Energy Saving Campaign

Mobile phone scheme
Tips on organising a collection of mobile phones that can be recycled by Oxfam to benefit people and the environment.

Drying clothes outdoors
Nearly 5,000 items of clothing are due to be hung with 24,600 pegs from a 113,005ft (34,444m) clothes line in Trafalgar Square, central London. The UN World Environment Day event is to remind people that drying clothes out doors can help save money. Organisers the Environment Agency estimates £88m is spent on powering tumble dryers in the UK every year..

Turn off the lights And the TV. And your mobile phone charger. These are all quick and easy ways to save energy. According to the Energy Saving Trust, if all UK households turned appliances off rather than putting them on standby it would save the energy produced by two-and-a-half 700 megawatt power stations each year. Unplugging mobile phone chargers could save consumers £60m a year and cut C02 emissions by 250,000 tonnes, the trust says.

Take public transport
Driving a car uses energy and produces C02 emissions. You can cut the amount of fuel you use by walking or taking the bus when making short trips, or taking the train on longer journeys.

Offset your emissions
If you really can't, or don't want to, change your lifestyle to reduce the damage you do to the planet, you could consider doing something to offset it. You can calculate the carbon cost of a flight, for example, and make a donation to a project that will absorb or reduce an equivalent amount of greenhouse gases elsewhere using a calculator on Guardian travel site.

You may also find takers for your unwanted furniture and white goods, for example, on community websites such as Free2collect and Freecycle.

On The Line - This joint project, founded by Oxfam, Channel 4 and WWF-UK, explores the countires along the zero degree meridian line. Includes features from WWF on oceans, deserts and rain forests with related quizzes.

Sources:
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/coolplanet/teachers/bringbring/index.htm
BBC online, Washing line world record attempt, 5 June
Guardian, Green with energy, June 5






Environment a pressing poverty issue

Development agencies brought a new perspective to the debate of climate change, viewing environmental issues through the prism of poverty. The stark fact is that climate change has already begun to impact detrimentally on poor people. The potential ravages of climate change are so severe that they could nullify efforts to secure meaningful and sustainable development in poor countries. Climate change, then, is a pressing poverty issue. Scientific opinion is moving inexorably towards acknowledging that the increasing incidence and severity of ‘extreme weather events’ that provoke many disasters is connected to climate change. More than 185 million African living in sub-Saharan, three times the population of the UK, are condemned to die because of the spread and increasing intensity of disease, caused by rising temperatures over which they have little or no control. Everywhere, the twin threats of drought and famine – caused by increasingly unpredictable rain patterns in tropical areas – are expected to bring even more misery. Predicted rises in sea level would leave millions displaced and dispossessed. Already, families are having to move every couple of years, as increased melt water from the Himalayan glaciers sweeps their land and fragile livelihoods away. According to DFID, some 94 per cent of disasters and 97 per cent of natural-disaster-related deaths occur in developing countries. Scientific opinion is moving inexorably towards acknowledging that the increasing incidence and severity of ‘extreme weather events’ that provoke many disasters is connected to climate change.

Politicians are now grasping the climate change argument and in the UK are vying to appear greener than one another. The Conservatives have made their ‘Quality of life challenge’, which includes a review of their policies on climate change and carbon emissions. Labour has Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, proposing a new World Bank fund of US$20 billion to help poorer countries pay for ‘clean’ technologies as they develop. The World Bank has picked up the idea of a fund and recently published proposals for a ‘clean energy investment framework’, detailing how the US$20 billion would be raised, allocated and spent.

Mr Brown has also established a Treasury commission, under the leadership of former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern, to consider the economic implications of climate change. renewable energy could provide radical improvements to the lives of some of the world’s poorest and most marginalised people – tangible benefits delivered on a timescale of months not decades. Light for schools or small businesses, which can only currently operate during daylight hours, creating new opportunities – especially for women. Power for water pumps, doing away with the arduous daily slog to the nearest well. Energy for refrigeration units, meaning vital vaccines and other drugs can be kept safely. These show how communities and countries can aspire to a better future, without repeating the destructive mistakes of the rich, industrialised world. There are real alternatives.


Christian Aid: The climate of poverty: facts fears and hope
http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/indepth/605caweek/index.htm