14 - 20 Nov 2008

ENGLISH honey may have run out by the end of the year, warns the British Beekeepers’ Association (BBKA).

It’s thought that one of the reasons bees are dying and colonies collapsing is because of wet weather and the varroa mite. One third of bee colonies (two billion bees) were lost in the last year.
Hundreds of beekeepers marched to Downing St to deliver a petition asking the Government to increase the amount of money spent on bee health research.
Tim Lovett, BBKA president, says: “Bees are probably one of the most economically useful creatures on earth, pollinating a third of all we eat. We must identify what is killing them, and that means research.”

WHAT could be easier than recycling? Not having the packaging to recycle in the first place!
The term ‘precycle’ was invented in 1988 for a waste awareness campaign in the USA.
Precyclers try to take home as little packaging as possible when out shopping. For example, instead of buying apples sitting on a plastic tray covered in plastic film, a precycler would choose to buy loose apples and carry them home in their own reusable fabric bag.
People in the UK throw away nearly six million tonnes of packaging a year. Although the amount being recycled is going up all the time, it’s even better for the environment to not use the packaging to begin with.
There are some shops, like Weigh and Save, where you put items like pasta and rice into your own containers.
- Here are First News’ top tips to precycle:
- take a reusable bag shopping
- don’t put loose fruit and veg in individual plastic bags
- get milk and orange juice in reusable glass bottles delivered by a milkman
- carry your lunch to school in a lunchbox with a reusable bottle
- shop at local and independent stores as they often use less packaging.
- buy bread from a baker or, better still, make your own!

AS we get closer to winter the kinds of food growing in our country has changed quite a lot.

Look at the images below and you’ll notice that several of the vegetables grow in the ground, beneath the soil.
During the warmer months food often grows above the soil level, such as lettuce, tomatoes, peas and beans.
In the colder months seasonal food often comes from beneath the soil, such as potatoes, carrots, parsnips and turnips. These veggies are perfect for making hearty, warming soups and broths!

24 - 30 Oct 2008

THE Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy 2009 are taking place again and your school could be a winner.

The Awards want to hear from any UK schools with exciting sustainable energy projects. Has your school reduced the amount of greenhouse gases it produces?
2008’s Schools Award winner was Ringmer Community College in East Sussex. 200 pupils act as Eco Reps monitoring energy use, helping control the heating system, and naming and shaming departments which waste energy. The school also generates some of its electricity from a wind turbine and solar photovoltaic panels.
As well as a shiny award, also up for grabs is a first prize of £15,000 and two second prizes of £7,500. For more information or for an application form, log on to www.ashdenawards.org/school_award. Applications need to be in by 2 December.
The winner will be presented with their award at a VIP ceremony in London in June next year.

17 - 23 Oct 2008

THE coffee shop chain has been criticised for a policy of leaving taps running for hours on end.

The Sun newspaper found out that Starbucks were leaving taps running to wash spoons, wasting at least two litres of water per tap per minute. Starbucks are now reviewing their policy.

10 - 16 Oct 2008

AS your letters and emails to us show, Britain’s kids are pretty clued up on environmental issues and are greening their family and schools.

But there may be some interesting facts about recycling that you don’t know. And they could help you convince the not-so-green members of your community to think before they chuck everything in the bin…
Did you know…
It costs money to send rubbish to landfill Councils have to pay £32 for every tonne of rubbish that gets buried in the ground instead of being recycled.
Around half of all our recycling is done in the UK This means half of it has to be sent abroad. However, that still uses less energy and creates fewer carbon emissions than making a new product, like a plastic bottle, from scratch. Here’s how much of the main recyclables are recycled in the UK:
• 100% wood
• 80% glass
• 65% aluminium (eg food and drink cans)
• 50% paper
• 30% plastic
A newspaper can be recycled into a new newspaper in a week That’s all it takes, seven days! An aluminium can be recycled into another can, or something else made from aluminium, in about six weeks.
The UK is getting better and better at recycling Ten years ago less than one tenth of our domestic waste was recycled. Now a third is recycled!

26 Sep - 3 Oct 2008

CHESHIRE farmer Graham Warburton tells First News how difficult it has been for farmers to harvest their crops this year.

Bringing in the harvest

I run a family farm in Cheshire totalling 900 acres.  It is a mixed farm and the crops we grow are wheat, barley, oil seed rape, potatoes and grass. We also rear 100 head of beef cattle.
This year’s harvest has been one of the most difficult I can ever remember in my 30 years of farming. Mainly due to the continuous wet weather. The potato harvest got off to a good start in May, but then during June and July we were plagued by blight in the crop caused by the wet damp conditions. Potato blight is a disease that rots the potato in the ground and makes it go to mush.
The winter barley harvest was completed during the only sunny weekend in July, but the non-stop rain delayed the oil seed rape harvest. The rain knocked over the rape plants causing some of the seeds to shed before we could manage to harvest it. The harvested seeds were too wet, so needed to be dried, which is very costly.  
The wheat harvest was delayed until September because of continuous rain but, despite the rain flattening some of the wheat, yields (the amount produced) were up on last year and quality was good. The harvest is almost complete, but I can’t remember the last time we were still harvesting in the last week of September. All we have to do now is sow all the fields with next year’s crops!

19 - 26 Sept 2008

A NEW car which you can plug in at home is being tested right now.

The Toyota Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle (PHV) uses battery and petrol power. The battery is about the size of three lunchboxes and takes up to one and a half hours to charge.
The car also can be charged at ‘juice points’ installed by the power company, EDF Energy across Britain.
At the moment EDF Energy employees are testing the PHV car to see how well it works.
For short distances the PHV can be driven only using the battery. When speeds reach more than 25mph the petrol part of the engine is used to power the car.
Toyota plan to sell the car to the general public by 2010 but have to decide on a price still.
Toyota have been selling a hybrid car, the Prius, for a few years but, in that car, the battery is charged by the petrol engine. With the PHV, the idea is that when driving at low speeds in towns and cities, it’s an electric car and for longer, faster journeys, it becomes a petrol car.

12 - 18 Sept 2008

TAKE the lead this year and get your school doing their bit to help the environment!

- Ask your teacher to buy recycled paper for the school.

- Write and print on both sides of a piece of paper.

- Put any spare unused pieces of paper in a box so they can be used for drawing or scribbling on.

- Once you’ve done all of the above and you have no more use for the paper, put it in a recycling box.

- Ask the school caretaker if the lightbulbs can be replaced with energy-efficient ones.

- Create posters asking everyone at school to turn off lights and computers when they’re not being used, and to remember to turn off taps after they’ve washed their hands.

- If your school provides meals, ask the head dinner lady where the ingredients for the meals come from. Find out if they could come from local farmers or producers to cut down the number of miles travelled.

- If you don’t already have a vegetable patch at school, ask if you can help make one. You will learn about nature and how vegetables grow, get exercise and provide the school with cheap, tasty, healthy food!

- Talk to your parents about walking or cycling to school. If that’s going to be tricky find out if you could walk with a friend and their parent or ask your school about organising a walking bus.
Create an award that is given to the pupil, teacher, class or year group who makes the biggest effort to be green!

5 - 11 Sept 2008

THE summer is over and it’s time to go back to school already.

But there’s no need to ditch your greeniness while shopping for stationery or lunchboxes. First News brings you a few of the best environmentally-friendly school supplies around:

Uniform Marks and Spencer are getting greener by the minute and are selling a complete school uniform range made from plastic bottles! Polo shirts, skirts, trousers, shirts, blouses, fleeces and blazers have all been made with polyester thread from recycled plastic, prices start at £3.

Stationery Fancy a pencil case that used to be a car tyre or a notebook that used to be a juice carton? The Remarkable range of stationery includes these two in a variety of colours and sizes plus ring binders made from shop packaging and coloured pencils made with wood from sustainable forests. The stationery is available at Tesco, WHSmith, Rymans, Ottakers and their own website www.remarkable.co.uk with prices starting at £1.35.

Bags and lunchboxes Stand out from the crowd with these brilliant backpacks and lunchboxes made from plastic and foil juice cartons! They come in different colours (depending on the juice flavour) including green, blue and pink as well as purple and orange pictured. The backpack costs £12.99 and the lunchbox £9.99 at www.ecoutlet.co.uk.

AUTUMN is a turning point in the growing season as new foods are ready for picking and eat.

Fruit from trees is finally ready for munching and what tasty food it is! Apples and pears taste delicious fresh from the tree and there are lots of other ways to eat them too.
Try cutting out the stalk, filling the hole with brown sugar and baking them in the oven. Or how about using them in a crumble or pie? Who said eating healthily couldn’t mean eating tastily?!

THE Campaign to Protect Rural England want your help to make Britain a cleaner place with their Stop the Drop campaign.

Dropping litter is illegal, it makes our towns and the countryside look messy, and wildlife can suffer if they eat it, yet nearly half of Brits admit to doing it. More than 373,000 pieces of litter were found on Britain’s beaches and 69,000 creatures were killed or injured by litter last year. Litter on our streets has encouraged more and more rats so now there are nearly as many rats as people in the UK!
You can help to clean up Britain
As well as putting your own rubbish in the bin or recycling boxes when you’re away from home, you can also encourage your friends and family to do the same.
If you see litter in your area ask your parents or a grown-up to help you email your local council about it. You can use the online letter on the Campaign’s website www.cpre.org.uk/campaigns/stop-the-drop.
Join a litter picking group in your area and clean up your community. Check out www.litteraction.org.uk for more information.

JUNIOR First News reporter Joel Delaney spent the day at this year’s British International Motor Show, and found a big emphasis on the ‘green’ side of motoring.

There were lots of new, eco-friendly models on display, as well as interactive exhibits, vehicle cutaways and simulators demonstrating futuristic technologies. Many car makers are working hard to help reduce emissions (some only emit water vapour!) and stop waste by using sustainable materials.
Joel said: “My favourite was the Lightning GT, an all-electric sports car that accelerates from 0-60mph in four seconds.”
Parents may not be able to afford one of these beauties – but they can do their bit for their pocket and the environment by following these tips:
Driving more smoothly, anticipating road conditions not only saves money but reduce the risk of accident.
Driving with your car’s windows shut makes you more aerodynamic.  Taking the unused roof rack off and getting rid of clutter in the boot really helps too – the heavier your car, the more fuel used.
Don’t drive if you don’t have to! Research has shown as much as a quarter of all car journeys in Britain are less than two miles long. Get on your bike instead.
Check the tyres regularly – the right air pressure can make you more petrol-efficient.

TAKING care of the environment doesn’t need to stop at school or home, you can be green when you’re on holiday too!

Taking holidays is all about doing things differently. You get up at different times, see new things and perhaps eat different food. While you’re enjoying these new experiences you can still take care of the world you’re holidaying in. Here are First News’ top five tips for a green summer:
1 When you’re out exploring, look out for recycling bins to put your recyclable rubbish in.
2 Take a reusable drinks bottle with you wherever you go so that you don’t need to keep buying bottles of water or juice when you’re out. It’ll save money too!
3 Where possible explore your holiday or local area on foot, or hire bicycles, rather than driving around in a car. Public transport in foreign countries can be great fun to use with vehicles like waterbuses and trams, paying with foreign currency and finding your way on the map!
4 Eat food local to the area. For example, if you’re in Spain try paella with freshly-caught fish. If you’re in Cornwall eat a Cornish pasty!
5 If the place you’re staying in has air conditioning, only use it when you really need to and don’t leave it on when you go out.