One of a series of Blogs as part of a sustainability study course
Sustainability, society and you:  The University of Nottingham

Being overweight is caused by over eating relative to the amount of activity or exercise.

One of the absolute rules of the universe is that you cannot create energy from nothing.  

The foods we eat is converted into energy by the body, if we don’t use the energy, it is stored as fat for future energy use.  

It is not possible to eat 1kg of food and produce 1.5kg of energy/fat so anyone who is overweight is eating more food than they need, for the amount of energy they consume.

The following are interesting current facts

In Ireland 18% of adults are obese. Of these, slightly more men than women are obese http://www.dohc.ie/publications/report_taskforce_on_obesity_es.html

 In the UK , in 2011 24% of men and 26% of women were obese.
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/02February/Pages/Latest-obesity-stats-for-England-are-alarming-reading.aspx

USA
Thirteen states now have adult obesity rates above 30 percent, 41 states have rates of at least 25 percent, and every state is above 20 percent, according to the report. http://www.rwjf.org/en/research-publications/find-rwjf-research/2013/08/f-as-in-fat–how-obesity-threatens-america-s-future-2013.html

When we combine the fact that 50% of all food produced in the world is wasted without being used http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jan/10/half-world-food-waste and the fact that 18-25% of the populations of Ireland/UK are eating more food than they need, food waste is a serious sustainability issue for these islands.

The economic costs: A study by Safefood Ireland showed that the cost of overweight and obese people on the island of Ireland is €1.6bn. http://www.safefood.eu/News/2012/New-study-reveals-the-annual-cost-of-overweight-an.aspx
The UK and Ireland have very similar demographics with the UK mainland population being 10 times bigger than the island of Ireland so, that €1.6bn would equate to £13bn in the UK.

This is definitely something that each individual can control as part of a contribution to a more sustainable planet.

One of a series of Blogs as part of a sustainability study course
Sustainability, society and you:  The University of Nottingham

The following comments are based on the results of having completed this questionaire

The country I live in is not on the list.  I filled out the form and decided that on the basis that the answer to everything is 42, I would choose the 42^nd country on the list, which is Gabon.

I also have to admit that I do not weigh everything I eat; in fact I don’t even record everything I eat. I have better things to do in my life.  I don’t have a stop watch running on my daily shower, I never leave a tap running, I never water my garden, I do not have a swimming pool, I use an eco carwash that recycles the water. 

Putting the numbers in to the best of my estimates I get 612, if I lived in Gabon, which I don’t.  If I assume that the water footprint of The UK is similar to Ireland I get a number of 333, which interestingly is exactly half of 666. (so only half a devil then)

I would be interesting to know how the calculation of water usage for toilet flushing was arrived at. Is it based on the amount of kgs consumed and how often one would need to defecate to get rid of that amount of kilos and how much water is required to move that weight to the waste water treatment station.  Who calculated the number of flushes required and the distance?

No mention of how many pints of beer I might consume in a week, how many soft drinks I might have or for that matter how many pints of water I might drink.

 No question of how many pets I have in my house (Just 1, favourite number 2 daughter’s cat) or if I have any form of water capture for my roof runoff.

I sincerely hope that the people organising this questionnaire were not getting paid for their effort  because as far as I am concerned,  the numbers generated are as relevant as the significance of the number 42 I used to find my chosen country. Of course things may be looked at differently in Holland ( no question of the amount of water used to produce and use certain types of substances)

Why the number 42 is important

One of a series of Blogs as part of a sustainability study course
Sustainability, society and you:  The University of Nottingham

Article 2:12
This from the
UN’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD, 2005-2014).
“Education for Sustainable Development means including key sustainable development issues into teaching and learning; for example, climate change, disaster risk reduction, biodiversity, poverty reduction, and sustainable consumption.” Etc, etc 

This to me is a bunch pious platitudes by the well educated “Haves” pretending they care about the uneducated “Have Not’s”  The first thing to do is commit to making certain that all humans can read and write properly by the time they are fifteen years of age, then they will have some chance of understanding and incorporating these pious ideals in to their lives

A look at the numbers in the following link will give a better idea of the real situation. One of the numbers gives the following

“Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen”
See, Global Issues: Poverty Facts and Stats

Having watched the videos, all very nice touchy, touchy, feely, feely, stuff showing how the impoverished of this world can improve “their” lot while behaviour of the 25% of the world’s population that live in relative comfort are not mentioned.

Patting ourselves on the back because we let poor black people paint on the walls of rundown buildings, in the ghettoes they are forced to live in, is hardly something that we should be shouting about.

Children scavenging on open, festering, tip heads are hardly something that anyone living in The EU or USA would regard as sustainable for their children.

To coin a phrase from “Oliver” I think they need to think it out again…………

With thanks to xkcd.com

I live in Rathfarnham Village, in South Dublin, Ireland. The Village, 5Km (3 miles) from the city centre was absorbed by the city in the early 1900’s and thankfully  bypassed in the 1980’s, which left the integrity of the old village intact with a pleasant main street and the usual local village shops and restaurants.  It sits at the foothill of the Dublin Mountains (5k)  and “The Wicklow Way”, a 127km (80mile) heritage walk through a national park and across some of the most spectacular scenery found anywhere on the planet

Rathfarnham developed as the service village for Rathfarnham Castle which was built by the Normans around 1199 (first mention in books) to keep the mountainy men from sacking the city so it has been around for a long time

I live in an enclave of 18 town houses with a small 3 story 18 apartments block behind the village and beside The Owendoher  River.  Our complex is called Rathfarnham Mill as it is built on the site of an old Paper Mill driven by this river. There were numerous Mills in the area over the millennia

Behind my house are the Dodder River and Bushy Park, a 445 hectare (1100 acre) recreational and forest park with lots of the kind of wildlife we find existing close to urban populations. The Dodder River (60m/yds from my house) is well stocked with trout which can be caught for dinner on a pleasant summer evening.  So, generally a very pleasant place to live, city life with plenty of interaction with nature.

For pleasure I ride a Harley Davison and in the last 15 years I have travelled 112,000km (70,000 miles) taking in the wonderful wide open spaces of North America, South Africa, France Spain, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, etc. I have spent many wonderful times riding around Yorkshire and the spectacular highlands of Scotland. Too many wonderful places to pick a picture from. The beauty of riding a motorcycle is that, when you are on the road, you are in nature, not just driving through it.

So looking at the above, you would think that I would have to choose my favourite place from all this natural beauty?  In that you would be wrong. My favourite places are Downtown Dublin on Saturday afternoon, Michigan Ave Chicago, in Spring or Autumn and Fifth Ave, NY anytime.

I love standing in front of a large building thinking about the engineering. When hundreds of people turn on a tap, they get water, when they hit the light switch, they get light, the building provides them seamlessly with everything and the real beauty of good building is that the occupants don’t even notice.

And when that’s done, if in Dublin, there is nothing like a pint of Guinness over a good book or an eclectic conversation with a like minded city boy in one of Dublin’s famous watering holes.

From a comment as part of a course with Future learn and Nottingham University Sustainability Society and You

On the basis that all energy and matter were created at a single point in time, as we measure it and commonly known as the big bang, everything that exists in the cosmos right now is made from the same matter so logic tells us that ecology and oneness is the correct position.

Humans, while an intrinsic part of the whole do have the ability to influence the environment  on this planet in either a positive or negative way, so environmentalism needs to be a part of our thought process

Consumerism as currently practiced, with all the inequalities set out in the article is simply wrong and most definitely not sustainable in the long-term, it is simply not possible for 7bn people to have the “western” lifestyle, if that ‘s what we want to achieve

Of course it could be sustainable in the worst sense of the word if the 1% decide to consolidate their hold on the world’s wealth for the benefit of the few, while the vast majority of people on the planet are born, live and die in abject poverty existing on minimal leftovers

The question is this; will those who control the wealth for their own comfort voluntarily reduce their consumption by up to 75% so that the resources can be shared with everyone on the planet?

For those taking the course, the question is; where do each of us fit into the resource use spectrum?

The question is to choose between each of the options

Incineration/landfill
The answer is totally dependent on what is being disposed of. For the purpose of this exercise let’s assume the disposal of mixed waste with no materials recovery.

Incineration is the best option as the process can deal with most of the issues surrounding disposal of mixed waste. The volume of residue for landfilling is about 10% by weight of the original input and there is the possibility of energy recovery.

Landfilling mixed waste results in decomposition over a long period of time with the danger of leaching of toxic liquids into ground waters and the production and release of methane gas into the atmosphere.  Modern landfills do have processes to minimise these problems but they remain an issue over very long periods of time.

The real solution is Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT)  followed by gasification. Where recyclables are removed from the waste the biomass content is either composted or processed through Anaerobic Digestion (AD). The remaining residues can then be further used for energy recovery by a process of pyrolysis/gasification. These processes create almost no emissions, other than those created by using the gas generated for energy, which is similar or lower than natural gas. The final residues are inert and can be safely landfilled.

Hot Air/Paper Towel
I would go for Hot Air drying on the assumption that a hand dryer has a reasonable lifespan with the original environmental cost of production spread over this time. The only other EI is the energy used to generate the hot air. Paper towels on the other hand use large amounts of energy and water in their production and even if they are recycled and returned for manufacture, the water and energy needs for producing even cheap paper is substantial.

Of course with a little patience, ones hands will dry naturally in a couple of minutes

Dish washer/hand wash
A dishwasher is basically a robot and it is claimed that they use less water for the amount of dishes washed than hand washing.  Having said that, coming from a time when there were no dishwashers, they do create bad habits and encourage people to wash their dishes a lot more.  As well as this, in order to make best use of the dishwasher, they need to be full. This means having a lot more dishes and cutlery available, which have to be produced with all the environmental impact of their production.

If we have to wash everything by hand we will use one knife to butter all the bread, one spoon to sugar all the teas, and the breadcrumbs from plates that have sandwiches on them will generally be wiped with a dry cloth.

So, for the environment, hand washing is the way to go, for me and convenience, I still use the dishwasher.

Sustainability is behaviour that can be continuous because the activity uses the same or less resources than those resources that are being naturally or artificially created.