Food – Paul Noël

Have you enjoyed your plastic meal?

We need to stop this. It’s becoming increasingly known that plastic is not only disastrous for the environment but also poses significant human health risks.

This is an excellent visual article on how much plastic we are all consuming. What we need to know is what are the long term health effects because of the pathogens and other chemicals that the micro and nano sized particles can carry with them. Where do they end up? Which organs and can they cross the blood brain barrier? This isn’t the way we should be living our lives and it certainly isn’t sustainable yet the fossil fuel corporations want to increase plastic production. We need to stop them. https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2020/12/11/in-pictures-how-much-plastic-are-you-eating

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

Individuals are still wasting food

Food is precious. It involves altering and damaging the environment in so many ways. It’s not about whether you can afford to waste it or not because the Earth cannot afford what certain people do.

Do you find it strange that even in these very difficult times that some people are still wasting food? Our food waste consists of cuttings and peelings. There seems to be a problem with certain individuals and their relationship with food. This has got to change. If you waste food then you cannot complain that it is too expensive.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

Cashew nuts, very good for you but …..

Cashew nuts are very good for us unless you are unfortunate to have an allergy. But like many things that we in first world countries take for granted and pick up every day, only stopping probably to reflect on the price, is what and who is involved in getting the cashews to us.

Looking at the side of the packet which I have never done before tells me that they were grown in Vietnam. So the cashews have covered a lot of food miles probably by burning fossil fuels so there’s the aspect of climate change to consider as well.

We should but few do, ask ourselves what sort of life the farmers or the people working in the growing and packaging of these cashew nuts lead. Are they well paid, well housed and do they have clean running water? Do they go on holiday and do their kids go to school? All normal things that the people buying the packet of cashews take for granted and would complain if they had to live without them. We all need to think about our impact on the planet but also the many invisible people that supply us with food.

Then of course there’s that plastic packaging. Where’s that going to end up? Incinerated, polluting the air we breathe or as nano sized plastic particles that may carry toxins or pathogens into our bodies and possibly end up giving us a serious health issue?

A lot to think about as we are going to have to change whether we like it or not.

Below are a few more photos of food miles and plastic pollution to think about.

Inside the Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria, La Rambla, Ciutat Vella, Barcelona, Spain

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

Restaurant, Churrasqueria, Asuncion, Paraguay

A restaurant we saw. Does it still exist? How many people have come and gone in the intervening years? Seen on the road out of Asuncion, Paraguay in 2012, as we leave on the long distance coach for Buenos Aires. A journey that for us leaves around 6pm, maybe earlier, if I remember correctly and arrives the next day, 19 to 20 hours later. 29th February 2012.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton T-shirts and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

Our Etsy shop, https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

An example of our human centric thinking

First posted in January 2021. We need to change as a species in so many ways but for many it doesn’t seem to register or concern them.

Humans generally fall into two types when it comes to our human centric view of the world. Those that actively think that it’s ours to do with as we please and that we must conquer and bend nature to how we want it to run or those totally unaware of what they are doing much like any less conscious creature. The third type would be those who actually have worked out that we aren’t in a good position and are doing something about it, especially seen recently in the younger generation.

We have done so much damage but somehow we fail to take it onboard because of our inward looking at ourselves. Part of the reason for the damage is that we added another 80,000,000 of us in the 366 days of 2020 without any plan as to how the planet would support them. Nature will have to be bent and broken so it is possible because we humans are the only life that matters. So we see here in this research, https://phys.org/news/2021-01-common-pesticides-bees-flies-good.html, that as we try to bend nature to our will it suffers. We don’t notice it of course but over time the repercussions could be very serious in the amount of food the planet provides us with. We really are not that clever as a species if we don’t start looking at the damage we are causing for our short term human centric views.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

It’s Veganuary – have you made any changes at all?

First posted in January 2021 and it’s here again. Time to do your bit for the planet in any way that you can.

We are rushing away from the start of the New Year. Are any of your New Year’s resolutions intact? Do you know about Veganuary? Perhaps it’s time that you took a small step to improve your health, save the lives of some animals and protect the environment with special reference to the Amazon rainforest. So thing about reducing your meat intake, try vegetarian and vegan options as there are plenty of good ones.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

Britain is again going to start using a pollinator unfriendly pesticide

First posted in January 2021. Our pollinators are still in grave danger.

Seems like we can’t think of anything else to do but use pesticides, https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-55566438.You have to ask why we need to grow the sugar beet in the first place. Couldn’t the farmers grow something else for a couple of seasons? Is it because food corporations want to stuff processed foods with sugar adding to the obesity crisis of the country?

Hopefully the next generation will put health before profits. In the meantime here’s a cautionary tale for those younger readers. A group of clever bees take on a farmer using banned pesticides in my story Busy Bee and the Silent Spring available from Amazon, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Busy-Silent-Spring-Paul-No%C3%ABl/dp/B088JFN1ZV/.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

The cost of convenience – paper toweling

First posted in January 2021

Returning to normal after the pandemic passes for many people will mean buying sandwiches, takeaway coffees, visiting cafes and restaurants. Most customers will be given one or more pieces of soft bleached paper and few will think anything of it. Just take a minute to consider how many billions of them are given out and how many trees are cut down just because we can’t carry a cotton or hemp based alternative around with us. There’s not just the trees to consider and the disturbed environment from which they are extracted, but to get from a tree to a bleached soft piece of in many cases white piece of paper, involves transportation and large amounts of energy and chemicals. Basically it’s unsustainable and if we all carried a washable natural fibres product it would be so much better for the environment. So think about the future and about making this small change. If we can scale it up to the part of the 7.8 billion people on the planet who use them we will be doing nature a big favour. Perhaps as a way of changing our habits either they should be charged for or simply banned as is happening with plastic bags.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

OK, so let’s try in 2023

Plastic soup. In 2021 let’s start getting rid of the plastic in our lives

First published in January 2021. As consumers we need to stop buying stuff in plastic even if it makes our lives a little less convenient.

Soup, at least in the UK, is sold in various packaging but this has to be the worst. Tin cans may require energy to be melted down to become cans again but at least they won’t end up as microplastic and nanoplastic particles in our bodies like the breakdown products of this plastic soup container might. We don’t know what these small plastic pieces will do to us health wise but on their journey they can pick up toxins and pathogens so it would be best if we were not consuming them. They are already in every part of our environment so if we want to stop that happening we have to use our consumer power as one way of making that change. So if you are buying soup leave this sort of soup on the shelves. If enough of us did it we might get the retailers to wonder why their products are not selling.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

When the government fails the people, the people need to act

First posted on the 1st of January 2021. It’s quite clear that in the UK we desperately need political system change.

All over the world there are examples of the political class failing the people in so many ways. They answer only to the rich one percent and to powerful corporations. It therefore leaves people to act for themselves until the failed political system can be truly wrested back into the interests of the many. Great initiative by a charity in Shrewsbury, UK to tackle food waste and deal with some of society’s failing to be inclusive. https://www.shrewsburyfoodhub.org.uk/