Just thought I’d take a sec to point out the latest addition to my Blogroll (down there on the right-hand side): The Guardian‘s extensive online section completely and utterly devoted to all things environmental. Who’d have thought those smoggy, bangers-and-mash-loving Brits would have such green hearts?
Please spare me the smug bit about smoggy, bangers and mash loving Brits.
One – smog went out with the Clean Air Act (1956) and London no longer gets chemical smogs because Mayor Livingstone’s congestion charge has severly limited traffic in the centre of London and
Two, have you tried bangers and green lentils, muc h more up yopur street I guess.
Actually, I don’t eat bangers at all… And I’m certainly not trying to diss the Brits (I do have a British passport, btw) on the green front, they’ve certainly accomplished more than Canada in a lot of areas, the congestion zone being one of them. But they’re behind a lot, too — there are no blue boxes, grey boxes or green bins for composting like in Toronto for one; and I know that every time I go to London my throat still gets sore and my snot turns grey, so there’s gotta be some smog there somewhere.
I think the blog reference to Brits was in an endearing way and not SMUG! It was a backhanded compliment and I took it as such.
And perhaps instead of smog (soot and fog) we will use the words heavy air pollution which british cities have a long way to go to improve.
And green lentils are not grown locally- so we wont be eating them. Thanks for the suggestion.
Pat
Down here in Devon where the air is so pure you can eat your breakfast off it, we have brown bins, grey bins, clear sacks and blue sacks.
Brown for food/garden waste which goes for composting, grey for non-recyclable waste, clear for plastic bottles and tins, and blue for cardboard and newspaper.
Next weekend I am going to my local town to get my free five bags of compost which I helped create by being a dedicated eco warrior. Now who’s being smug?
Sorry about your snot btw, have you seen a doctor?
Well yes, it’s like that in Devon; I’m sure the air is equally pure over here in Banff or Nova Scotia. But I’m comparing major cities here: Toronto and London (not Toronto and rural England). Smog didn’t just magically disappear from London — which is still affectionately called The Big Smoke — in 1965, and while some people are getting on the biodiesel bandwagon, plenty of those Fiats and Minis still run on Diesel.
Last word on the green front. If you want to compare Toronto with London I have to tell you that MOST London boroughs now recycle MOST waste( and have been doing so for the past four or five years.) Doorstep[ collections too.
For example, my good friend who lives in Queen’s Park, in answer to my question “Which items do the council (London Borough of Brent) collect for recycling? Papers? Bottles?Garden Rubbish?Food waste?” replied ” All of the above.”
You and your fellow blogsters might want to check out http://www.capitalwastefacts.
Welcome to Green as a Thistle. My name is Vanessa, I'm a journalist at the National Post, based in Toronto.
When I saw the documentary An Inconven— no, just kidding. Now that organic is the new bl— OK, no, seriously now. In short, this blog began somewhere between guilt and earnestness, between dissing Stéphane Dion's dog (named Kyoto) and finding myself amongst a group of eco-hipsters drinking hemp beer at an anti-styrofoam party.
I decided to take on a bit of a challenge: Spend each day, for an entire calendar year, doing one thing that betters the environment. The idea was that everything I did, I kept doing (so if I switched brands, it was a permanent switch; if I turned down my thermostat, I kept it down), so that by day 365, I'd be living as green a lifestyle as it gets.
It was a gruelling year, but in the end, it proved that being an environmentalist doesn't necessarily mean being a smug hippie, nor does it have to mean compromising aesthetic values or good wine. You can read more about what I learned in my book, Sleeping Naked is Green, or just keep reading this here blog. Now, I'm mostly writing about whatever the heck pops into my head (isn't that a novel concept for a blog?).
Happy holidays, ye fellow bloggers and readers! I don’t even really know what “ye” means, but nevermind. I just wanted to pop up into your RSS feed/inbox/Google search/etc. for two reasons, which are completely unrelated other than a tenuous connection to Christmas. One is this: I decided to make some from-scratch holiday gifts this year, [ […]
Yep. Me again. Creeping into the blogosphere like I tend to do these days — about once every few months, with a totally random subject of conversation, which every blogger will tell you does NOT lead to a very consistent readership. Oh well. But I thought y’all might like to know that Miss Thistle is [...]
Sometimes, this city drives me crazy — there aren’t enough bike lanes, the public transit system is a mess and we’ve even banned kite-flying in one of our parks! And yet, every now and then, Toronto gets it right. The most recent example is here below, for your viewing pleasure:
Please spare me the smug bit about smoggy, bangers and mash loving Brits.
One – smog went out with the Clean Air Act (1956) and London no longer gets chemical smogs because Mayor Livingstone’s congestion charge has severly limited traffic in the centre of London and
Two, have you tried bangers and green lentils, muc h more up yopur street I guess.
Actually, I don’t eat bangers at all… And I’m certainly not trying to diss the Brits (I do have a British passport, btw) on the green front, they’ve certainly accomplished more than Canada in a lot of areas, the congestion zone being one of them. But they’re behind a lot, too — there are no blue boxes, grey boxes or green bins for composting like in Toronto for one; and I know that every time I go to London my throat still gets sore and my snot turns grey, so there’s gotta be some smog there somewhere.
I think the blog reference to Brits was in an endearing way and not SMUG! It was a backhanded compliment and I took it as such.
And perhaps instead of smog (soot and fog) we will use the words heavy air pollution which british cities have a long way to go to improve.
And green lentils are not grown locally- so we wont be eating them. Thanks for the suggestion.
Pat
Down here in Devon where the air is so pure you can eat your breakfast off it, we have brown bins, grey bins, clear sacks and blue sacks.
Brown for food/garden waste which goes for composting, grey for non-recyclable waste, clear for plastic bottles and tins, and blue for cardboard and newspaper.
Next weekend I am going to my local town to get my free five bags of compost which I helped create by being a dedicated eco warrior. Now who’s being smug?
Sorry about your snot btw, have you seen a doctor?
Well yes, it’s like that in Devon; I’m sure the air is equally pure over here in Banff or Nova Scotia. But I’m comparing major cities here: Toronto and London (not Toronto and rural England). Smog didn’t just magically disappear from London — which is still affectionately called The Big Smoke — in 1965, and while some people are getting on the biodiesel bandwagon, plenty of those Fiats and Minis still run on Diesel.
Last word on the green front. If you want to compare Toronto with London I have to tell you that MOST London boroughs now recycle MOST waste( and have been doing so for the past four or five years.) Doorstep[ collections too.
For example, my good friend who lives in Queen’s Park, in answer to my question “Which items do the council (London Borough of Brent) collect for recycling? Papers? Bottles?Garden Rubbish?Food waste?” replied ” All of the above.”
You and your fellow blogsters might want to check out http://www.capitalwastefacts.