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!

I went to a company today, in the line of my day-to-day business and although this company can be considered fairly cynical environmentally and the things it sells are pretty much environmentally unfriendly I can’t blame them for selling what they sell as I am typing on one. (yes a computer). A couple of things impressed me, firstly in their reception they have a massive display promoting bargain composters for the garden, from just £8.00, a massive display and special deal on energy saving light-bulbs and a great deal of information on recycling services in the area. All of this was a council led scheme, but I was impressed with the initiative and wished my council did the same thing, I was also impressed that a big corporate allowed this in their reception. Well done on both accounts to these organisations.

Mustn’t grumble about the news that Coca Cola are slimming down their iconic glass coke bottle by 20% to reduce waste. Obviously this has a big impact on the environment, and probably saves Coca Cola some money too, which is a double bonus. My question is why do so many companies have so much packaging all of the time, why don’t they follow Coca Cola’s lead and do the same, helping the environment, reducing their long-term packaging costs and getting good press in the process?

To be fair, I prefer a nice smoothie to soda as I’m a health freak, but that aside, we need to see more multinational companies take a lead so well done to CC for this at least.

The Greenpeace ‘Guide to Greener Electronics‘ has been released and gives a big slap to Nintendo for ‘being first global brand to score zero across all criteria’. You’d think you would have to go out of your way to score zero, so it’s a disappointing result for the company. At the other end of the scale Sony Ericson, Samsung and Sony are the top three this year, so for us eco-types it’s looking like we should be asking for a PlayStation 3 from Santa instead of a Wii. In all seriousness I would have liked a Wii but with all the banging on about consumerism I’ve been doing, and now hearing the eco-credentials of Nintendo it’s something I’m going to have to cross off the list. Shame.

When I was in Norway I noticed that in every supermarket there was a machine, which you could put in bottles etc to recycle in-store, plus you’d get money back for doing so. Virtually all Scandinavians recycle religiously, unfortunately with only 4.5 Million Norwegians, they will not make as much difference that 60 Million plus people in the UK could make if they decided to make a difference.

People complain that recycling is hard, too difficult, pointless etc, but more people are starting to do their bit regardless of the buffoonian few. My question is why are there these machines in the UK? I can’t recall seeing one anywhere I’ve been and I find that quite depressing.

When I was a child my gran used to take her ‘pop’ bottles back to the newsagents and get money back. When did we all become so rich and pig headed that we didn’t need to do this any more? Consumerism is out of control and there is a price (no real pun intended here) to be paid for it.

Nevertheless, apparently these machines ‘are’ in the UK, but I would like to see more and I urge everyone to write to their local superstore manager via email to tell them this.

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