Over the last year it has been amazing to see how Britain, historically one of the biggest contributors to global warming, has become obsessed with climate change. Unfortunately the discussion often gets limited to plenty of hot air (pun intended) and little action. Brits still love their cheap air travel and hate recycling, which a lot of people see as a hassle while local councils often treat as a revenue-generating issue.
But there’s hope: yesterday the Observer wrote that this week the government will launch an official calculator that “enables every person in Britain to work out how much they are contributing to global warming. The special website will calculate how people’s home heating, appliances and personal transport add to the carbon emissions blamed for causing climate change.”
The device was conceived by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and will make it possible for people to work out how much carbon they produce at home, in their cars and when they fly.
I’m sure a lot of people will be in for a surprise and I guess this is the aim of such an initiative: to shock people out of their complacency.
Elsewhere, the Sunday Independent published an article about the relationship between clothes and waste. It describes some of the initiatives around to counteract the increasing consumption of cheap, semi-disposable clothes that reproduce high fashion for style-obsessed teenagers who treat themselves to clothes like our grandparents would buy milk for their children. The full article is here.
