Wednesday 19 December 2007

A Nice Green Leaf: RHS - Greener-than-Thou?

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The January issue of The Garden, the magazine for RHS members, just plopped on to my doormat, and it's a bumper issue devoted to the future of gardening and to questions of sustainability in particular. It's interesting to see a round-up of how large-scale gardening organisations like the RHS and Kew are tackling these long-term issues; all of them face similar problems. For example, most visitors arrive by car, yet should be encouraged to reduce their carbon footprint; and what can we say about the building of new hothouses, no matter how "green" they are claimed to be? The role of the Eden project in providing a campaigning platform on climate change issues has been huge, but then, presumably, so has their gas bill.

How we think about carbon output, sustainability and climate change
is complicated - and I feel totally confused. I'm thinking about trying
to do a carbon audit on myself in the new year, and wonder if anyone
else has done the same successfully? And where should we start? Is it
by growing our own vegetables, or is turning down the thermostat a
million times more important? That's what I really want to know.

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