The Comisión de Sequía del Ebro asked for special measures to be taken in view of the looming drought predicted for the coming summer. They asked the Enviroment Ministry to reduce the amount of water drawn off into reservoirs and to more closely monitor the use and wastage of the heavy industry along the river.
Archive for February, 2008
Suatainablity at home
I’ve been trying to use washable nappies for some time now, but seem to fail on all accounts. The first set we had (Kushies) leaked everywhere and resulted in having to change the baby every time she wee’d. Parents out there will know that this means a lot of changing! So our friends got together and presented us with a set of Popolini nappies. I waited until the little one grew into them and two weeks ago, began to use them during the day. Lo and behold – dampness, leakage, changes of clothes. I shall persevere, but it must be said that disposable nappies work. I relent…
At the el Cisne rastro the other day, I came across a much-coveted item: a lint remover. Slap in a pair of D batteries and pull out your old jumpers. The best way to live sustainably is reduce-reuse-recyle and with this little gadget your old clothes – or better yet, second-hand clothes from the market – come out looking like new. Wa-hey!
Electronic items wear out in double-quick time and it’s all too easy to just throw away an old camera or PC tower when something smaller and more powerful takes its place. I’ve been struggling without my Macintosh Powerbook G4 for nigh on a month and a half but it looks to be reparable and the data recoverable! So, in theory this old hardware will get a new hard disk and optical drive and then be chugging along towards its third birthday. In the meantime, I’ve pulled out my Fujistu Lifebook B-2174 laptop and spend time on a 512k processor/256M RAM computer. I bought the machine used, so it’s creakingly old already – at least 5 years. In technology years, that might as well be 50 years. It certainly changes your user experience: nothing of YouTube or Flash-intensive sites, and fearsome selectivity when it comes to downloading or saving files.
My helpful friend Franco – a smiling Argentinian – has also installed Ubuntu Linux on my old dual-processor tower PC. It’s a noisy, greedy machine with whirring fans and a huge motherboard, but it’s already 5 years old and still runs.
So I am r-r-r-ing like crazy, trying to live as lightly as possible and leave the planet a little fresher for my having been here. But if washable nappies result in more loads of laundry and my old battler of a PC sucks up electricity like a British tourist in Benidorm sucks up cañas, am I achieving anything other than a slightly calmer conscience?
