Two years ago, I yearned for a pond in my back garden. I really believed it would make my life complete. My ever hopeful husband dutifully obliged, dug a hole as a labour of love and created a natural looking pond. Natural enough to nurture our first batch of frog spawn to adulthood no less. Although I also did my share – my maternal instinct kicked in and there I was, freezing an ice cube tray full of lettuce to nourish my new babies.
I even had aspirations for a solar powered water feature. Having been runner-up in a local short story competition with prize money to spend, a fountain seemed a suitable momento. It never happened. Then, since the sun did not shine at all last summer, the pond did not get visited and a solar powered fountain seemed pointless. However, hope springs eternal. Another short story has been entered into the competition; the sun has been shining and the fountain has been bought and installed.
But I can’t help wondering if it is tempting fate. Can I really expect any sun to shine in my garden this year?
Read the rest of Life with a Solar Powered Fountain »
Tags: frogs, garden, solar fountain, solar powered 
Will there ever be sustainable palm oil?
Since it’s launch in 2004, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) finally delivered its first sustainable palm oil into Europe, which shipped into Rotterdam last month.
Responsible for wide scale tropical deforestation and conflict between local communities, palm oil currently appears in anything from chocolates to cosmetics and is estimated to be in as much as half the products on average supermarket shelves.
Retail giants, such as Unilever and Sainsbury’s, have bought from this first batch. While Sainsbury’s Natural Resources Manager vouched for it’s authenticity, and claimed it to be of ‘a higher standard’ that ‘doesn’t compare with anything we have sourced before,’ Greenpeace were somewhat less convinced.
They said that although the palm oil could potentially be ‘something good’, the current RSPO’s standards and criteria are ‘not strong enough to guarantee that any of the palm oil it certifies is actually sustainable’.
Currently, 80 per cent of global production comes from Indonesian and Malaysian plantations and Greenpeace say it is the leading cause of forest destruction in Indonesia.
Are you still boycotting palm oil products? Do you have any products to recommend that don’t include palm oil? Let us know.
Read the rest of Green News Roundup November 2008 »
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