World Environment Day

Yesterday was World Environment Day and I'm sorry that I didn't get a chance to write before or on the day, but I am interested to hear what you got up to.

The theme this year was 'greening your local economy', and in the consumptive phase that our communities seem to be obsessed with at the moment, this is a great one to attract the more mainstream community to join in and become more aware of the environment and the impact each of us have upon it.

To celebrate this day, and particularly the theme, I decided I would encourage a bit of a socialisation in my office and hold a tea-tasting event. You may wonder what this has to do with either World Environment Day or the green economy theme. Well, all teas I purchased for the day were teas produced or owned by companies in my local area. In addition to this, I asked participants for a gold coin donation, with the proceeds to be donated to a local wildlife caring group run by volunteers and which my work requests assistance from occasionally.

Great way to get together over a cup of herbal tea and chat about the environment! 

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Books versus Ebook readers

I have a personal passion for books and love to read, but even more than that I just love looking through book stores. The onset of e-readers may see the end of my strollings in these wonderful commercial entities. There is however debate as to whether the e-readers are truly more environmentally friendly than our lovely paperbacks!

I read an article in the latest G Magazine today which compared the environmental footprint of our traditional paper books and the e-readers. The first portion of this article made me feel that there certainly must be an overriding detrimental impact from the e-reader, however, the conclusion of the article in fact was the total opposite (based on a number of assumptions). The e-reader despite needing to be powered by electricity and requiring new batteries on occasion has less environmental impact than our normal book, even when the book is sourced from local publishers and printed with vegetable dye on recycled paper. Ho hum!

Despite all this, I think I will probably continue to purchase the lovely paperback on occasion, but certainly will be utilising my library as much as possible and forward on to other people books that I have purchased and loved. I also love attending the annual Lifeline bookfest, a great place to purchase pre-loved books and help out a worthy charity organisation. Pin It