Thursday 24 March 2011

Water Companies with Wrinkly Toes

During the last big recession Margaret Thatcher, had run down all if the utilities and now made to sell them off, however, it potential investors had to deduce the value of the utilities and as such thorough financial investigation was undertaken, of assets and such forth it was found that many of the sewage works were in breach of discharge limits set in 1951, Maggie invested in the companies to a point where they were saleable, and then sold them off, the initial reaction was asset stripping, selling of high value land near to PLVIs made some companies early profits. In more recent years it the high ground owned by many of the water companies has been rented to mobile phone companies for massive amounts.

I don't think this was foreseeable. It seems bad now that the Tories sold off all of the utilities but they were on the way out of a recession, I wonder what Prime minister Brown has in store round
the corner, in order to stump up funds, his borrowing will cost us more in the long run, If he had some utilities to sell perhaps he would be doing it now!This model of privatisation has not been extended to such levels in other countries, where in most cases mearly the running of such companies has been sold off to management companies. This is the case in France and the environmental management company also manages water in other countries, such a Israel.

Environmental Consultants Devon

Environmental Consultants Somerset

Wednesday 16 March 2011

Green Economics - A fair way to go.

A green economy represents the way to mingle a capitalist economy with an environmental strategy which may irk out human existence on the planet.

The concept of the supply chain , which is a vital concept for consumers to grasp if they wish to prevent the collapse of the global ecosystem. If people knew about the palm oil in their digestive biscuit than perhaps, they would think twice about eating it. Palm oil plantations in Malaysia are responsible for a vast amount of native forest clearance, palm oil is in 30% of all products in the super market and people just keep on buying it ignorance is the main hurdle to overcome as people are just unaware of the destruction that they cause on a global scale, when loading their trolley at a local supermarket.

The concept of local thinking; people are detached from the pollution they cause and that is why they don’t think about it, we do a bit of recycling, screw in a few energy saving light bulbs and that’s that, we are doing our bit. WRONG WRONG WRONG. We have to have a major shift in the economy to green business, its possible and its already started in the states.

Although the concept of the supply chain is a simple on the tracing of say all of the components in a microwave can take months, as components may be manufactured in different factories in different provinces / countries. How can this information be passed over to a consumer so that they will understand the impact there consumer-ing has on the global environment, its already started to a certain extent with food, local food consumption is on the increase, supermarkets are
owing to consumer pressure but it needs to spread in to other sectors.

Environmental Consultants
Environmental Permitting
Desktop Study
Sustainability Consultants
Compliance Consultants

Tuesday 8 March 2011

China and India. Do we have a right to judge?

Although it is dubious as to whether we in the west we have the right to question India and China's rapid growth and the associated industrialisation and pollution, it is clear that the price of progress falls dear on the environment.

Firstly we watched a documentary on China where the presenter visited two cities and there associated provinces, from the outset it was clear that the glittering jewel of shanghai is just centre piece in a rather large dysfunctional crown, one town, Xidtious had a cancer rate of 30 times than national average towns folk were regularly covered in outfall from the polluting factory. From what we saw on the documentary the town's chief was very much in business with the plants owner and despite the plants flagrant breeches in environmental, it obvious negative affects in the local populace and the appalling waste management practices, stood firmly by the plant saying "the cancer figures were not in the slightest bit odd".

It is obvious that corruption is a very big problem to be dealt with in developing countries, this is something that could be stamped over night in a what is effectively a dictator ship, just one word could stop all this, or could it? Some of the Chinese students voiced concern that there is no trust worthy enforcement body, (An equivalent of the UKs EA)

What benefits china gains from being under utilitarian rule, India lacks and so we see the full scale flounderings of the emerging global super power instead of the flounderings of a "fully developed country" the UK :-)

Environmental Consultants
Environmental Permitting
Desktop Study
Sustainability Consultants
Compliance Consultants

Friday 4 March 2011

Tesco. Pulling its weight?

With Tesco constantly anouncing record profits every year we can asume that it has a little "room" in the budget to work on its environmental impact.

We have seen some very comendable stuff going on at Tesco, there has been zero carbon stores we have seen them spear heading quantified carbon labelling schemes, all be it very limited.

















But where they are not making an effort is fish. We have all watched hugh fernly wishingstool on the TV, and we know that cod is bad, and mackeral is better, but do Tesco offer sustainable choices to there customers? Not of the whole.

Read more on sustainable fish.

Read more on green food.

Environmental Consultants Bristol
Environmental Consultants Exeter



Thursday 3 March 2011

To Beaver or not to Beaver?

A new concept that I learnt today was that of key species, the example being that of a European beaver which have been completely driven from the UK by land owners as they “damage” trees.

However, it is this damage of trees that leads to them to build a habitat on which other species depend. The building of dams, creates areas of still water within an other wise turbid lotic system and as such, new species find a niche, moor hens paddle about on the surface feeding
on weed which may grow from the bed, other mammals may ustilise the lodge that the beaver lives in, the felled trees create ponding and encourage still more bio diversity, I feel whilst typing this that these key stone species are very important but there is a reason why they have been so unpopular, after all if you were a forester and 10% of you trees were stripped of their bark and died then what would you do (I would have less sympathy if the woods were grown on a commercial scale) Also in our current predicament with the climate would it not be better to preserve the trees, do they store more carbon than the ecosystem created by the beaver?

Environmental Consultants
Environmental Permits
Desktop Study