Green (Living) Review

Bloomberg writer advocates for a $4 minimum wage

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

What's next? Employees pay to work? Best not give the greedy capitalists any ideas, shall we, for as far as they are concerned they would take that route gladly.

Think minimum wage workers have it tough today trying to make ends meet? Wait until you hear what a writer at Bloomberg has to say.

Michael Strain, a writer at Bloomberg, thinks the wage is not low enough and he states, "If we knocked the minimum wage down to, say, $4 an hour, we would significantly mitigate employers' risk from hiring a long-term unemployed worker. Allowing employers to pay this group of people 45 percent less than other minimum-wage workers provides a strong incentive for businesses to give the long-term unemployed a shot."

And what about the fact that it’s impossible for workers to live on such a wage? Strain offers the predictable solution: have the taxpayers subsidize companies for failing to pay a livable wage.

Strain argues, "Of course, we can’t just lower the minimum wage for the long-term unemployed to $4 an hour and leave it at that. Society must have as a goal that no one who works full time and heads a household lives in poverty. This policy would have to be paired with an expanded earned-income tax credit, or with more straightforward wage subsidies – federal transfer programs that supplement a worker’s labor market earnings with tax dollars."

The capitalists will reduce the wage of the working class more and more to return us to the standard of a Victorian age and the way they and the governments, which are but an arm of the capital, in Britain, other parts of the European Union, and the USA, it will not be long and we will have arrived at the new Victorian era.

As far as the capitalists are concerned any kind of minimum wage is an anathema to them and in order for them to be able to get every higher profits and dividends for the shareholder of the multinational capital and corporations workers need to make do with as little as possible and if they can't make ends meet then they will simply have to work more than one job or starve.

Or, as in the suggestion by this Bloomberg writer, the state, the government, should pick up the tab that businesses do not wish to pay. It is amazing that Ford, when old Henry decided that he was going to pay his workers more than anyone else did, was more successful than were the others. And, while it is true he had an ulterior motive, namely for the workers to be able to save money in order to buy his cars, it is also shown in other countries and companies, such as Volkswagen in Germany, that this principle of paying workers a high wage can work very well indeed.

But there are but a few companies and more or less global corporations who look at such a model. The rest would rather pay as little as possible and either, as in the UK with the government cutting away all of the safety net, want the working class back at Victorian levels or, as in the USA, want the government to make up the difference between pay and what someone needs to live on. It is all about greed and profit and to them the worker is even less worth than would be a slave.

A slave at least, being property of the “owner”, could at least count on being fed, housed, and clothed. When wage slavery came in the capitalists were rubbing their hands with glee and having been doing so ever since. They no longer had to feed, house and clothe the slaves. Instead they could actually charge them rent for living in company houses, for shopping at company stores, etc. and they would like that Victorian standard back.

For that very reason, amongst others, the system needs changing and the Labor Movement needs people to join it to fight for a new way.

Happy 365th Birthday Fiskars

Fiskars celebrates 365 years of innovation and design

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Established in 1649 as an ironworks in a small Finnish village, Fiskars has grown to be a leading global supplier of consumer products for the home, garden and outdoors. Fiskars' products bring joy to consumers' lives and help solve their everyday problems – every day.

Known for innovation and design, it's the Fiskars Classic orange-handled scissors, selling over one billion pairs worldwide, that turned Fiskars into an internationally recognised and renowned brand.

From the very first nails, hoes and knives made in 1649, to launching the world's first plastic handled scissors in 1967, and producing gardening tools in 1985 Fiskars continue to design and innovate to this day.

In the garden sector, Fiskars holds premiere position for its cutting tools.

Following three successful spring TV campaigns, Fiskars is back with two campaigns for 2014. The first TV campaign is launching in April and will promote Fiskars PowerGear™ pruner with its 3x more cutting power.

This will be followed during the Easter period with Fiskars highly recognisable Weed Puller campaign.

Fran Kershaw, Trade Marketing Manager for Fiskars UK Ltd, says, "We're incredibly proud of the Fiskars heritage. 365 years is a landmark for us and we wanted to celebrate it through demonstrating our expertise as well as showing consumers that we are a forward-thinking and innovative company. Our TV campaigns over the past three years have been highly successful, driving footfall to retailers and increased product sales. We look forward to similar success when our Fiskars PowerGear™ campaign launches."

From 1649 to 2014 Fiskars has lead the way in cutting tool technology and the future is bright and most certainly orange.

Having had the pleasure to use and review a number of Fiskars' products I can but wish them many more successful years to come and being a bit of a woodcarver in my “spare” time the Fiskars X5 is for me the hatchet to use for rough shaping and even using it like a plane at times.

Full Disclosure Statement: The GREEN (LIVING) REVIEW received no compensation for any component of this article.

The comeback of the paper notebook

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Basically declared dead well ahead of time at the advent of mobile devices, the cloud and all that the paper notebook is far from dead and dying. In fact, it is making a definite comeback, as are good quality pens and their use.

The German company Leuchtturm 1917, who has been making good quality notebooks well before Moleskine was ever thought of, reported a 40% increase in notebook sales across the board in 2013 compared to the previous year. And more and more notebooks of the style, upon which Moleskine is based, are being produced by and for other stationery companies.

Seeing that we are, supposedly, in the digital age makes the return of analog ways an interesting phenomenon, not only are paper notebooks, especially good quality ones, all of a sudden cool – a little like the Filofax was in the Sloane Ranger era – but demand for typewriters, and here even and especially manual ones, and here also working vintage ones, also is on the up.

Paper and especially paper notebooks, and analog in general, is far from being dead or at the brink of extinction in the digital age and this is also good so, in my opinion.

The United States has reported that in a number of areas enquiries as to learning the use of a typewriter to such an extent that typewriting schools are opening up (again) even. And most of those enquiries appear to be coming from young people under 28 years of age.

Paper, handwritten, or types, or printed, will be with us for much longer as records and books go than anything stored on hard drives or in “the cloud”.

The British Archives at Kew have been working on the archiving or websites and other material from and on the Internet but had to make a choice as to what to keep and what not to and much of what is on the Internet today, even important information, will not be available for future generations, not even researchers, unlike published books in print, notebooks, journals, and other paper records, whether held in public, university or private “collections”. And we call that advancement?

E-books and cloud storage all sounds good until we look a little deeper into that glass and find that we have been falling for an illusion on a grand scale.

Amazon's Kindle books have had a serious problem once when Amazon decided that people had had their books long enough and deleted them off people's devices. Even though you pay for them you do not, unlike with a physical book, actually own them and you are not permitted to – legally – pass them onto others. It is also not technically possible to do so.

If you store your notes – and some people even upload, using white-lined notebooks, pages of their paper notebooks – and other stuff in the cloud you give, by using the service, the owner of that service, be this Google or whoever, copyright use of everything to use and distribute as they see fit. Sorry, but I do not think so! Thus my notes and other materials stay in hard copy firmly with me (and in digital for on some electronic media in my possession).

It very much appears to be time to rethink digital and find some terra firma again and some sanity. And, it would appear, a fair number of people around the globe are beginning to realize that too.

The paper notebook, the fountain pen and the typewriter are on their way back again already and, so it would appear, not just in a small way.

Paper notebooks have a great deal going for them and they are far from dead, that is for sure. While this may not be to the liking of the proponents and advocates of paperless and may also displease the believers that the production of paper harms the tropical rainforests – which is a fallacy – it is a sign that people appear to be looking for “slower” ways in our maddening modern world. The continuing increase in the same of paper diaries, address books and agendas also proves this trend.

At the same time paper notebooks, the notes contained therein and diaries are always accessible, even on a mountain top or during a power outage and thus beat the electronic equivalent – if there is such a thing as an electronic equivalent to them – hands down (and that goes for real books as well). No batteries, no power cord, no connection, or whatever, to worry about.

Paper is here to stay and is going still very strong indeed and long may it continue.

Personally I cannot function without paper notebooks of some kind and I always have various on the go.

US Spying a Threat to Global Climate Deal

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The US government has been at it again spying at all and sundries and this time it is revealed the target were the UN Climate Talks and its participants.

Activists and experts have expressed outrage at the revelations that the US government, through the NSA and its allies, has conducted espionage on participants of UN climate talks.

They are calling for President Obama to commit to no further spying on participants of the talks, accompanied by a drastically increased commitment to climate action on the part of the United States, if the talks are to succeed as they build toward another global summit at the end of 2015.

"The UN climate talks are supposed to be about building trust - that's been under threat for years because of the United States' backward position on climate action - these revelations will only crack that trust further," Meena Raman, negotiations expert from the Malaysian based Third World Network, said.

Brandon Wu, Senior Policy Analyst with development organization ActionAid in the United States, said: "Fighting climate change is a global struggle, and these revelations clearly show that the US government is more interested in crassly protecting a few vested interests - rather than acting ethically by taking responsibility to lead and working cooperatively with others to find solutions."

"This is yet again an underhanded, undemocratic and arrogant use of power by the US government to protect corporate interests. We urge the citizens of the United States to condemn these actions by their government and call for an immediate stop to its blocking progress in the climate talks," said Lidy Nacpil, director of Jubilee South Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development, a social movement headquartered in the Philippines.

And Asad Rehman, Head of International Climate at Friends of the Earth EWNI in the UK, said: "If Obama's rhetoric on climate change in the State of the Union is to be believed he must use an executive order to stop spying on climate negotiators and take up a position on pollution cuts that is consistent with the science."

But, let's face it, the United States government and its funders, the industries with vested interest, and those of it allies, have no interest in the success of the UN Climate Talks as that could and would mean that things would have to change. This could not possibly allowed to happen now, could it, as it would cut into the profits of the companies and the “income” of the politicians industry has managed to bribe.

All the United States and most other developed countries do is pay lip service with regards to climate change and the wish to make changes and then they look at (1) buying carbon credits from Third World countries and (2) play with fire by claiming that nuclear power is the answer to a carbon-free future. But I will not start a discourse on nuclear even though it is not the answer. The fact is that the powers that be in the developed countries have no interest in reduction of carbon emissions and reduction of consumption as that does not bring them money; it is as simple as that. And that is why the likes of the US and the UK will spy on the talks in the same way that they declare climate protests acts of terrorism.

There is lots of rhetoric from the sides of the powers that be in the often referred to as “Western” nations but it is but rhetoric as far as climate action is concerned totally missing the point that action is required and total different action that which they are advocating in their speeches and all the papers that are being produced by them.

They wish to have business as usual and further economic growth (and this is not just the way it is seen in the developed world) on a Planet that cannot grow and with ever diminishing resources. How that is supposed to work beats the hell out of me, for sure.

A copy of the leaked document, which concerns the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, can be found here.

Rags to...

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

No, not to riches, but an awful lot else...

How many (cotton) garments, one can but wonder, end up in the waste stream and ultimately the landfill or incinerator on a daily basis and that only from homes, not to speak of those that for whatever reason are discarded by manufacturers and stores.

There was a time when old garments - “rags” – and in those days all made of natural fibers were collected for recycling, and that was before that word was even coined. “Rags” were collected by the so-called “Rag and Bone Man” and those were sold by him to be made into cleaning rags for industry and military gun cleaning patches, as well as to be made into paper.

We claim to have advanced since World War Two and before but in the way that we create waste and manage our discards, same as in some other departments, it does not appear to be the case at all.

Considering that in those bygone days we seem to have recycled more and better – true, it was also out of necessity - and reused more and better than today points to the fact that we have not progressed at all, at least not in a positive manner.

Wipes in industry – and elsewhere – nowadays are non-woven synthetic materials such a polypropylene and paper (one time use and toss) and thus textile rags went out of fashion and favor.

Even though some companies have begun – again – to make (specialty) paper out of textile waste it is being treated and paraded as something new as in “did you know you can make paper from textile waste”. They seem to forget – conveniently – that the first paper, made by the Chinese, use to be made from rags. We keep reinventing the wheel, it seems.

Off-cut waste from the garment industry, as long as we are talking natural materials such as cotton, canvas (hemp), and such like – alone could produce tons and tons of paper, not even considering how much more could be made from clothing such as T-shirts, jeans, etc., thrown out by people on a daily basis all over the world.

In the days gone by such rags would have been – on a more or less regular basis – collected by the “Rag and Bone Man” on his rounds and kept out of the waste stream but nowadays into the landfill or the incinerator they go. And they call that progress.

In the absence of a viable and useful collection system for rags – especially from natural materials, as textiles made from synthetic fibers often are not much use for even cleaning rags, bar some – for the the “Rag and Bone Man” of old is all but history, we must reuse as much of this resource as possible ourselves (at home).

Our ancestors would have, first of all, reused the material from any old garment to make something new, including and especially quilts and such like, and today the same could be done again and also making totes and such. Only when the fabric really was of not reuse use it would be tossed into the rag bag for use as rags around the home, etc., or for collection by the “Rag and Bone Man”.

Old socks and mittens, and here even of synthetic fleece, can be turned into dusters for use around the home – I do this all the time – and worn-out denim jeans – and who has not got them from time to time – can be made (upcycled) into a variety of really useful things for use around the home, etc., and even for sale. The Internet abounds with ideas and instructions on the latter matter.

Cotton T-shirts and such like, when they have come to the end of their useful lives, can be turned – if all else fails and there is no other use for them – into cleaning rags for a multitude of uses.

Some modern-day garment materials, such as some polyesters – aside from fleeces and high-cotton content poly-cotton blends – and, though not all that common anymore, Nylon, do not lend themselves well for the conversion into rags of whatever kind as they are not very absorbent.

Worn-out towels also do not – immediately – belong into the trash (and not even the rag bin). They can be remade in to flannels and then, ultimately, into dusters and cleaning rags, and this goes also for tea towels.

Using cleaning cloths and rags, repurposed from worn out fabric, is a green and frugal way to travel and reduces the use of paper towels, wet pipes and such likes, which impact quite negatively on the Planet.

This is just a little food for thought as to what to do with rags that turn up, so to speak, in the absence of the of the “Rag and Bone Man” and any viable waste clothes collection

Will we see the modern-day “Rag and Bone Man” soon? I doubt it though it would be a good idea.

Air pollution kills 200,000 people a year, vehicle emissions largely to blame

Automobile emissions are linked to some 53,000 premature deaths every year, according to a new study by MIT

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

A new study released by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) shows that air pollution is prematurely killing off some 200,000 Americans every year, and the leading source of that pollution is vehicle emissions. In fact, some 53,000 deaths annually are linked to exposure to automotive exhaust. Following a close second is electric power generation, which accounted for 52,000 deaths.

“It was surprising to me just how significant road transportation was [as a contributing factor],” said Steven Barrett, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, in a statement, “especially when you imagine [that] coal-fired power stations are burning relatively dirty fuel.”

The study results, which were published in the scientific journal Atmospheric Environment, used information collected in 2005, but Barrett and his team say the data is reflective of current usage and trends. Other areas of emissions studied were industry, commercial and residential sources, marine transportation and rail transportation.

When researchers broke down the data and analyzed the health impact of air pollution by state, California topped the list for suffering the worst health effects from air pollution. About 21,000 premature deaths — or slightly more than 10 percent of all pollution-related deaths annually — occur in the Golden State, with emissions from road transportation and commercial/residential heating and cooking cited as the main culprits.

Most of the premature deaths related to electricity generation were in the Midwest and east-central parts of the U.S., where power plants tend to rely on coal with higher sulfur content.

The city with the highest emissions-related deaths was Baltimore, where 130 out of every 100,000 residents die each year from long-term exposure to air pollution.

Premature deaths were categorized as deaths occurring a decade earlier than expected. The research was based on data collected by the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Emissions Inventory.

The question is as to whether it really required an expensive study yet again to “discover” and confirm something that we have known already for decades and of which the Hippies in the 1960s and 1970s already warned us all. But then again they were just eccentrics and not scientists.

However, they and many others of us, were right and renaming the pollution as “brown carbon”, as has been done as to the soot that is causing glacial melt in the Himalayan mountains does not change this either.

The climate scientists have become obsessed with the word “carbon” and that, I would say, simply because of the invention of carbon trading and carbon certificates, the modern version of indulgences, nothing more.

We must get away from this carbon this and carbon that and address all pollution and also not just those from exhausts, whether vehicular, factory, power stations or others. A chimney is also but an exhaust, only bigger that that of a car or truck.

And it is not just airborne pollution that is an issue and a danger to us all and the Planet which is the only one that we have to live on. The is no Planet B, there is only Mother Earth.

Former NSA contractor develops font designed to combat government snooping

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Sang Mun is a former contractor for the NSA. Mun created the font as a response to increasing government incursions on privacy. “I have become dedicated to researching ways to ‘articulate our unfreedom’ and to continue the evolution of my own thinking about censorship, surveillance, and a free society,” he explained to Reason Magazine, after releasing the font online in June 2013.

The font is intended to work by throwing off Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software with the unique and noisy style.

This font is reckoned to be a great weapon in the war on America’s privacy. It is encouraging to see such proactive measures being taken. You can download the font for free, here.

Below is an open letter from Mun explaining his reasoning for disseminating the ZXX font.

I do not know what OCR system the “author” of the fonts has used but in tests of converting documents written in any of those fonts, turned into PDF and then using an OCR extractor in a program the material was read back perfectly. This leads me to believe that it may work as far as letters are concerned but not for emails or other electronic communications. Especially after having used the font to write an email also and upon receipt it was nicely in clear text.

If you really want to avoid government snooping it would appear that we need to develop codes, like the spies of old did, using numbers derived from books that the sender and the recipient use as base, that is to say the book cypher. And, the book cypher is almost impossible to crack by electronic means as the finding of a message still attached to a dead carrier pigeon of WWII showed. The code cannot be broken without knowing the relevant book or books used to generate the code and not even the most sophisticated computers that the NSA or GCHQ use cannot do it.

Whether this font will be able to throw off the scanning software intend for storage of intercepted material will remain to be seen. The one that scanned from PDF to text that I used, a free program, did it with ease and even with the version with the greatest amount of “noise” of this font.

The jury is still out on this, I am sure. Thus, if you want to securely communicate use a good book cypher and change the books used all the time.

You should have at least six different books from which to generate the cypher – though you don't use those books all at the same time – and your communications will be uncrackable. You then use a number code, either five or six digits, corresponding to page number, number of line, and word in that line. Simple but basically uncrackable.

Use the font by all means if you want. I will do too. By mixing the font versions, as indicated in the picture, however, throwing the system off may be possible. But real important stuff will be sent in code.

Edible Cities – Book Review

Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Edible Cities: Urban Permaculture for Gardens, Yards, Balconies, Rooftops and Beyond
by Judith Anger, Dr. Immo Fiebrig, and Martin Schnyder
Foreword by Sepp Holzer
Published by Permanent Publications October 2013
176 pages paperback, illustrated with color photographs and drawings throughout, 225mm x 170mm
ISBN: 978-1-85623-137-4
£14.95

Want to grow food but have nothing larger than a balcony, windowsill, or a piece of wall? No problem! This is a gardening book with a difference. It will help you to grow your own fruit, vegetables, herbs, and even mushrooms in small spaces in the most ecological way possible. Edible Cities shows you why the urban landscape can be a great place for permaculture. Discover inside:

Principles of permaculture
Worldwide examples of urban gardening projects
Ideas for flats and balconies
Green roofs
Vertical gardening and urban beekeeping
Guerrilla gardening and successful community projects
Illustrated practical techniques with clear instructions

Preface and contributions by Sepp Holzer

Edible Cites aims to inspire urban residents to incorporate nature, preferably the edible variety, into their lives. The authors, ardent permaculturists inspired by their study with Sepp Holzer believe that growing plants is possible for anyone with a balcony, rooftop, or even just a windowsill. To that end, they offer a broad overview of permaculture followed by numerous examples of how it is implemented in ways both beautiful and delicious.

Urban case studies from cities all over the world. Packed with inspiration and practical, fully illustrated ideas, discover how people around the world are inventing new growing opportunities and making them a reality with few resources and a lot of creativity. Find out how you, too, can plan and create your own urban growing paradise.

This is a great book that can be seen and used as a sort of manual for the creation of blueprints for the Edible City, a concept that we must turn into reality.

The issue is not just greening our cities, our urban areas, in the literal and other aspects but actually make spaces within productive by way of food growing.

The good news is, while there is still pollution for sure in our cities, the fact that gasoline no longer has lead as an additive makes the consumption of food grown in urban areas now, basically, once again, safe.

Car tires for growing of food, as advocated, so to speak, in the chapter about Detroit (pages 120-123) is a problem issue as, unless those tires are not steel belted radial tubeless ones, they leach cadmium, and possibly other chemicals, which can and will be taken up by the plants and in turn by those consuming the plants as food.

This book is the first – at least one of the first and few – that actually talks proper sense about making compost. As where most advise not to have any meat and cooked foods in the compost heap here, finally, sense is talked in that the advice is to is to include those items.

Personally I have always done that and never have had any problems though, nowadays, any such leftover foods go first through my hens.

The only problem with regards to cooked foods and meat in a compost heap is that it may attract rats. But then again even vegetable remains will do the same and, it would appear, the very heap itself.

I very much like the little practical tips that go with almost every chapter and here, as example, shall stand – pardon the pun – the Potato Tower. But this is but one and not the only one.

Having mentioned all those positive aspects a few negative ones will also have to be mentioned.

The first one would be that the high gloss paper, together with some of the text color, at times makes for tiring reading, especially in conditions of artificial light.

The second one being that the Urban Homestead^TM would have best been omitted from this book as a good example in permaculture as Jules Dervaes' ongoing lawsuits against people using the term “urban homesteading” in an attempt to trademark and patent the terms “urban homestead” and “urban homesteading”, etc., puts him a little in the league of Monsanto and Nestle.

Such actions fall very much under “money grabbing” and do not belong into the movements that want to promote a change of how we do things.

But those two points shall not detract from the book and the fact that it is a brilliant guide to permaculture in urban areas. The edible city must become reality for the sake of all of us and especially the Planet.

The Great Bamboo Lie

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Four companies that use bamboo for clothing and other household fabrics were charged by the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for deceptive advertising techniques: claiming that the fabrics are made from “bamboo fiber”, are manufactured using an environmentally friendly process, are naturally antimicrobial, and will biodegrade. In point of fact, says the FTC, “bamboo fiber” is really rayon, the same fiber invented in the 1850s. Rayon is traditionally made from wood pulp, but it can be made from any pulpy substance, including bamboo, and the FTC had issues with these companies selling rayon under a misleading label that made it seem more eco-friendly than wood-based rayon. Furthermore, they add, both wood-based and bamboo-based rayon are manufactured using air-polluting caustic soda, or lye, which is not environmentally friendly and destroys any antimicrobial characteristics that may have existed in raw bamboo pulp. Regarding claims of biodegradation, the FTC says that bamboo will not biodegrade if tossed into a landfill, where most of our trash ends up.

The FTC is not the first to criticize bamboo-clothing manufacturers for advertising the fiber as eco-friendly when the process of converting the pulp into fiber employs such caustic chemicals. In a recent article for the Council of Fashion Designers of America, a representative from the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is currently working with textile mills to lessen their environmental impacts, recommended that any designer looking for more eco-friendly fabrics should avoid bamboo. And the GREEN (LIVING) REVIEW has, more than once, criticized the claims made about bamboo, and especially bamboo-clothing and I believe that the GREEN (LIVING) REVIEW was, in fact, one of the first to take an issue with the promotion of bamboo and especially bamboo-based textiles as greenwash.

Bamboo is always claimed to have an environmental upside in that grows quickly, replenishing itself in as little as 5 years after it has been harvested always compared with 15 to 20 years for trees, though no one seems to look at proper coppice rotation in this matter. It is said to require few pesticides and very little water. I have yet to see wood grown in most environments to require pesticide and for water, well Nature takes care of that with trees.

Bamboo clothing is not – really – natural and neither is it biodegradable or compostable. It is a viscose material and the same as Rayon with the only difference being that one is made from wood pulp the other is made from bamboo pulp. Same difference.

Someone from the green movement stated in response to the US FTC ruling with regards to bamboo clothing that no clothing, not even from natural fiber biodegrades. I would like to dispute that fact and suggest to that person to try to see what happens to a cotton T-shirt or a wool blanket after a year or two in the compost heap. They will have disintegrated. How do I know? I've done it!

Bamboo fiber bowls, cutlery, etc., are still being promoted in the UK, even and especially on green (trade) events as the be all in green but it is a lie plain and simple.

While traditional bamboo products, including furniture, made in countries where this grass grows are fine and good it is not good and sustainable to import them thousands of miles to Europe and the USA and then call them eco-friendly products. Such imports are, in the same way as bamboo clothing, flatware, etc., are not green nor sustainable.

It we want to be eco-conscious and sustainable then furniture should be from homegrown wood (or better still from reclaimed wood) and the same goes for flooring and treen ware. And as far as clothing is concerned this should be from real fiber or if man-made then it should be marked and marketed as such. Bamboo for clothing is Rayon, which is a viscose material and thus, regardless of the fact that it is either wood or bamboo pulp, man-made. Period!

When it comes to bamboo flooring we encounter the bamboo lie and that on a real heavy level. Bamboo flooring is but a laminate flooring type, like wood laminate flooring, and is not green and environmentally friendly at all regardless of the growth rate of bamboo. You cannot cut bamboo into planks or slabs as bamboo is hollow in the round and a lot of heat and other energy, plus powerful glues, are required to make this kind of flooring. It is also not as hard and hard wearing as normal hardwood flooring. It is greenwash in the extreme and it is time that the truth be told and broadcast far and wide.

If you want green flooring – aside from a “dirt” floor – then choose hardwood and ideally here reclaimed hardwood flooring. Now that is green and sustainable.

If you want sustainable clothing then go for real fiber or recycled fiber materials and, ideally, go pre-used from thrift stores. I have not bought new clothing, bar underwear and socks (I would never go as far as buying them pre-owned), for I do not know how long. And, when the clothes really come to the end of their lives then reuse them for cleaning rags and such like before condemning the material, finally, to the waste stream or, if made of truly natural materials, to the compost heap to return to the soil.

The greatest problem that we are facing as consumers who want to be environmentally conscious and do good to the Planet is the amount of greenwash that is about and whose misleading claims are not just misleading but outright lies, such as in the case of bamboo textiles and bamboo flooring, for example. We must, thus, arm ourselves with the knowledge and combat greenwash wherever we encounter it.

Stop the biofuel madness

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

It is said that there is not enough land on which to grow food, and this is, more than likely true, and yet land is being taken out of food production at the same time to satisfy our “need” for gasoline and diesel in the form of bio-ethanol and bio-diesel. If you think that this, somehow, does not compute I have to concur with you. It does not.

We must have gone totally insane to put fuel before food, whether it is corn (maize) being grown for biofuel or miscanthus, or whatever.

Somehow it would appear that automotive fuels have greater priority to those that claim to be our “leaders” than food security. Can we really not think beyond the motorcar and are we going to put driving before food? It would appear that those “leaders” most certainly do.

We can neither eat our gars nor the fuel on which they run, whether made from mineral oil or from plants and we must make the choice and make this clear to those that pretend to be our rulers.

Furthermore, aside from using valuable farm land, or in the case of palm oil for bio-diesel destroying the rainforests of Asia, biofuels will do nothing whatsoever to reduce carbon emissions and pollution, it is just a change from fossil fuel to another one to be burned in combustion engines.

Additionally, bio-diesel particle emissions, the ones held responsible for the increase in asthma, have been found to be several times greater than those from fossil suel diesel.

We are jumping from the proverbial frying pan right into the fire, and losing out as regards to farming areas at the same time. Has everyone gone insane?

It would, however, appear that everything is being done to maintain the motoring madness instead of getting people out of their cars and onto or into alternative means of getting about.

The British capital London has been told to cut air pollution by 2020 or face hefty fines and the cutting of pollution, whether in London or elsewhere, is not going to happen if we keep on motoring as we do right now and, as far as diesels are concerned, it will only get worse with bio-diesel. Time to wake up!

It is good to see though that many young people in the early part of the second decade of the twenty-first century are going car-less and are walking, cycling or using public transport instead. This is, to a degree, due to the ever increasing cost of running a motorcar as with tax and all that aside from the purchase price but also because they begin, and it is but a beginning only, so far, to understand that motoring is not a sustainable way.

There are still too many people who are not comprehending this, as yet, and firmly believe that mineral oil derived fuels and others will continue to make personal private motoring, which many see as a (human) right even by now it seems, possible.

This is, however, an illusion conjured up to them by those – unfortunately – in power with their snouts firmly embedded in the trough of the oil and motor industry.

You can't eat your car, or roads, neither most bio-fuel crops. We have to understand that we either can drive and by this very action destroy the Planet or change our ways and eat. Both at the same time soon will no longer be possible.

And here we are coming back to the issue of the way ever since World War Two the car has been put on a pedestal and we have separated ourselves not only further from Nature but also, as far as where we live further from our places of work and thus have become dependent and reliant on the car to get from home – often many tens of miles away – to work and back.

With mineral oil, if I may call it that, running out all over the place cheap and plentiful petroleum products are about coming to an end and no amount of tinkering, such as with hydraulic fracturing – fracking – for shale oil and shale gas is going to make any difference in that quarter. It is just going to prolong the agony and the destruction of ecosystems.

We must transition now to a oil-free future, and that included one free of biofuels, which still pollute and possibly even much more, to one without the internal combustion engine. And even methane produced by anaerobic digestion be best reserved for use in our electricity generating plants and for cooking and heating than for use in motor vehicles.

It is time – high time indeed – that it was realized that the time of personal motoring is over, is history and that the motorcar is and will have been but a blip in the history of mankind. The future is car-less, at least internal combustion engine car-less. And the sooner this was being realized the better and the futility of biofuels (and fracking) be abandoned.