Buy Nothing Day is on the 24th of November. Perhaps you could organise a day out to the beach or to the country taking a packed lunch. Perhaps you could just spend the day in bed! Whatever you do you’ll feel better for not buying anything for a day!

BTW Across the pond it’s on the 23rd – or perhaps you could try a ‘Buy Nothing Weekender’ and roll up both into the weekend!

The folks at anti-apathy have a new campaign called ‘The Nag‘. You sign up and then it emails you every month with one thing you can do to make your life more sustainable.

Seemed a bit London centric asking for ‘borough’ when you sign up apart from that it makes the subject quite entertaining.

It’s free and it’s easy!

I won’t be able to make it as my parents are stopping by but don’t let that stop you going! I would probably take some flame retardant clothing too as it is the day before Bonfire Night. I would be good to think that all these people supporting the campaign will not be too keen on burning stuff!

The details for the (according to Calvin):

10.00am Cycle protest assembles at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, South side (Holborn/Temple tube). Goes via ExxonMobil offices, Australian Embassy and Downing Street to arrive at US embassy at 11.30 am.

11.00am Rally opens : Messages from around the world, performance poetry & musical protest with “Seize the Day” and others.

12 noon Main Rally at US Embassy, Grosvenor Square. Speakers include George Monbiot, Colin Challen MP, Caroline Lucas MEP, Norman Baker MP, Zac Goldsmith.

1.00 pm March for Global Climate Justice from US embassy to Trafalgar Square

1.45 – 2.00 pm March joins i-Count’s Mass Gathering in Trafalgar Square

1.00 – 3.00pm i-Count Mass Gathering in Trafalgar Square

You can find out more here and here.

Once we get sorted it out will make our lives a lot easier as will not having overflowing recycling bins and the silly blue plastic bag lying around anymore. It will save us money on petrol too as we won’t need to go up to the dump quite so often.

I found an article about recycling the other day. It refers to a TV programme in which they say recycling doesn’t work. Here’s a link to a clip of the programme – it’s not particularly family friendly! This maybe true in terms of efficiency etc but I think that it’s the principle that is important. We can’t go on using stuff then putting it in holes in the ground (unless it’s been composted already!) – this might not seem so bad in the US but here in the UK land is not quite as available for landfill and nobody wants a landfill in their backyard.

You have to think about countries like China and India where they have huge populations. At some point they people are going to want all the stuff we have. If we don’t set the example of being serious about recycling and I guess in some ways reducing our consumption the waste produced by these countries will have a massive impact on the rest of the world.

The whole recycling system might not be efficient but really it is still in it’s infancy and hopefully retailers will get on the bandwagon and make their packaging more recycle friendly and people will demand more environmentally friendly packaging.

I think people sometimes miss the point with recycling it’s not just about separating the out the glass and paper etc. It’s about reducing your waste buying a particular product or shopping in particular shop.

It’s about reusing things, fixing things, taking them down to charity shop or freecycling them rather than dumping them in the bin.

It’s about setting up a compost heap in your garden and putting suitable waste on that so you can fertilize your garden easily and cheaply. Apparently 38% of all UK waste is organic waste that could be composted and contributes to creating greenhouses gases when put in landfill.

Once you have done those things then you can get down to sorting out the glass and paper!

The thing about all this stuff is it’s not rocket science, everyone can do and really there’s no excuse not to now – at least not Bournemouth anyway!

Anyway to follow up that post coincidentally I am about halfway through the sequel cleverly named More Scenes from a Smallholding. This is just as good and I can’t help daydreaming about cows or chickens living in my back garden. Unfortunately being realistic this not going to happen apart from my garden being to small my daydreams don’t really take account of the hardwork involved in growing stuff!

It’s interesting as well. Near Studland there is Old Harry which is a pillar of white rock standing in the sea – I think Harry’s wife stands next to him. It’s one of those places where you want to go to the edge to have a good look but you don’t want to go to close.

Up near Kimmeridge there are the MOD ranges, which I like because they have tanks and stuff on them – not very green I know but I am boy! There is also Tyneham village which was abandoned during WW2 so the MOD could use it for training and the inhabitants never went back is it’s almost like a ghost village.

Anyway I could go on for hours about this area – I am very priveliged to live so near so I think need to talk to the wife about registering to this and raising a bit of money to keep it looking like it does!

It does bug me that you can buy organic produce from a supermarket but the produce is packed plastic that doesn’t bio-degrade.

Numbers of plastic bags that supermarkets generate bug me too – I think I might have mentioned this before. I stand grinding my teeth when I am waiting to be served in one particular place I go as the cashiers pull out bag after bag ready for their next customer and then almost force one on me – of course I politely refuse and try and stuff everything in by backpack or pull out a pre-used bag that I just happen to have with me! (perhaps not all the time to be honest but I try!)

As well as detailing their five main aims the site also provides addresses and a templated letter so you can write to the supermarkets to air your views.

I think this will do wonders for the image of the WI. When you usually hear about them it’s about jam or cakes but I think this idea is pretty cool and will be added to the list of campaigns on this site.

BTW I have updated the this site with a new theme which I built – there might have a few teething problems but I am trying to fix any problems as I find them!

You can support the Bumblebee Conservation Trust by joining it here. If you join you will receive a regular newsletter, a bumblebee identification poster, a pack of wildflower seeds, a sticker and a first edition bumblebee pin-badge.

It’s fairly straightforward to attract more bees by planting certain plants in you garden the BCT has more information about which plants to use. It seems that planting native wildflowers is one of the key things to do the BCT provides a list and links to suppliers of these seeds. Looking at their ‘garden flowers’ list I was quite pleased to see that I already have a few planted out including lavender, sage, marjoram and I have recently started off some sunflowers. Apparently they like rosemary and last night when I got home there were two a three bees buzzing around the thyme we have in the back which is currently flowering.

If you want to know what kind of bees are visiting you garden the Natural History Museum has provided this handy bumblebee identification guide .

One last thing if you suffer from hay fever a good reason to keep bumblebees around is that apparently if you eat locally produced honey it will relieve your hay fever. I don’t suffer from hay fever so I cannot verify this but I would be interested to hear from anybody who has!