Waste – Paul Noël

Leaving the lights on, polluting the planet, polluting the night

First posted 13th of January 2021. Even more important now that climate change is accelerating and there’s a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Leaving the lights on when not necessary is wrong on so many levels. Doing so pollutes the environment and pollutes the night. Every light left on causes wood, coal, oil or gas to be burnt increasing atmospheric CO2 and enhancing climate change, or it causes a bit of radioactive waste to be produced lasting thousands of years, or it wastes renewable energy and resources causing unnecessary environmental loading and resource extraction. Your pocket and bank account may be able to waste planetary resources and cause significant pollution but the planet and its environment cannot. Just remember also that there are countless humans out there who haven’t the ability to squander like you or your society might be doing. This lack of lighting severely restricts the progress of many individuals and societies especially in terms of the education of children. Finally, beyond the human centric view of the world it is important to consider that before two centuries ago the night was mostly dark but now humans have invaded and polluted it with no consideration for the creatures whose domain is the darkness. We need to give back the night just as much as rewild the wilderness.

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UK Government Extremely Slow in Dealing with the Plastic Peril Killing Our Oceans

First posted in 2018 and surprise, surprise, the useless Tories are still in power and need to be permanently removed.

In an article in the Business section of the BBC, Theresa May, or perhaps she should be called Mayhem Theresa, has stated that the government has a target to ban “avoidable” waste by 2042. What nonsense, an empty statement, the government and the oceans will all be very dead by that year.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44600378#

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Litter and waste. Time to get tough on everyone from the individual up to the corporation and country

First posted 3rd January 2021. Two years later we, humans, are polluting the planet even more than we were then.

Let’s make 2021 the year that we also ask for the people responsible for the state of the planet pay. In the UK there seems to be little that’s done against those individuals, criminals, organisations or even our country. What do I mean by that? The microplastic pollution is out there. It covers every part of our environment and it appears to be in most living organisms including us. The corona virus is making it far worse with discarded face masks filling our landscapes, seas and oceans. Since this waste is potentially very dangerous those who discard it need to face the proper penalties and it needs to be taken for the serious problem that it is. First we need to catch the individuals. If we do what would be a suitable punishment? How about a week street cleaning and the street cleaner gets a week off? Fly tippers? Well that should carry heavy fines and a prison sentence for repeat offenders. That might already happen but we obviously don’t catch enough of them. Corporations? We need to protest to our governments to make them pay heavily for using non recyclable materials. Governments? We must stop 1st world governments dumping our waste on 3rd world countries. A government that does this is no better than an illegal fly tipper. OK, I’m being frivolous but we need to start somewhere. Waste, especially plastic based waste, is something that needs to be taken far more seriously than it is.

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Killing the Earth for shopping

First posted in January 2021.

Western, first world countries rely on cheap and often exploited labour to fill the shops and increasingly so the internet with cheaply made throw away rubbish. Perhaps no more so than in the fast fashion industry which is always so shocked at finding exploitation in its supply chains. Shops turn over at quite a rate either for a new brand or a refit and this is where they also exploit the environment. Here we see one shop being refitted for a brand and at the end of it the wood and whatever materials are covering it will be placed into landfill or burnt causing more pollution. If workers were not being exploited and there was an actual true value put on the resources used for this “cheap” hoarding this sort of waste and wanton destruction of the environment for the business as usual model of capitalist growth would not be possible. Make 2021 the year when you shop and consume less. Our political leaders want us to consume more but we must stop if we want to have some sort of sustainable and equitable future.

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

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Smashing up glass, that’s insane

First posted December 2020 and since then nothing has changed.

We take materials from various sources and then use huge amounts of energy to heat them up to make container glass, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_glass#:~:text=Container%20glass%20has%20a%20lower,storage%20of%20beverages%20and%20food.. Then we fill it with something and transport it potentially long distances. The jars are put on shelves where shoppers who have often driven to the supermarket by the jars and take them home. The contents are emptied and then if they are lucky the glass containers are smashed and possibly recycled. A lot more energy will be used to make them back into glass containers again. Others are just chucked in the rubbish. We have developed highly inefficient one way supply chains and here we sit with a high in May 2020 of 417ppm CO2. Nothing to be surprised at if you look how inefficient our systems are. Those same shoppers have to drive back to the supermarket to buy another jar full of their favourite content. The lorries delivering the jars to the supermarket have to return to the depot. Lorries or vans supplying the depot have to return to the suppliers. There is therefore something very wrong with both our economics and our one way supply chain both of which have contributed to the amount of climate change generating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We need to change and we need to change now. The value of the environment is not costed or not fully costed into our supply chains because otherwise those glass containers would be reused over and over again.

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

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Wasting resources just to make a building site look pretty

First posted in December 2020. The flagrant waste of Earth’s limited resources in first world countries is truly disgusting.

This for me instantly says a waste of Earth’s precious resources and more pollution but then I always look at things in terms of environmental impact and at least over medium time scales of hundreds or thousands of years. That may sound like an eternity to some but even a thousand years is a blink in geological time. If we look at human history though it has been the last 200 years plus that we have really started to mess things up. Certain things exemplify the fact that we either haven’t got a clue what we are doing to the planet or we just don’t care. While a group of people must have sat around and thought up this idea of making the hoarding of a building site look pretty they must have been as far removed from thinking that it was in any way detrimental or wasteful of resources as could possibly be. That’s the biggest problem to overcome. People for the most part live in very small bubbles. If the material for these hoardings caused a large hole to be dug outside their dwelling or the burning of these panels at the end of their short life filled their lungs with acrid smoke they may have thought differently of the whole idea in the first place. Professional people may have all sorts of qualifications but that still doesn’t mean that they are “Earth wise”. Something we need to rectify if we are to have any chance of solving the problems that we ourselves have caused.

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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/.

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It’s easy to save energy – Environmental loading 17

So why don’t we? Why do we have leaders, who even after almost three months of the war in Ukraine, can’t even instruct lazy, stupid, ignorant construction companies to turn off lights. This was taken on a Sunday evening. How many times is this repeated not only in this country but around the world? We claim to be an intelligent species but there are many examples where incompetent would be a far better description. The climate crisis gets worse each day but many seem oblivious to it.

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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/.

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Why do we continue to waste energy? – Environmental loading 16

Currently, on the 31st of March 2022 there’s an invasion going on in Ukraine by the evil leaders of Russia. Now’s Europe uses a lot of Russian gas and oil so why are we wasting these fuels to light up buildings at night and in this case unfinished buildings that could remain empty for years even when they are finished due to the changes in the ways we now work? Behind the invasion which many see as most pressing there’s still the need to reduce our fossil fuel emissions by 50% within the next 2900 days or less. So once again why are we wasting energy especially when it is so “expensive” in monetary terms and very much more so in environmental terms.

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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.

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Waste of resources, London building site

Has anything changed in the time I first posted this last March? I don’t think so. We are probably still wasting resources as if there is no tomorrow.

28th March 2021

This building site hoarding represents a great waste of natural materials and a source for long term damage to the environment. It’s single use for a start and will either end up in landfill or be incinerated. The materials used are not just natural wood as in previous times but are covered in all sorts of glossy materials which are most likely not natural and that will pollute the environment for possibly a long time into the future. Hoardings should be reusable. These are just an example of a rich society that just throws away and therefore, if used, should carry a large environmental loading tax.

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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/.

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

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Leaving the lights on, polluting the planet, polluting the night

I posted this almost a year ago. It’s quite simple really, the more we leave lights on, the more fossil fuels are burnt and the subsequently the planet heats up. We need to reduce our fossil fuel emissions by 50% before the end of this decade.