POSCH shopping bags for all

We are all being told to use reusable shopping bags as oppose to plastic carrier bags. The many millions of plastic carrier bags used and thrown away every day around the world do incredible damage to wildlife and the environment. There are many reusable shopping bags available, but if you’re looking for style to go with your green outlook try the POSCH bag. Luce Beaulieu is the Canadian creator of POSCH. Luce is an eco-designer and entrepreneur who is concerned about the effects of discarded plastic carrier bags on the local wildlife, especially on the endangered bird species native to Quebec. Luce uses recycled vintage bed sheets to make rather attractive shopping bags. The bags are handmade in Canada using an environmentally friendly process to minimise the ecological impact of the production process. The used sheets and pillow cases are sourced from local not-for-profit outlets like The Salvation Army and other similar charity shops. They are then sanitized, washed and printed using water based inks. The bags come in loads of different and unique designs and are available on-line from The Natural Store.

Is there such a thing as a green mobile phone?

I know using mobile phones is pretty unethical and not very planet friendly, but hey in today’s society I couldn’t manage without one. Anyway, the solution is to get an ethical planet friendly mobile phone and contract. There is a company called Green Mobile that gives you a mobile tariff that helps the environment and soothes your conscience. Intrigued by the claim I read further. Basically what they do is give you a tariff on an existing network and ask you to keep your existing handset, or you can have a new or refurbished handset instead. By not getting a new handset for at least a year, you are reducing your environmental impact. The other thing they do is give £25 and 6% of your monthly bills to one of their partner charities, Friends of the Earth, WWF and the Woodland Trust. They will plant 5 trees on your behalf as well. It sounds pretty good, but I’ m not sure what kind of uptake they will get because most people want the newest and fanciest mobile phone they can get. For most people a mobile phone is as much a fashion or status symbol as it is a communications device.

Next Reiki Course in London

We are running our next Reiki level 1 and level 2 course in central London on Saturday 7th July for the level 1 and Sunday 8th July for the level 2. You can take both levels together if you wish. Our website http://www.thehealingco.com/ gives more detailed information about this amazing and life changing natural therapy.

Reiki is a form of energy healing that was discovered and developed by Mikao Usui in Japan in the early part of the 20th century. Reiki is a form of healing, yet it is so much more. Reiki is the start of a beautiful spiritual journey that will help you to find your purpose on earth and follow your path with. Reiki was called by Mikao Usui "the art of inviting happiness...the miraculous medicine of all diseases" and once you learn Reiki you will really understand what Mikao Usui meant.

Is the Darfur conflict due to climate change?

Is the Darfur conflict caused by climate change? Is this a sign of things to come as global temperatures rise and liveable land, water and food become scarcer? A report published by the UN Environment Programme following an 18 month study of Sudan concludes “Darfur…holds grim lessons for other countries at risk”. The report basically says that the conflict in Darfur has been driven by climate change. The region has suffered a 30% drop in rainfall over the last 40 years and the Sahara desert is advancing by over a mile each year. This is causing tensions in the area between farmers and herders as they fight over disappearing pastures and drying water holes. When one group happens to be of a different ethnic group to the other, you have the seeds of a local war. The UN warns that this type of conflict will spread throughout Africa as climate change creates droughts, increases desert areas and forces population movement into neighbouring areas. The potential for war is growing as fast as the temperatures are rising. Global warming is already affecting many parts of the world, and as the temperature rises, the consequences will be more widespread and far-reaching. Do we really want to live in a world where wars are fought over liveable land and resources like food and water? Do we really want mass migration and the havoc that will cause? Action is needed now.

[Via The Guardian]

Al Gore talks tough on global warming

Al Gore, ex-vice president and once almost president of the USA has now turned eco-activist. Is this just another politician looking for public approval as a prelude to a presidential run? Or is Al Gore a committed environmentalist with a genuine concern for our planet? In a new forward for his revised book ‘Earth in the Balance’ he makes some valid points about the scientific community and raises some quite disturbing issues with the Bush administration. Mr Gore says with amazing hindsight “I wish that we could have had in the 1990’s the deafening scientific consensus that has emerged in more recent years”. I do believe there were some scientists and many environmentalists talking about rising global temperatures in the 1990’s, but they were either ignored or ridiculed. The US government, like all governments, chooses carefully which scientific advice to follow at any given moment, usually the advice that matches its own aims. In the case of the Bush administration, this was taken to new levels as Mr Gore states that under Bush the US pulled out of the Kyoto treaty, reversed their pledge to regulate CO2 as a pollutant and replaced key scientific advisors with ones suggested by ExxonMobil.

This last act has probably done the most damage, as the new scientific advisors allegedly vetted and adjusted scientific evidence to raise doubts about the human impact on global warming, and even tried to cast doubts on global warming actually existing. The question is though, would a president Gore have done any more to reduce CO2 emissions in the USA? While he was vice president to Bill Clinton, carbon emissions rose by 15%, faster than at any time in modern US history. I think it is always easier to be an armchair president or prime minister, all you have to worry about is getting in the papers and on tv, and of course impressing the voters, but once you’re in power you have many more restrictions on what you can do. The reality of running a modern economy is far more complex than Mr Gore makes out. Every decision has consequences to the economy, to the people, to business and to the environment. Nothing is ever simple nor is it ever black and white.

[Via The Independent]

B’Nice Ice cream for vegans

As I look out of the window at a typical English summer day, the rain streaming down the wet glass, I let my mind drift to sunnier memories, of childhood days out and vanilla ice-cream cones by the sea. Since I became vegan many years ago, ice-cream has become nothing more than a long forgotten taste. That is why I want to mention B’Nice Rice Cream, a vegan ice cream made from rice as an alternative to soya based vegan ice creams. While there are plenty of soya based ice-creams available, this is the first rice based one I have found. For me, and perhaps for others, soya can cause an allergic reaction, and the natural oestrogen found in soya can be a bit off putting for us men. At last I can enjoy ice-cream with my meat-eating friends this year, though not too much as the sugar tends to make me hyperactive!

B’Nice is made in Belgium by the Roefs family, not that I expect you to know the Roefs family. They have been making ice cream products for over 50 years now. They have recently started to produce rice based vegan ice-creams to compliment their soya products. The rice used in the manufacture of B’Nice products is herbicide free and the ice-creams themselves do not contain any artificial colours or genetically modified ingredients. With less than 5% fat, you can enjoy these gorgeous treats without the guilt or the extra inches.

Just how bleak is our future?

Well, if you read the report by six leading scientists from the USA you may very well come to the conclusion that our future on earth is incredibly bleak. The scientists behind the 29-page paper (Climate Change and Trace Gases) are among the world’s leading climate change experts. Led by James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the team included three of Hansen’s colleagues, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha and Gary Russell, David Lea of the University of California and Mark Siddall of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

Fundamentally, the message from the paper is that the Earth is approaching a point of no return with climate change. Forget George Bush’s ‘war on terror’ what we need right now is a ‘war on CO2 emissions’.

They argue that unless effective measures are put in place to control CO2 emissions over the next ten years, the rise in the Earth’s temperature could trigger uncontrollable climate change. The mechanism for this they argue is the ‘albedo flip’ as ice melts the sunlight normally reflected by the ice is absorbed by the sea, causing rising temperatures, which causes more ice to melt, which causes rising temperatures. The phrase from the paper that I find most worrying is “If we have not already passed the dangerous level, the energy infrastructure in place ensures that we will pass it within several decades” so we are either already too late or we will be in the near future. Does the political will exist to take the necessary steps to save the planet? From what is being said and done at the moment, I would have to say no. Maybe one day our political leaders will find the strength and integrity to act on our behalf to save our planet, but I really think this will only happen after it is too late.

[Via The Independent]