Antique? Well not quite but old, pre stainless steel certainly and quick to rust, if not dried after use.

But the decision made us also think about how best to store all the knives for easy retrieval. So this last Sunday after a lunch time discussion of alternatives, we decided on a magnetic knife holder.

They work like magic. I’d always fancied one but we’d never had the right space for it.

So log on to Amazon – yes we could have one and at 3.32 pm an email confirmed the 40 cms long rack had been dispatched with free next day delivery.

As promised, the van drew up a little after 2.00 pm on Monday and the parcel was handed over and signed off.

Amazon had got the rack selected, packed and delivered to a country area in under 24 hours from a Sunday start. Impressive.

No complaints there. This is online shopping at its best and saved me a lot of time.

But the box (opposite) was a different matter!

Slitting it open I wondered first if there was anything there. Loads of brown scrumpled up paper tumbled out, but no sign of the rack.

Finally I found it at the bottom, well packed in its own box. It measured 2 x 5 x 47 cms, so it didn’t take long to work out the Amazon delivery box (11 x 35 x 55 cms) would have held easily 34 of the racks – if I had wanted that many!

And that scrumpled up paper? On inspection it turned into a long seamless sausage-like creation, which flattened out into one continuous length of paper over five metres long by 38 cms wide.

For just one knife rack they had needed, because of the over large box, a length of packing paper that stretched from the eaves of the cottage to the flower bed – as you can see in the photo at the top of the page.

I’m a fan of online shopping because it can save on ‘travel to search’ time and costs. But the calculations from this example about use of resources are pretty scary. Just a hundred similar Amazon deliveries would use up 500 metres of the packing paper, which would either be thrown away or recycled at best. How many trees do you need for this and for the over large packaging?

The knives look great now and I had them installed on the new rack by 3.30 pm on Monday. That’s good going – a 24 hour turn round for job completion is fast. But isn’t it time Amazon looked at its wasteful packaging policies? No gold stars here for good environmental practice.

To get the best you need to be there early as this is a popular venue for people of all ages.

Farmers’ markets have proliferated in recent years from the first one in Bath, UK established in September 1997 in response to discussions about the Local Agenda 21 Commission. There are now over 500 in the UK.

Only a mile from Chicago’s downtown skyscrapers, the Lincoln Park market stalls are full of a wide range of produce and provide a marvellous contrast of colours.

Sustainability and environmental issues are key concerns for producers and many of the farms have full organic credentials or are certified green.

Farmers’ markets are not-for-profit bodies and have been increasingly popular in the US. They are overseen by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In the last seven years they have increased from 1755 to 7175, making a 17% increase in the last year alone.

But this is not big business like the average 450 acre farms in the prairies of Illinois and Iowa, where millions of tons of field corn (or maize) are grown every year for home beef production, for the rapidly expanding Chinese market and for ethanol production.

Typically farmers’ markets are made up of small producers with orchards or perhaps a 7 acre garden farm – with intense cultivation of tomatoes, peppers, onions, carrots, fruits etc – or others breeding cattle and pigs with specialist production of smoked meats. Most farms are under 50 acres and have to be within a defined radius; in Chicago’s case this is 300 miles, though for other markets it is a lot less.

A campaign of the market at present is to encourage shoppers to pledge to be ‘locavores‘, only buying and eating produce from within a defined local area.

Often the vegetable producers will be supported by CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) schemes where members of the local community guarantee to take a box of vegetables every week during the growing season. While people on benefits with food vouchers can shop here, prices of the produce are on the high side and tend to attract shoppers with more disposable income, higher qualifications and an interest in environmental issues.

The same however does not apply to the farmers’ markets in rural areas where jobs are limited and wages low and unemployment, well over the national rate of 9%, is hitting communities hard.

A New York Times article “Vegetable gardens are booming in a fallow economy” (9th September 2011) describes the situation in East Kentucky in the Appalachian foothills.

Here rural residents are turning over their ground and selling the surplus from their gardens at low cost to the elderly and unemployed, who look to squeeze their budgets to make ends meet.

As Tim Woods, Professor of Agricultural Economy at Kentucky University puts it: “You won’t see certified organic products or fancy marketing here. It’s a very different world.” But the growth is similar with a doubling of markets there since 2004.

This includes a searchable database. You can type in your postcode and find out more about local practice and the policies of your local authority for the recycling of different kinds of materials. This is useful because these are changing as new techniques of sorting enable more to be collected and saved.

Allerdale local authority had managed in 2009 to achieve a recycling rate of 45%, but last year the figure dropped to 44%. When I asked Stephanie Fleming, Allerdale’s recycling officer about this, she replied “the weather’s got to take the blame here”. 

With so much flooding in November, the Council was overwhelmed with the sheer task of getting areas cleared and houses habitable. Water was covering huge areas and recycling for a while had had to take second place. Hard to argue about that!

But there is a bigger question here we need to ask. The EU has set a 50% target by 2020 for household recycling for the UK as a whole, but both Scotland and Wales have set their own higher targets of 70% for 2025. With no targets set for English authorities does this mean, say Friends of the Earth that we’ll shelter under the skirts of the Scots and the Welsh and lag behind? 

We know this Government is averse to the ‘nanny state’, but let’s see a bit more forceful direction on this front! Surely we need this if we’re going to create a green economy, which Ministers tell us they want.

Two other good Government websites on green issues are worth looking at. A more technical waste data flow site, (http://www.wastedataflow.org/) provides additional information about waste management across the country.  You need to register to get access to the data.

The second is for the Department of Energy and Climate Control  (http://www. decc.gov.uk/). This includes information about the Government’s Green Deal programme, with more details due out soon.

A New York Times article (18th February 2010) reported on the disappointment of many that progress in the US on green issues was too slow and concessions too numerous. But let’s acknowledge at the outset that some key developments have taken place. The Christian Science Monitor (17th April 2010) points to a number of significant moves taken at a federal level. These include:

● Formal recognition of the dangers to health from greenhouse gases, which has paved the way for regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency.
● Setting of a new clean car standard, which will promote future efficiency and innovation in the industry and bring substantial reductions in emissions
● Commitment of $90 billion Recovery Act monies to accelerate adoption of renewable energy sources – like the 30,000 acre solar energy scheme in San Joaquin Valley, California – and support high speed train developments.

Critically there still remains the task of persuading Congress to agree reduction targets and penalties – as there are in the UK – to ensure compliance. However as with the Health Bill changes, Obama is by no means assured of success and for similar reasons.

There are powerful US interests, willing to fund those opposed to the thrust of Obama’s environmental policies, even though they have been watered down to win wider support. The best current example is the Proposition 23 (P-23) campaign in California. Here Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has steered through the legislature a commitment by 2020 to reduce CO2 emissions to the levels of 1990. This target is part of Assembly Bill 32 (AB32) of the Global Warming Solutions Act, but is opposed by a variety of oil and other interests.

The P-23 campaign seeks to reverse the AB32 reductions commitment until unemployment levels in the State, now above 12%, have dropped below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters, a level only seen three times in the last three decades.

This month two brothers, David and Charles Koch, have come forward with a $1 million contribution to the P-23 campaign. A small step maybe but typical of the way that they and others with oil, energy and refining interests seek to influence public attitudes about climate change. Their Koch Industries conglomerate is the second largest privately owned company in the US with a $98 billion annual turnover; and has provided over $50 million to climate opposition groups.

A report in Grist (17 August 2010), a Seattle based NGO, describes this as a battle between clean new technology and old fossil fuel thinking and points to growing support from green entrepreneurs for California’s landmark global warming initiative.

With recognition from amongst the US military that existing global energy supplies have now reached a peak (Guardian report, 11th April 2010 ), – and will decline – the California AB32 programme could be seen by the P-23 campaigners as an initiative for making up the likely deficit in traditional fuel supplies, but the chances of this in a highly polarized debate are minimal.

In an excellent article in Global Dashboard (18th June 2010) Alex Evans argues that there are costs, inconvenience and limits involved in a transition to something positive on climate and that there will be clear (and noisier) losers. He makes this interesting point. “What will open the political space for comprehensive solutions – alas – will be impacts: impacts that are tough enough to frighten people badly, but not so bad as to overshoot irreversible tipping points.”

If he’s right, let’s hope that we can get there quickly enough.

The smart meter in the house for reducing energy usage may be a case in point. It can show how much electricity a kettle or a heater consumes, but it won’t stop you having tea or wanting to keep warm.

I have always been a fan of GPS (Global Positioning system) devices. Sat-navs have sold so well because they save time – and fuel – in getting from Point A to an unfamiliar Point B. Now I’m looking out for a Garmin Forerunner 310XT training device. For runners, walkers, swimmers and cyclists this is really useful for plotting and detailed analysis of your course and performance with the data uploaded wirelessly via your PC to a website for storage.

But the GPS based idea that has got me really excited these last three weeks in the US has been Seattle’s OneBusAway app, which is downloadable free onto an iPad, Blackberry or other smartphone. Feed in the bus numbers and stops you are likely to use and you’ll get a map display and a constantly updating list of bus arrival times. (See opposite).

This simple idea has been developed by University of Washington graduate student Brian Ferris, using open source software. The app accesses King County data publicly available, is being developed for other platforms and has already been downloaded for 40,000 individual iPhones. It is used weekly by 25,000 individuals.

As Ferris says in an interview with Government Technology (7th July 2010), “People are more satisfied with public transit, spend less time waiting, take transit more frequently, feel safer at bus stops and actually reported walking more.” A safer, healthier, less congested and greener Seattle – no wonder other cities are looking to copy the idea. No smart grid city of the future, worth its salt, will be without its own OneBusAway app!

Nor is there any doubt about the incentive! Could the car virtually disappear from downtown Seattle?

Living and working in the same spot since 1902, they trace their antecedents back to John Harris, a Tyneside basket weaver who settled in the area in the 1850s, working initially as a forester and timber merchant. By the 1860s he had started the fairground business with his sons, buying one of their early steam roundabouts from a Tewksbury manufacturer in 1890.

Now run by five brothers and two sisters, the business involves transporting equipment and running their fairground in villages and towns all over this area of rolling downs, meadows and woodland. They also hire out individual items for weddings and special events. Volunteers, who love the laughter and excitement of the fairground scene join in regularly to help with the swing boats, roundabouts, gallopers and side shows.

Hard to classify, fun to be with and dining mostly together, the family extending across generations is like some utopian example of the Arts and Crafts movement – a time capsule that has refused to die. Living close to nature, they are above all immensely practical, turning their hands to any job.

They’re experts too at recycling, throwing little away and collecting useful items over the years. “Just put it under the hedge – you never know when it will come in handy”, says Rob, one of the brothers when I asked what they did with old gear. (See photo of field opposite they have recently acquired.) It reminded me of the MOMA Waste not installation we saw in New York last year.

The Scammel trucks for towing the equipment are ex WW2 stock, so you can’t just pick up the phone for a new spare part. A replacement for an axle on one was found from a hedged machine. Another truck was re-fitted with an old Rolls Royce engine (See photo at the top).

With a little imagination there’s not much they can’t find a useful home for. An old shop display model now keeps watch in a large greenhouse where the tent canvases are dried after a downpour. An old galloper (below) has been put out to grass – for the time being – on an empty landing. Objets trouvés like the old cow advert (below) reflect a simpler rural economy.

Can this real life example of Cameron’s Big Society idea – with up to 70 people actively involved in a small community based business – survive in an increasingly competitive and slick leisure field? The work is hard and seasonal and depends on hours of unpaid labour. Time only with tell. But if you have a chance, try out the Gallopers or the Paratroopers at their next Fun Fair. You won’t be disappointed with the experience or the friendliness of the Harris fairground.

We take for granted our sophisticated municipal services, but in the Berber villages, connected only by mule tracks and in cities like Fez, Meknes and Marrakech with their overcrowding, narrow alleys and limited resources, it’s hard to produce more than primitive refuse collection and recycling systems (See photo opposite in Marrakech).

Infrastructure and road schemes are helping to grow the economy fast and to address sub-regional disparities but they can be double edged. They have enabled fish caught in Essaouira to be distributed quickly to the north and abroad (Photo); and encourage industrial activity. But in coastal Safi intensive phosphate processing is hungry for water and has brought heavy atmospheric pollution.

Addressing global warming, pollution and resources depletion is complicated so generating public awareness is crucial. This is happening here with the UK’s 10:10 campaign to reduce carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010 (see Guardian Halfway report, “So far, so good” 10 July 2010).

But in developing countries this is a far harder task. In sun-soaked Morocco the Government’s commitment to provide electricity supply for all by 2010 (not actually fulfilled) seems if anything to have dampened enthusiasm for harnessing solar energy.

While trekking I only saw three small photovoltaic (PV) cell panels in use; whilst in Marrakech a rooftop snapshot from my riad showed one PV cell panel outnumbered by 18 satellite TV dishes. (See photo below of PV panel on Lepiney Refuge at 3000 m near Toubkal summit – © Athol Lester; and of Marrakech rooftops.)

Water too is a critical issue. Blessed with rainfall brought by Atlantic winds hitting the Atlas mountains, Morocco has a long history of capturing water for irrigation (see Photo right), but the growth of industry and tourism is increasing demand inexorably. Yet water seems to be treated as an endless supply and no attempt is made in hotels or elsewhere to encourage careful use and conservation.

They use it for building houses, for logs (always beautifully stacked as the photo shows), for seating, for furniture, for hides, for toys, for fencing, for carving and no doubt for much more. The forest’s wood is local, sustainable, readily available and easily transported.

Here in Cumbria there’s plenty of forest but there’s less woodland cut down for timber now by the Forestry Commission because cheap imported wood from the Baltic makes it is less economic to do so. This then is the first difference. In most areas of Austria the forest is controlled by the community, which has a use for the wood and arranges for the felling. Timber yards and stacks of drying boards are a common sight in the villages and on the roadside.

But there is another difference too, which you can tell from going into the large supermarket type ironmongers. They’re full of the widest possible range of tools and equipment of the highest quality – tools for building, for farming, for turning, for drilling, for cutting, for forestry, for home improvements; and most of them are made in Austria.

Only a country with a wide skill base – where people can use the tools and discriminate between the good and the indifferent tool – can support shops like these. And it can be hard to resist a purchase!

Last month I came across in Grobming the tool that half consciously I knew I needed but had never seen in existence – what I am calling a ‘bough-shave’ named after the spoke-shave, a tool we are more familiar with. It’s not one you would find at B&Q. If you know its proper name let me know!

We’re using local resources where we can at The Larches and have pressed the garden’s long holly branches that shoot skywards into service for the safety railings above the cottage. The bark needs removing as it will rot and scraping it off with a knife is tedious. My new two-handled bough-shave by contrast allows the task to be done with speed and provides a long-lasting hardwood barrier (See photos below of the bough shave in use and the final top barrier with the suspended tool).

The Accord was hammered out at the last minute meetings involving US President Obama and the leaders of China, India and Brazil – a reflection of the new multi-polar world that the 21st century is ushering in. To judge from conflicting accounts, China appears to have led the resistance to specific targets and international monitoring.

For all their talk and offers of cash and emissions targets, EU leaders – with their comparatively rich and prosperous populations – failed to stitch together a deal which could unite a deeply divided world. All we could find to cheer here was energy and climate Secretary Ed Miliband speaking up to ensure that even the Accord – a small step – was not thrown out on the final day.

Reducing carbon emissions is not easy. Providing green energy is expensive and can be controversial. Developing countries want the benefits that industrialisation can bring. Politicians, mindful of elections, know that they can’t count on public opinion to support mitigation policies.

All this is true, but we need leaders who will take bold decisions that can lead to low carbon economies and avoid the devastation that global warming will surely bring. With political will, solutions can be found; and we need to support the politicians who promote these solutions. One way you can make a personal contribution is by signing up with Avaaz.org – The World in Action, a global web movement committed to promoting positive action to protect our environment. We discuss in Good Practice some of the actions we are taking at The Larches.

This is not a dry academic exercise. Climate change is happening now as we stand on the eve of the twenty-tens decade. It is affecting large areas of the world. Glaciers are melting. Weather patterns are more volatile. People in Bangladesh live with the daily fear of rising water levels flooding their houses and leaving thousands destitute.

Other examples can be seen in John Vidal’s account in the Guardian (6 December) of a recent journey (see opposite) from Nepal to the Bay of Bengal; and in the Economist Special report Getting Warmer – Stopping climate change (5 December 2009), which includes a good summary article reviewing the evidence for global warming. More good sources are referenced in the Eco-friendly section of this Lakeland Belvedere website.

The possibilities for change are there. We need new green industries and a commitment to provide seed finance for them in the early stages. New technologies have transformed economies and so many facets of our life over the last two decades. Now we need green technologies, which can help limit carbon emissions and build a sustainable future for us all. We need to act now before it is too late.

POSTSCRIPT
In an article in The Guardian (January 1st, 2010) Government must ‘green economy and create jobs’ Lord Adair Turner, Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, spells out the practical implications involved in the last paragraph of this blog posting.

There’s also a readers’ resources area and a useful graph in the Section showing the growth of the Fair Trade movement in the UK over the last 15 years. Total Fair Trade sales are up from £2.7 million in 1994 to £712.6 million in 2008, of which bananas now represent £184 million and coffee £137 million. It’s still a small part of this billion pounds sector, but a very encouraging development.

At The Larches we provide Fair Trade tea for visitors on arrival and we’re exploring how we can obtain introductory packs of Fair Trade coffee. More information about the very successful local campaign is on the Keswick Fair Trade website.