So the UK government is pushing ahead with plans to build a new bunch of nuclear power stations, which in my view is simply a way of making the country believe we are actively reducing (the new buzz word on the street) CO2 emissions, whilst investing heavily in a technology that is dangerous and gives a poisonous legacy for our offspring to deal with. Reading on forums there is a big backlash against ‘lentil eating tree huggers’ who have stood up to complain about these new power stations. I wonder why it is that the ill-informed and all the painfully stupid people in the country, always revert to the same old name calling tactics, which make me wonder what is wrong with lentils, or having a positive outlook on trees. Having watched a few programmes on the television as of late, notably Hugh FW’s programme on the treatment of broiler chickens and the attitudes of the people he had to deal with who didn’t seem to care that the chickens were kept in hideous conditions it made me wonder truly what the state of the country is in. This country is filled with really dim people, to say that it’s OK to keep chickens in horrible conditions was OK, because the chickens ‘didn’t know any different’ is missing the point by such a long way that it would be funny if the subject matter wasn’t so dire. What has this got to do with nuclear power? Well, it’s the same mentality taking grip here, the ‘we need power’ let’s leave the small, apparently insignificant issue of disposing of nuclear waste for some other generation to deal with, because we don’t care, because ‘we need power.’ I also loved the argument that we were too dependant on nations such as Russia to provide Gas, the Middle East to provide Oil and we want to generate our own home grown power. Great argument, but where does the fuel for nuclear power stations come from? Well, I tell you what, it’s not the Lake District. It’s Canada and Australia predominately. That’s OK though, because we like Mounties and Aussies, I mean Aussies are great they all work in bars and they are always so chipper, but those Russians and Arabs… well we just don’t know what it is with them. I hate all the spin from Governments who so easily pull the blinkers over the masses in this stupid country, it drives me nuts. Honestly, I’m tempted to emigrate.

Looks like they are building a coal powered power station in Kent. Greenpeace labelled it “dinosaur technology” which is bang on the money. That’s another dim idea from the bunch of idiots that run the UK. Coal really isn’t the future and if this government wants to tackle climate change they are going to have to ‘think outside the box’ and not come up with nonsense like this.

Happy New Year to all of our readers from Suburban Chimp! This environment blog sure does hope that environmental news and sustainability plays an even bigger part in people’s minds in 2008 than it did last year, as we have an awful lot of issues to deal with. As for us, we’ve had a little holiday, put our feet up and enjoyed a well earned rest. At home we sorted out our recycling area so that it’s easier to place things in the recycling bins than it is to put in the waste bin, meaning that instead of having to make a concerted effort to recycle we have to make a concerted effort to NOT recycle. In fact, due to a lazy lie in one morning we missed the dustbin collection (which is only once every two weeks), and therefore our trash isn’t being picked up for a month. In this month our household has generated one full wheelie bin full of rubbish that we can’t readily recycle easily. Considering we’ve just got through the ‘excess’ period of the year, dealing with Christmas and New Year, we think that our effort was pretty good. However, it could be better, so moving forward we are going to aim to reduce our waste further. Another resolution (of sorts) is to recycle more of the rubbish we generate at work. Suburban Chimp isn’t a full time job, so we have day jobs to contend with too, and the recycling systems in our offices and work places aren’t always up to scratch, for whatever reason. This means taking our rubbish home with us, and where this is practical we will do so. Of course, when we recycled most of our Christmas waste, what was we left with? Yup, we were left with plastic and specifically polythene food wrappings. We are going to make a bigger effort to avoid buying foods/products with polythene where possible. However, this stuff gets everywhere so we know it is near on impossible to avoid it completely. In 2008 we at Suburban Chimp are going to target ‘excess packaging’ as a priority as it is a subject that is starting to drive us nuts. For example one of our staff writers bought a DVD without really thinking about the environmental impact of it. OK, so we live in the real world where we buy DVDs and stuff, we don’t live in caves and live off moss. We buy stuff too! However, this DVD is a real case in point of something we probably shouldn’t have purchased if we had looked at it from an environmental aspect. DVD creation aside, here is a run down of the packaging involved in this purchase. One polythene cover over the DVD. (yawn). One cardboard sleeve over the plastic DVD case. One plastic bag to carry it all in. OK, there are commercial reasons for the polythene but it gets absolutely everywhere and is annoying. We should have bought our own bag to carry the purchase home in, and as for the cardboard sleeve? What on earth is that for? Pointless, excessive and wasteful. Manufacturers, please stop doing that!