Hi All –

To start with I’d just like to set out what I would like to do with this blog but to start with I am going to divide the population into three broad groups:-

1. The “Greenies” – those people who are converted to the green cause who carefully consider all their actions in terms of an ecological impact. A relatively small group.
2. The die hard consumers – the “Squanderers” – to quote George Best – soccer player – ‘I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered” – who are going to be pretty difficult to convert to the green cause.
3. The ‘Fence Sitters / excuse makers’ – which includes me. I would like a clean pollution free world, a pleasant place for my children (and 15 years further on my grandchildren) to inherit – but you know how it is – I need my car to get to work and can’t afford a hybrid and it is just too difficult to retrofit the house to make it more energy efficient.

And it will be through changing the minds of the large group “fence sitters” that the largest change to our environment in New Zealand will be effected. So I’d like a blog that helps Fence Sitters become more green but in a sensible affordable way.

I am a “fence sitter”, around 50 years old, married, mortgaged and 2 children who are still at school. I know there are hundreds of things that could be done to become “greener” but I am interested in finding out what are actually the best / most cost effective solutions. I’m interested in solutions for my home and solutions for New Zealand and also I am interested in seeing what is going on around the world.

I’m sure many topics of interest will come up as we go along and we’ll go down many different and unexpected avenues so please come along for the ride.

So this blog is really aimed at the Fence Sitters – but I hope it will also appeal to the Greenies.

General electric have an interesting page showing you how much energy various appliances use.  Unfortunately it is in US dollars.

The bit I find interesting is seeing how much use you get for I kWH.  For example, I didn’t know that it takes 10 times as much energy to was a load of dishes as it does to wash clothes.    Click here to find out more about Home Appliance Energy use.

More links will follow – or please contribute your  own.

From Treehugger – At SAI (Subaru) , “waste is just a raw material with a next use that hasn’t yet been discovered. Discover that use, and it’s no longer waste.”

Every time we go to the supermarket we pick up a few more plastic bags. Quite a few as the packers don’t seem to want to put more than 6 items in each bag.  95%+ of mine end up in the landfill.

They are the perfect size for lining my bins in the kitchen – so they do get some reuse but….

Now, I am slightly green here as the front part of the bin takes the rubbish and the back part the compost.  But even the compost section gets a double lining of bags as the compost can get quite ‘juicy’ after a few days.

When retailers introduced a small charge (5 or 10 cents) for each bag at the local supermarket, people were not happy.  I think we even got a credit if we used a recycled plastic bag and in the first week or so if you spent more than $50 they gave you a free reusable bag.  The local hospice was even given the money the retailers raised from the bag sales – so you couldn’t even accuse the supermarket of profiteering. This industry lead initiative failed badly.

The Warehouse has introduced a charge on bagsand has stuck to their guns.  I don’t think I have used a bag from them since then.  But I normally only shop for one or two items at time – not like the supermarket were I have a whole trolley full.

A story on Treehugger.com says that in Washington DC they introduced a 5 cent tax on all bags (plastic and paper)  and the number of bags used dropped from 22.5 million per month to just 3 million in January.  This is a huge reduction and the money raised from this is going to be targeted at cleaning the Anacostia river.

So why can’t New Zealand get its act together.  I guess the key thing in Washington was that it was a specific tax – government regulated and not just seen as a marketing gimmick by one of the major supermarket chains. Well done to New World for trying this out – so how about another crack at it?.

There is still the problem of me wanting a bag to line my bin. I probably don’t need so many as I could look for food with less packaging but  maybe I’ll just keep buying the supermarket bags as they were cheaper than the bin liners available on the supermarket shelves. Can we win this one?

On April 1^st – the Chagos Islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean were designated the words largest marine reserve by the UK government. At 544000 sq kilometres it is about twice the size of New Zealand’s total land area.

The well known environmentalist President George Bush – in his final few days in January 2009 office managed to designate 3 new marine reserves in the Pacific totalling 505000 sq kilometers. This was in addition to the Papah?naumoku?kea Marine National Monument established in 2006 off the north west of Hawaii.

So what can New Zealand do? The Pew group is suggesting that the 200 nautical mile radius EEZ (economic exclusion zone) around the Kermadec Islands becomes an Ocean Sanctuary.

Located about 1000 km (621 miles) northeast of New Zealand, the islands form a small chain covering a distance of 250 km (155 miles). Five large islands—Raoul, Macauley, Curtis, Cheeseman, L’Esperance Rock—and a number of smaller islets and exposed rocks comprise the Kermadec group.

Fishing is already fairly tightly controlled in the EEZ area – though how effective an Orion plane is at patrolling this vast area is debatable, DOC already have a presence in the area – you can only land on the islands with a permit and they have been clearing rats and kiore from the islands and the local bird life is thriving.

The Kermadecs are volcanic and there are lots of underwater thermal vents which are rich in minerals (gold and silver) which the mining focussed NZ Government might have its eyes on. The water is very deep and so extraction would be costly and almost certainly uneconomic for the foreseeable future.

So lets get this area protected now. It probably wouldn’t cost the government much more than it already spends on Orions and DOC to maintain the sanctuary, it could lose some revenue from selling fishing quotas but I have been told only 4 boats operated in the area last year and took a catch worth $90,000 – not a great deal.

The plus side for New Zealand is it can only enhance the 100% pure marketing message and the National Government could do with a bit of good PR on the environment front.

So lobby your MPs! Point them to this article

There is a lot more information on this at the Pew Environment Groups Global Ocean Legacy website http://www.globaloceanlegacy.org/ or for information on the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary got to http://www.globaloceanlegacy.org/kermadec/index.html .

Let’s make this happen – soon.