A few weee facts for you....

On holiday in Cornwall I visited the the Eden Project, which is an amazing place where you can experience the world's climates all in one place. You can see tropical plants, see banana and coffee and rice growing and then walk into a different biome (that's the name they give those giant bubble wrap domes you may have seen pictures of) and see California vineyards and Mediterranean flowers. Now as most Tonbridge primary school children know there is also a giant sort of sculpture called the WEEE Man at the Eden Project which really did make me think. As you can see from the picture it is about 30 to 40 feet high and very skilfully made up of old bits of electrical equipment, everything from fridges and microwaves to laptops and computer mice (its teeth in fact if you look closely!) The amazing thing about the WEEE Man, which by the way stands for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment, is that it represents the waste of just one person in their lifetime, a staggering 3.3 tonnes of it! And if you start to think about it it's true; we, or should that be weee, humans in the West throw away an amazing amount of stuff, often when there's nothing wrong with it. A washing macnine here that was more expensive to fix than it was to replace, a scrappage scheme car there because we got £2,000 for an old banger, a mobile phone because they were offering a free upgrade. You know the sort of stuff. I'm as guilty as most on this but the WEE Man brings home the sheer waste of it all in an impactful, and I might even say embarassing way. I tried to assuage my guilt in the shop on the way out of the Eden Project by buying a stapler which I now use almost every day at least a couple of times. The cool thing about this "eco-stapler" is that it doesn't use any staples. Yes that's right it is staple less! It works simply by punching a small hole in the sheets of paper and then folding a bit back in on itself. As it says on the packaging if everyone in UK offices saved just one staple a day that would be a whapping 72 tonnes of metal saved each year. And all of this is before we get started on food waste, on books thrown out, on plastic bags etc. etc. etc. Has TonbridgBlog gone all greener than thou?! Not really, well ok a bit, but just thought it was worth mentioning, interesting if nothing else....