The reasoning for this is that I am looking at the best options of combining the daily Green-up tips with the, at times more in-depth, standard blog posts which at the moment seem to be getting swamped by the Green-up tips which are also valuable but are of a different nature.

Various options include making a separate blog for the Green-up tips or having them on a separate page.
Over the next few days I will be looking into these options. If you have any suggestions, your comments are very welcome.

Thank you for your patience.