A Walk in Pictures: Bolton Abbey

The day starts off unpromisingly, as we are woken at six by that sound of rain. I always find rain peculiar when camping, in that whilst a disincentive to emerge from the tent, this also provides peculiar proof of the success of the pitch, that the tent is waterproof and providing a defiantly simple home against all weather. There is also the less ideal fact that going to the toilet or making the morning cup of tea means getting drenched. By about eleven, it has eased off, and we drive towards Bolton Abbey, parking at the Barden Bridgecar park, where there is no charge; otherwise, parking on the estate leaves you £5.50 out of pocket. In spite of our awareness that the monies will be well-spent on the heritage of the countryside, this seems against the spirit and the art of rambling in nature.

On the other hand, this is a rich safari along well-maintained paths, through rugged and ancient woodland, following the course of the river Wharfe. Within five minutes of setting off, we have spotted our first kingfisher, which taunts us by flickering continually out of sight each time we almost reach his current perch. He is the essence of energy, a vital spark of blue; it is appropriate that kingfishers are the best sign of a healthy river, as something for which motion is such an apparent imperative can only be sustained by easy supplies of food. As if to confirm this observation, a few minutes later a heron pumps sedately overhead.

At a certain point, we turn away from the river and zig-zag our way up the contours of the valley, following the waymarked red route. Whether the red is for the danger of the precipitous drop that accrues to our left, or for the increase in cardiac activity required to climb it, I am not sure. As we move deeper into the woodland, however, the rain's earlier activities seem to have awakened something primeval; the perpetual mist seems to suck smell from the wet leaves and decaying undergrowth, and ferns surround us with their young spiral spines ready to unfurl into leaf over the coming weeks.

If the vegetation seems jurassic, it is apt that our next encounter is with one of the dinosaurs' ancestors. Ahead of us on the path, a rock stirs and lurches into motion; a common toad, unmistakable with his rough and dimpled skin, struggles his way into deeper cover (though not before I have had a chance to record the moment with a picture).

As we continue, we step from the Jurassic to the medieval. There, on the trees, peculiar "green man" masks entice us along, their porcelain eyes leading us, like Hansel, to a house made of sweets.

Or, at least, the ice cream shop. Here we pause momentarily, and I capture ducks skidding their way to the water; seen frozen in time, their landings are peculiar, like elderly gentlemen easing themselves into their seats, legs slightly ahead, wings reaching back to clutch to the air, but nevertheless landing with something of a drop and a lurch.

Crossing over the river at this point, our enticements along the path are no longer green men, but strange, fallen trees, with bronze coins inexplicably embedded in their trunks. Like uncanny growths, or perverted wishing wells, we are not sure whether they are acts of sculpture or vandalism.

Certainly, I am more excited by the discovery of one wholly-natural parasitism: this glorious fungal growth projecting from one mossy bough, the radial fans beneath them made clearly visible from this angle.

A little climb further on, and we reach our target. Seen framed through the trees as below, the abbey is a romanticist's misty, dreamy imagination set in stone, rooks circling the tops, a river beneath the abbey, and all long, long ruined.

Recycling Plastics

The cynic in me would argue that it is not coincidental that kerbside plastic and cardboard recycling was finally implemented in the constituency in which I live just two weeks before the local council elections. But the environmentalist in me thinks "so what," if it has a beneficial effect on the waste problem.

Over the three years we have been living the our present house, we three (girlfriend, housemate and I) have tried hard to limit our waste. The most significant step is having a compost heap, but we also rigorously washed bottles and cans for kerbside collection, and hoarded cardboard for recycling at the tip whenever we happened to be passing (for the latter is self-defeating if you are going to make a special 10 mile round trip).

We prided ourselves on the fact that our weekly waste amounted to about one large pedal bin sack a week; we also bemoaned the fact that of that waste, possibly three quarters was comprised of recyclable plastic, such as milk cartons. (Yes, ideally we would get our milk in glass bottles, but rather than the milkman we choose to get ours from the local organic farm in plastic ones - sourcing locally in plastic bottles is probably better than sourcing milk that could have come from any distance, even if its container is environmentally better.) This stacks up with the average statistics: nationally, plastic makes up 11% of household waste, and of this 40% is plastic bottles. Unfortunately for us, though, our local council did not offer any recycling of plastics, even at the central waste disposal sites.

So when plastic kerbside recycling arrived, we were pretty pleased. And, lo and behold, our throwaway waste was cut dramatically, probably averaging a little more than one plastic carrier bag per week (though we obviously try not to use these when shopping, its better to reuse the ones that are pressed upon you than it is to buy new bin liners).

However, the environmental sceptic in me wonders whether our pride ought to be deflated a little. Consulting my recycling bible, I discover that there are seven types of recyclable plastics:

1. PET (Polythylene Teraphthalate - try saying that with your mouth full!). A strong plastic designed for containing high-pressure liquids; used for bottled soft drinks, cooking oil bottles, oven ready trays.
2. HDPE (Hi Density Polyethylene). Used for plastic milk bottles and washing up liquid.
3. PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride). A hard plastic, used for plastic pipes, outdoor furniture, bottled water and shrink wrap.
4. LDPE (Low Density Polethylene). A softer plastic used for carrier bags and bin liners.
5. PP (Polyproylene). Used for bottle caps and margarine tubs.
6. PS (Polystyrene). Used for foam trays, protective packaging, vending cups.
7. Other.

These are denoted by the little symbol impressed or printed on to the item.

The problem is, unlike glass or cans there is no way of automatically separating different types of plastics, whilst individual items might contain two or more types of plastic. This makes recycling at best time and labour expensive, and at worst means that separating and recycling the individual components demands more energy than their initial production. Finally, even if recycling of plastic were more feasible, the whole appeal of plastic is that it is cheap to produce from the outset, so recycling may be self-defeating if the market becomes over-saturated with supply.

Although on balance it remains a good thing that recycling of plastics is available to every household, the case of plastics ultimately reinforces the validity of that mantra: reduce, reuse, recycle. Recycling should be seen as the last step, a salve for the symptoms rather than the cure for the condition of the over-consuming Western world. The best thing to do is to cut down packaging from the outset, by buying food products with little or no packaging - does it really make a difference to the quality of those bananas or apples if they are shrink wrapped? I suspect not. Secondly - and still at the imaginary supermarket - if you do buy loose items but put them in those small plastic food bags, try to re-use these for your sandwiches or food storage; rinse them through, and substitute them for your usual clingfilm or tin foil. Only after the bag is falling apart should you think about placing it in the green bin.

Wrap reported in 2008 that compared to the previous year, "The weight of plastic bottles being collected for recycling in the UK has increased by 68% with 92% of local authorities offering collection facilities." This is a good thing. But it will be a drop in the ocean if the use of plastics continues to increase at the point of origin. Between 1995 and 2002, for example, my book informs me that sales of plastic drink bottles almost doubled, whilst recycling proportionately fell.

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive

On July 1st, 2007, a much-trumpeted new environmental directive came into force in the UK and across the European Union: Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment, ironically abbreviated to WEEE. The European Commission claim the legislation ensures that:

Producers will be responsible for taking back and recycling electrical and electronic equipment. This will provide incentives to design electrical and electronic equipment in an environmentally more efficient way, which takes waste management aspects fully into account. Consumers will be able to return their equipment free of charge.

So when our digital set-top box gave up its thirst for power and refused to give in to all bullying at the end of my screwdriver, and when two of my Xbox controllers became so clogged with dust that they no longer functioned, I assumed that it would be possible to recycle these in accordance with WEEE procedures.

Because we still had the receipt for the Freeview box, my first thought was to return it to the retailer, Tesco. I visited their website to check whether our local store has such facilities, at which point I started to suspect that the WEEE legislation is not so robust as is made out. Explaining their compliance with a benchmark piece of environmental legislation, the UK's biggest retailer devotes a mere small paragraph on their corporate website:

2007/08 finally sees the implementation of the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Directive in the UK. In support of this, Tesco has continued to play an active role in the development of the Distributor Take Back Scheme. This will provide a mechanism for retailers who do not wish or are unable to provide WEEE returns facilities in their stores to fund the provision of facilities at upgraded local authority civic amenity sites. We believe this arrangement will provide the most sustainable and effective solution for customers.

I am not sure that the most effective solution for customers - who presumably go to Tesco stores on a near weekly basis - is for the retailer to pass on responsibility to local councils with their distributed waste disposal sites.

With my nose now sniffing the air of waste (or WEEE!), I investigated further. Directed to the UK implementation of the legislation, The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Regulations 2006, I found that - contrary to my earlier belief - it is not a requirement of either producers, retailers or distributors to provide like-for-like or instore recycling schemes. Rather, the legislation can be complied with if the retailer signs up to one of 37 approved "Producer Compliance Schemes."

One such scheme involves providing financial support for upgrading local council waste disposal sites, which is precisely what Tesco have done. However, the problem with the legislation is the lack of transparency. To register with a compliance scheme retailers must pay a registration fee and inform the scheme of the total of electronic equipment they place in the market each year. There will obviously be a tendency to underestimate this data. However, will this be picked up at the point of recycling by the public bodies now made responsible for the trade waste? The "financing of the costs of the collection, treatment, recovery and environmentally sound disposal of WEEE from private households" is determined by a formula: "The amount of the relevant WEEE" - seriously, it's hard not to laugh - "for which each producer shall be responsible shall be calculated in relation to each of the categories of EEE" through the formula (A / B) x C.

A is the amount of tonnes of EEE that has been put onto the market by that producer over the particular period (remember, this amount is estimated by the producers themselves). B is the total that has been put onto the market by all producers in the same period. Thus the division ensures that a large retailer like Tescos will contribute the appropriate ratio of total waste as compared to an individual small shop. C is the multiplier for the amount of EEE deposited at a collection facility, with a consequent cost of disposal and recycling.

The thing to note here is that for financing local authority recycling schemes, the formula applies only to the amount of waste that consumers themselves actively take to be recycled. Thus whilst the legislation also requires retailers to mark EEE products with a crossed-out wheelie bin, the retailer is not under obligation to make clear how precisely to recycle the product (though under Section 17 they are obliged to provide information on the different constituent materials in the product), nor to explain to consumers how they are complying with WEEE capabilities through third parties.

It is therefore entirely contrary to Tesco's financial interests to direct me from their corporate website to the specific council site at which I can recycle my old set-top box. My waste would add a small chunk to the "C" half of the equation. Rather, I have to take the initiative and work out my nearest capable site through Recycle More, and to transport it there myself (with the added cost of carbon emissions from my car journey).

In the case of my WEEE, when I did get to our nearest council facility, I could not see any signs of the added investment one would expect. In contrast to the neat skips for garden waste, cardboard, paper etc., the WEEE section is apparently just an undesignated pile in the corner: TVs piled on fridges, digital set top boxes mixed with desktop monitors, all items with different disposal requirements and hazardous materials. Where the money actually goes remains to be seen beneath the pile of rubbish.

Incidentally, don't think I am picking on Tesco. At best, Asda have precisely the same policy. At worst, Morrisons and Sainsbury's do not appear to have any information on their websites or in their corporate responsibility reports. By contrast to all these four, the Currys group seem to have an excellent policy, offering free in-store recycling when you buy a replacement product from them, even if the old one was not sold by Currys. Their home delivery service will also collect old large kitchen appliances, such as fridges, as new ones are dropped off.

So what, then, is the solution for a piece of legislation that should have tightened the knot tying producers to the waste of products they promote, but which instead has at its centre a major loophole? Because of the formula, retailers will underestimate the amount of goods they will sell; more significantly, it is not in their interests to increase the waste deposited at council sites because this will be reflected in the "C" aspect of the equation, and so they do not actively advertise the scheme. The answer is to turn the formula around. The moment individual consumers take it upon themselves to recycle more, the more this will increase the burden on companies, encouraging them perhaps to take recycling schemes in house (as Currys have done) and certainly to look at the amount and nature of electricals waste they produce. Is it really worth promoting that shaver with a battery, over the simple plastic one? Is it counterproductive to encourage people to upgrade their computers every six months?

As ever, though, the real issue is one of the chicken and the egg. Local councils or government will not want to invest in encouraging individual recycling, for example through kerbside collections, when the companies should be paying for it under the legislative framework. On the other hand, retailers will not want to make themselves financially liable for the full mass of their WEEE, when they can paper over their corporate responsibility by claiming to be assisting councils (but not consumers) on their glossy websites.

Shell Pull Out of Renewables Project

By any standard, Shell's recent decision to sell their 33% stake in the London Array offshore windfarm is a disastrous turn of policy, which has rightly been lambasted. Shell this week announced profits of £4 billion, and it is hard to see how they can justify withdrawing their investment of £0.6 billion from the £2 billion renewables project, in which they were the major partner along with Eon. Their press release explained that their decision was taken on the basis that "We constantly review our projects and investment choices in all of our businesses, focusing on capital discipline and efficiency." So not much need to read between the lines there: with oil currently running at $120 a barrel, there is more money to be made elsewhere, possibly lurking beneath melting icecaps.

But whilst Shell's retreat exposes their much-trumpeted environmental policies as a superficial marketing gimmick hiding a hard core of greed, it also indicates something inherently flawed in the government's environmental claims. At a time of credit crunch and inflationary belt-tightening, the government justifies maintaining fuel taxes at their present level on the assumption that lowering them would have a detrimental effect on the environment. In reality, the only groups that win from high fuel prices are the major companies, whose ability to affect the environment for good or ill far outweighs that of the individual consumer, who needs to get to work and the out-of-town supermarket and will almost certainly do so by car, at any cost.

Rather than falsely sustaining the high price of oil, the route to encourage individuals to choose environmentally friendly transportation methods, and to reduce the effect independent oil companies have to undermine any national commitment to renewables, is through radical change in infrastructure at the national level. Increase subsidies for public transport, provide incentives and tax breaks for people to throw out their oil burners in favour of sustainable heating, and suddenly Shell might realise that there is more to be made in serving renewables, than digging for the black gold.

Teletext Extra (or Teletext Less)

Environmental sensitivity is increasingly being deployed as a tool for commercial promotion.

Today, Tesco announce their intention to start adding "carbon labels" to 70 000 of its own-brand products, allowing shoppers to compare carbon costs across similar products, much as they currently do with salt content or price. This is, of course, a commendable plan, although it is one that will work only if low-carbon alternatives (which often means locally grown) are available. Given the regular absence of their Local Choice milk from the shelves in our area, this may not work well in practice; sticking a label on a packet is a little like adding a sticking plaster to the massive carbon wound that is the current food chain system. And it is, of course, a label that shouts as much about Tesco as a family friendly brand as it does about a real committment to the environment. Given Tesco's recent profits hit 2.8 billion, there is always more that can be done at root. Nevertheless, they must get marks for trying.

But if I am somewhat cynical about Tesco's commercial motivations whilst pleased about the plan in environmental principle, I am left utterly angered by the recent service that has stealithly crept up the wires overnight to find its way into my television. I'm talking about Teletext Extra, "a new service for Freeview, combining a sophisticated Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) and a new improved Teletext service." New it may be, but improved?

Rather than enhancing the usability of the Freeview TV guide, the updated system is hard to navigate, slow and - on our small screen - virtually unreadable. Its sole purpose seems to be commercial: the bottom third of the screen is now taken over by advertisements for Sky, Virgin and - that's right - sex channels. Worst of all, though, is that the service intended to sell goods has completely failed to realise that environmental sensitivity will inform commercial success.

Every time you turn the digital box on, the new service shouts that it MUST BE ALLOWED TO DOWNLOAD THE NEW GUIDE (or, if you really, really don't want to, you can press menu to exit, and wait for about 30 seconds before the black curtain to television-watching is raised). I am in trouble, it seems, because I turn the box off at the plug once I've finished watching. This was never a problem for the old software on the Freeview box, which happily remembered its previous settings. Teletext Extra, though, tells me in no uncertain terms that I MUST LEAVE THE BOX ON STANDBY OVERNIGHT. DO NOT TURN OFF AT THE WALL.

What utter and absolute ignorance of all the current logic within the electronics industry, which seems - slowly but incessantly - to be switching on to the fact that consumers want (and the planet needs) electronic devices that turn off when not needed, and draw radically reduced power when running. Though a complete ban on standby options may be impractical, the government's 2006 Energy Review is set to pressurise makers from above to be sensible about this (and their 2007 Consultation on the Promotion of Energy End-Use Efficiency recommends that all public procurement of electrical devices draw upon a list of the most energy efficient systems, including those which minimise or eliminate power on standby).

So how, given this climate of public opinion and government consultation, was it determined that the Freeview service - which will be the most popular way to receive television following the 2012 switch off - should now run autocratically on such an energy inefficient piece of software? Whilst the first fault must lie with the makers, the government and OFCOM also should have been monitoring and influencing the development of a service that is nationally widespread.

I am not the only one to have complained to Teletext Extra about this. Others have deluged the service with complaints about software glitches. Happily, though, whether you are concerned about the environmental implications of millions of boxes being left on overnight, or simply do not like the poorly designed system, there is a solution, and it is possible to go back to the old, functional guide.

The Call it Science

The television advertisements broadcast in the United States by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, launched partly in response to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth film, are a poststructuralist's paradigm. In the former film, soft-focus, saturated images of children blowing dandelions, and trains trundling down rural railroads, contrast with dull images of third-world farmers pounding grain. This regression, the film suggests, is what a world would be like without oil (no mention of renewable substitutes here). Its punchline hammers the point home in terms every bit as binary blankly binary as Bush's "you're either with us or against us" ('you're either for the war or a terrorist') speech: "Carbon Dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life." The meaning of words change before the eyes of the reader; even the supposedly absolute and permanent formulas of chemistry metamorphose into rhetoric and ideology.

Secondly, the advert signals once and for all the death of the author(ity), even of science, as a quick look at the background of the "Experts" on the board of the CEI reveals. The President of the CEI has a degree in Mathematics and Political Science; Chair of Energy and Global Warming policy is someone with an MSc from the London School of Economics; the Director of Energy Policy is "working part time toward a Ph.D. in American Government from Catholic University." In my PhD course, my graduate school is always emphasising my need to gain transferable skills; but even though I work in an interdisciplinary field across sciences and arts, I would not claim to qualified to speak with a solid foundation of empirical knowledge on the case of the former. But perhaps unlike in the British university system PhDs in "American Goverment" give one the skills to make accurate and objective scientific claims.

Preceeding these technical criticisms, though, my gut reaction is one of utter despair at the inequality in the battle between science and political ideology. As the CEI so stridently asserts, scientists as a body are not sure precisely how fast climate change is taking place. Even as I type this, the BBC Climate Change Model running silently in my taskbar reminds me that climate change may well be happening faster than some scientists think, but that its effects may also have been over-exaggerated. But these are concerns that are quantitative in type; the overwhelming majority of scientists working in the field are agreed that in our earth is experiencing a qualitative revolution in its climate, one that breaks so radically from past events that, regardless of the details, impacts on life are already being felt.

The unfairness of the playing field in which these scientists must compete against the likes of the CEI is that (as I mentioned in my previous post about Richard Dawkins) for scientists to assume the rhetoric of dogma and politics - which they have to do in this most pressing issue - is for them to open the arena to all-comers. Noting just a few coincidental contentions in the broad canvas of scientific consensus, even opponents with little awareness of scientific practice can argue that, having stepped out of their remit for the objective pursuit of knowledge, scientists are legitimate targets on the assumption that the science as a whole is founded on faith (as in Creationism) or warped by liberal politics (as in relation to global warming).

It leaves me deeply depressed for the lack of respect we have for the Baconian enterprise that has constructed a world in which we live longer, can communicate through the internet and, yes, drive cars. In his weekly column in The Guardian, Ben Goldacre tries in vain to correct some of the media's grotesque perversions of scientific evidence. These often assume that one trial on one particular issue (MMR and autism is a favourite), though it has failed the standards of scientific practice, has the same authority as the rest of scientific evidence on the issue put together, even though the silent majority of scientist have been required to meet high benchmarks of double-blind laboratory testing and peer-reviewed publication. A few years ago, Elton John was awarded hundreds of thousands of pounds in libel damages, following tabloid claims that he was bulimic. It seems to me that we need a similar sort of law to protect scientific knowledge from similarly, but more significant, defamatory abuses.