Saving Trees, Earning Manpoints

Evening everyone. Apologies for the lateness in writing. On the way to our corporate ‘Finance Funday’ this afternoon, it struck me as quite hilarious that the six of us in Accounts  were driving in six separate cars to the venue a mile up the road (we were all going home in different directions afterwards, promise). Then I came to feel sorry for mother earth as I pondered my size 10 footprint and the wider ramifications of my actions....WO WO WO! Man-up Edwards! (Said my other cerebral hemisphere) You are a Homo Sapien! King of nature; slave to no beast! (Except computers). This dichotomy ran its course in my mind for exactly the length of time that my commute takes. (Funny eh?) Anyway, half an hour later, I listed:

My Top 6 Manly Ways for Saving the Environment

1. Drive a Used Car

Besides the facts that hardly anyone can afford a new car in this day and age, and that you lose 35% of what you’ve just spent when leaving the forecourt, driving a used car is incredibly sound for the environment.  It takes an estimated 39,090 gallons of water to make a car. Which, when you replace the word water with it’s new political title of ‘white gold’ sounds like an incredibly expensive process.This article on Wired.com states that a Prius has to do over 100,000 miles to be more efficient than a used car. (Because the environmental impact in all the excess interior plastic, harvesting the lithium to make the AA batteries and making pure Aluminium out of Bauxite is just horrific.) With that fact in mind, Autotrader.co.uk tells me that only 2% of all available Priuses have done >100k on the clock. Alas, my 1995 BMW is efficient than 98% of all eco-(un)friendly cars. So suck on that Tom Cruise.

2. Use a Cut-Throat Razor

Now then, I’m not encouraging you to all become Sweeney Todd. I would just like to make my male readers aware of the calamitous effect cheap, disposable, plastic products (razors are just the start of it) are having on the oceans and the global bird population. 

This picture should illustrate the point above. Cracked.com, quite possibly the best magazine website available on the Intertubes, published an article entitled ‘6 real islands way more terrifying than the one on Lost’. What’s that got to do with rubbish? Check out the link to the article and be amazed by number two (the others are pretty horrific as well). I urge you to buy less plastic crap and hopefully we can stop this island from becoming the size of the African continent. Cut throats should last a lifetime: Not just two shaves then be disposed of to eventually end up inside an albatross

3. Fold Crisp Packets Into Little Shapes

This may not change the world overnight, but your local council should sure as hell thank you for it. If you have no idea what I mean, click here. Landfills are filling up an ever-increasing amount of land and any space saved is a blessing. Practice your crisp-packet origami when next having a pack o’ cheese n’ onion at the pub and feel good about the result. 

4. Download Music 

Whether legally or as part of a Blackbeard-esque pirating operation, DLing muzak has got to be ecologically sound right? I mean, paper and plastic just to have...for the sake of having, I know it’s the idea of ‘the tangible’ in the age of ‘the digital’? But come on, nobody buys a CD for the li’l book or the poorly hinged polystyrene case. Download it, save it, back it up, move on. Gain environmental superiority complex. Profit.

5. Buy Antique Furniture

This one may not appear to be as manly as the others at first glance. But trust me on this one. Those of you who know me personally will already know that I’m a bit of an art/fashion nerd. I propose to you that in terms of value for money, comfort AND environmental moral highground, one of these: 

in used condition is definitely worth a third of the price of one of these:

British heritage and century-old craftsmanship for £300 or Swedish minimalist crap (which is leading to increased deforestation) for £1000. The choice is obvious. Get into antique furniture, (‘upcycling’ or whatever title hipster yummy mummies have called it) and save some trees whilst impressing your woman with your knowledge of period styles AND turning your flat into a country estate only a Duke would be proud of. Awesome.

6. Drink Organic Cider 

This one’s a give ‘un really. Organic cider means vast expanses of apple trees which means a large open expanse for bees to hang out and get freaky with other bees. The British honeybee has been in decline over the last decade and anything to help its recovery is welcome. Bees pollenating the trees, us humans drinking the delicious 6.8% nectar and the apple remnants feeding local pigs who then fertilise the orchard’s soil. If that isn’t perfect GCSE-level biology, I don’t know what is. So then boys and girls, next time you’re at the supermarket, notice the box of Weston’s Organic that’s not only big in value, but big in environmental prestige.

There you go everyone. Keep these things in mind and maybe you'll keep your conscience clean and show other people you care about the wider world. Girls love that.

Take care. 

x


(All due copyrights go to those who's pictures and content I've borrowed. Thanks very much.)

Spaghetti Hoops and MRSA

Evening everyone. I was reminded today by avid reader, former housemate and absolute star Lucy Kightley that I haven’t blogged for a fair period. For those of you who were also aware of this, I salute you and I apologise...and I’m guessing you were looking for more reasons to procrastinate. I would provide you with some sort of excuse, but work, menial household tasks and Pokemon Black have all played their part. (At least I’m honest!)

Anyway, last week in an attempt to get fit for summer I bought a rowing machine, as my legs are built like Jonah Lomu’s but my upper body looks more like Mr Tickle. After a solid eight and half hours work in the office and the luxury of a home-cooked meal I endeavour to sort out our garage (to make space for said rowing machine). I’m not sure if any of you have a room in your house which accumulates junk, but in our house it’s the garage...and the conservatory...and the spare bedroom....but mostly the garage. To put it into some sort of perspective, it’s seen two skips in as many summers. If it was a virus, it would be MRSA. Mostly concentrated in one place; but spreads like a vicious rumour. 

The problem with our garage isn’t the old furniture or paint tins or garden equipment, it’s foodstuffs. I mean, tins of tuna, packets of pasta, bottles of squash, you get the gist. The reason for this is because our larder is quite small (taken up with food which went past its best before circa the Cheynobyl disaster, nevermind Fukushima) and so it’s migrated into the garage. 

I really wish I hadn’t started to be honest. I mean, in terms of being on the edge of a nervous breakdown, this was second only to the time where my dissertation was due in two weeks, I’d written 40 words and time was so precious I didn’t have time to cook so my entire diet became Tea, Whisky and Custard Cream biscuits. (First for the diss + narrowly avoiding the signs of scurvy = Win)

But seriously, I flicked back the lock and started moving the tins around with all the good intentions in the world, but then the realisation kicked in. WE HAVE ENOUGH TINNED FOOD TO SELL BACK TO LIDL, TESCOS ET AL!

The joy of hindsight says that I wish I’d taken a ‘before’ photo but the below is after I’d got-my-OCD-on and reverted to a four year old girl and “played shop”.

                                             So....Yeah...... I wasn’t using hyperbole in the slightest.

In the picture you may notice...

11 tins of grapefruit

16 tins of pineapple chunks

15 tins of dog food (there’s a reason Molly the Mollusc [she’s a Labrador, not an actual mollusc] is so rotund!

22 tins of tomatoey saucey spaghetti & beans

9 packs of flour (of varying grains and sizes)

And so on....

I appreciate that my dad didn’t grow up with much and whilst rationing was still dictating the habits of the nation, but does it really mean that we should have enough nomz to last a zombie apocalypse? So before the waves of zombies arrive and we all head to the Winchester; just remember that however much food you have in your fridge / garage, that there are 925 million+ undernourished people in the world and you’re probably not one of them so I implore you to give what you can to charitable causes.

Have a good evening everyone. 

xxx