Environmentally conscious? Or just pretending?

I am feeling irked right now. In order to be 'environmentally conscious,'  our local supermarkets have banned the supremely useful plastic bag.  You know, the one we get our groceries in, then, almost always,  use again for something else, and finally, use to enclose some smelly rubbish for the bin.  They call it the 'single-use' plastic bag, but they are seldom 'single use.' Nearly all of the truly single use plastic bags are still there, from those flimsy plastic bags for fruits and vegetables, to the black plastic bags that come in rolls at beaches in the hope that dog owners will pick up after their dogs.

So much other plastic that we could do without.  I had a takeaway lunch.  It came in a cardboard box in a paper bag, but the plastic knife and fork I didn't want was in a sliver of plastic. Of course.

If I thought that banning this particular item of all the other plastic we use daily would do the slightest good for the environment, I would not be so annoyed.  Yes, if you are on the coast, it could get into the ocean and a turtle could make itself sick on it.  But I live hundreds of miles from the coast, and as far as I can see, all it will do is increase the unenclosed rubbish that flies breed in, and rats thrive on.

It is the hypocrisy that annoys me most!  It is like they just wave the banner and pretend they care about the environment while not actually doing anything effective.

There are many examples of virtue-signalling about the environment - except that, so often, the overall effect is negative, not positive.  It appears that effectiveness is not important to those who push various initiatives - just the appearance of caring.


A new Recycling system:

For a long time, we have had recycling bins for drink containers as well as other recyclables such as newspapers.  It was successful, recycling rate around 80%,  so they always said,  and it was convenient.

So now, our council has put in, at colossal expense, a much more elaborate system for recycling drink containers. There was publicity, all with a very positive slant, and they say it is 'successful' because people are using it - far more people than I had expected.  That is probably because all of our cans and bottles now cost more to cover the cost of the new initiative, and people can get a refund of 10c each, provided the can or bottle can still be scanned.  So it must not be crushed, and it must still have the label. Does it sound good?  How has it turned out?

The recycling of cans and bottles is now a combination of the new and old systems.  Overall results - around 80%.
But with the new system, people have to keep their cans and bottles intact, they must be conveyed to the recycling centre, (by car, and usually contained in plastic bags)  inserted into the machine, one by one, and the person then claims a refund of 10c each - which involves more time and trouble. 
But people are using it. I guess they don't like being defrauded 10c for every can or bottle they buy.

Others of us consider the small refund not worth the trouble, and still drop the cans and bottles into the recycling bin at home, the way we have for the past twenty years or so.

Overall effect of the new system?  It costs more to the council, it costs more for the individual, it takes more time, and is more of an effort for individuals, for council, and for the retailers where the credits are redeemed.  It has made no difference to the litter around.  The rate of recycling is unchanged.

But it looks good, and that appears to be all that matters.

And maybe a factor is that it is acting as a de facto sugar tax - soft drinks cost more (though so does Diet Coke)  and an alcohol tax - cans of beer cost more. Could that have been a factor in its adoption?  There is always someone pushing for taxes on consumer goods deemed unhealthy, the sort of  'health police' who feel that other people cannot be trusted to make the 'right' choices.

There is actually one unforeseen benefit - at a caravan park, I saw a ragged couple going through the recycling bin and removing all the intact cans and bottles in order that they could claim the refund. It may have been little money for a lot of dirty work, but they explained that they didn't like dealing with Social Security.  So there is one good effect to put against the bad. It has nothing to do with recycling and the environment, however.

Update 28th December, 2018

An article in 'The Australian' today spoke of how it is going. The title -  'Bottle Refund Scheme Loses its Sparkle.' 

In summary:  
* rate of recycling before: 53%,  now 54%.  Negligible.  (A lot less than I had said, but no doubt it varies region by region, depending on how convenient the process is.)  
*Consumers have been charged around $250 million for the scheme,  and have been refunded around $100 million.  So a lot more cost for almost no benefit. 

So in summary, this expensive and unnecessary scheme is a bust - but I suppose it still looks good to those who choose not to do any actual thinking.

The full article, link below.

https://myaccount.news.com.au/sites/theaustralian/subscribe.html?sourceCode=TAWEB_WRE170_a&mode=premium&dest=https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/bottle-refund-scheme-loses-sparkle-with-higher-prices-little-benefit/news-story/996bb5b7765f7f2abcd9485cdfc1a572?memtype=anonymous






Remember 'Earth Hour?'

It started in Sydney in 2007. We were all supposed to switch off all lights for one hour in a year, in order so save electricity and to advertise how virtuous we were in caring for the environment.  Enthusiasm spread, and many cities around the world adopted it.  I never thought it would make any difference except maybe to increase the likelihood of muggings in that hour, so never bothered with it.  It is now over ten years later, and I don't think that many bother with it any more, though it does continue to limp along.

But now, we have 'Vivid,' a festival where light is used lavishly in order to make wonderful effects. It runs not for an hour,  but for over three weeks!  It is beautiful, but what of the electricity consumed?  Even if they use modern lighting that uses less electricity than older types, the electricity consumed makes the amount saved by 'Earth Hour' look laughable.

It is another example of hypocrisy.  It doesn't seem to matter if something actually does good, as long as one can boast about it as if it did.


Trying too hard

Most of us try to do the right thing, but sometimes it is better to understand that recycled goods are not actually worth that much.

*  I am thinking of an old, old lady I knew, fragile skin at risk as she conscientiously scrubs out cat food tins, jagged edged, in order to put them, clean, into the recycling bin, as the council requires.  But a tear in that skin would not quickly heal. There would be extra visits from the district nurse, extra dressings, maybe antibiotics.  For a tin that is worth almost nothing, sometimes less than nothing.

*  On the local news was an item about a family who boasts that almost nothing goes into the rubbish bin. Everything is recycled, including tiny scraps of paper. They were applauded, and obviously thought they were being oh, so virtuous!

But the contents of those recycling bins are sorted by hand, by lines of workers wearing gloves, picking out plastic to put into one bin, glass into another, paper into another. None of it is worth very much, and to pick out every small piece of  'recyclable' is a waste of time and effort. Large pieces, sure.  Tiny bits of paper?  No. All that family was doing was making the job more difficult for the sorters.

*  Some time ago, I saw a feature about those wonderful people far out in the remote drylands of Western Australia, carefully preserving all their glass recyclables. Then it was shipped all the way back to civilisation where it was finally processed.

Sadly, the fuel required and the wear and tear on the trucks and the roads would be far more than the tiny amount that the glass could be sold for. Since then, the market for recycled glass has further collapsed.  No-one wants it.

*  Trucks of recycled goods are sent interstate, or sometimes just dumped. No-one wants it, and those who agree to accept it, charge for the disposal.  There are scandals when it turns out that it ends up either in illegal dumps, or sometimes simply stored - indefinitely. Think fire risk as well as everything else. What has anyone gained? 

Trade and Commerce

There are some things that appear to make no sense at all. Shipping Australian prawns off to Asia to be processed and then returned to Australia. Buying things as mundane as disposable nappies that

come from across the world.  And yet, somehow, it helps the economy.

Washed up

Does it?  It is far from common sense, and far from environmentally friendly when one considers the cost of handling and the cost of fuel used.

There is also the risk of accidents. A ship ironically named 'Efficiency' has lost over eighty containers overboard, now creating a hazard to shipping and a mess onshore. (left)

Imported cars, stacks of containers

But those in authority will not consider these environmental hazards. They prefer to focus on little things that might inconvenience people, but have no actual positive impact on the environment. It is all about the appearance of things. It is hypocrisy.


So what can individuals do that is actually useful? 

One could try thrift, but that is not a modern virtue. Those of us who are older are the ones who re-use rather than buying new. At the same time as the useless plastic bag ban, we happened to have a household rubbish collection day.  People put out their unwanted items, and council kindly collects it for us. And while a lot of it is truly rubbish,  there are also things that only need a coat of paint and maybe a bit of repair, and they are useful again.

One could almost furnish a house from what is left to be collected, and if no-one finds it first, it will be crushed and buried as rubbish. And that waste grieves me.  Surely, if the council was really interested in being 'green,' they would make an effort to allow these things to be re-used, not by the sort of  'recycling' that results in mounds or bales of plastic or glass or paper than no-one wants to buy, but real recycling - re-using.  Making and mending rather than discarding.

So what do we have, right now, in my neighbourhood, left around for those of us willing to recycle in the best way possible?

There are colourful children's toys, appearing new,  numerous chairs, some of them
repairable, two washing machines that appear new, a new-looking fan, presumably no longer wanted,  wardrobes and desks, and plenty of timber for the home handyman.  The items in the picture left are merely those within a few houses of us. There are treasures further afield.

Dirty, with a rusted tap.
Now a garden ornament

The garden bench only needed a bit of a repair and a re-paint

The inside coating was too rough for cooking,
fine as a planter once a few holes were added.   

It is actually the trendies who are so adamant that others should be inconvenienced who are the worst for unnecessary consumption. Throw out the old, buy new.  A coat of paint for that table?  Never.  Second-hand toys or clothes for your special child?  Don't be silly.  There's a piece of standard advice that goes "Check your wardrobe and if you have not worn it in the last year, throw it out."  They have to have the new, the fashionable, the latest upgrade with never a thought that this,  THIS!  is bad for the environment.  

Every new item has to be made, has to be shipped, has to be sold, has to be brought home. And all of this is expense, it causes pollution, and if you think carbon emissions are a sinister new thing, it causes that too.


The economy:

Buying things is good for the economy, we are told. It seems to me that there is something wrong with our way of life if waste is good. Maybe we should even measure how well we are doing by individual happiness instead of production, as I am told a certain country does.

But we have to have 'Growth.'  The GDP must rise every year, and in that cause, our government ensures that we have a rapidly growing population. Australia has one of the fast growing populations in the world, though by immigration rather than by a high birth rate.

But continual growth is NOT good. We are like a person already obese, who continues to eat in order to grow bigger and bigger and bigger until they are useless to themselves and to everyone else.













A new theory of economics is needed

We need a way of managing our affairs that promotes stability, and does not depend on an  ever-increasing population with an ever-increasing consumption of the earth's resources.

Until this happens, gestures like the banning of plastic bags will be just that - futile gestures.

More about plastic bags

Since the ban on plastic bags has come into effect, there have been several commentators pointing out a few relevant facts, such as that the ordinary plastic bag is actually more 'environmentally friendly' than a cloth bag.  And such that re-using bags can result in the harbouring of bacteria and the cross contamination of food.

Craig Kelly,
https://www.facebook.com/CraigKellyMP/posts/946208842240417

Andrew Bolt   "Maximum politics for minimum gain."
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/a-bag/news-story/426e02208ea9545e339886af48760231

And here is an interesting excerpt:

"Assessment of the Potential for Cross-Contamination of Food Products by Reusable Shopping Bags, was conducted by researchers from Loma Linda and Arizona universities. He is the abstract (with emphasis and a link added):

The purpose of this study was to assess the potential for cross-contamination of food products by reusable bags used to carry groceries. Reusable bags were collected at random from consumers as they entered grocery stores in California and Arizona. In interviews, it was found that reusable bags are seldom if ever washed and often used for multiple purposes. Large numbers of bacteria were found in almost all bags and coliform bacteria in half. Escherichia coli were identified in 8% of the bags, as well as a wide range of enteric bacteria, including several opportunistic pathogens.

When meat juices were added to bags and stored in the trunks of cars for two hours, the number of bacteria increased 10-fold, indicating the potential for bacterial growth in the bags. Hand or machine washing was found to reduce the bacteria in bags by > 99.9%. These results indicate that reusable bags, if not properly washed on a regular basis, can play a role in the cross-contamination of foods. It is recommended that the public be educated about the proper care of reusable bags by means of printed instructions on the bags or through public service announcements.

The same study found no bacterial presence whatsoever in single-use plastic bags." 

https://www.facebook.com/dallas.beaufort/posts/10155757485359370

And just a small fact to finish: 
Brown paper bags cost 7 times more in 'emissions' than a plastic bag
Cotton bags cost 327 times more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCL7nKCwtc

So don't criticize those of your acquaintances who claim that what you see as a nice thing for the environment - 'Save the planet' etc,  is maybe not as useful as you thought.   We all care for the environment. So many beautiful places to see, and no-one wants it ruined. But when there are initiatives marketed as helping to 'save the planet,' it is a good idea to first think about whether its overall impact is positive or negative.

Declining Living Standards

Declining living standards due to over-population

and making it trendy! 

Due to a rapidly increasing population that is assumed to be inevitable, we are suffering a decline in our living standards.  The intriguing thing is that some of this declining standard of living has been re-interpreted as trendy!  

1. Taking up less space

Heard of  'Tiny Homes?'   They look cute, and are pushed as The New Thing!  It is asserted that one can live perfectly comfortably in a 'tiny home.'  There are TV programmes that have idealistic young couples searching for their special 'tiny home.'  They are pushed as if they were a desirable thing, rather than the squeezing of a family into a far-too-small space. 

They are very like caravans, (or 'trailers' as the American would say,)  though not all are made to be moved around.  There are differences, they look prettier, often with steep roofs,  and they are often worse-designed space-wise.   

There was a TV programme I watched that was touting the virtues of 'tiny living.' It showed the interior of one of these houses.  There was a projecting corner that I could see was made for hitting your head on,  and there was a bed upstairs without sufficient safety railing.  Get up to go the toilet, still half asleep, and an accident would be all too possible.

Left - It looks beautiful and very cute.




The image on the right is little more than a bed on wheels.






I think there must be a deep instinct inside us that sees a cavity and imagines it as a home. 

The image (right)  is of the interior of a 'tiny home.' It looks attractive, but for long-term living?  I think a normal sized home is better.  And imagine the hazards for little children living there!

So 'tiny homes.' All they are is a loss of the living space that we have grown up with, and expect as a matter of routine.

And yet they are supposed to be all the rage?


 Cubicles instead of hotel rooms.

I saw a TV news reports that speaks of a trend in hotels to offer merely bed spaces instead of a hotel room.  There was a common area, where people could sit, and several bed spaces with doors, where one retired to sleep. The rationalisation was that one really only used a hotel room to sleep and could perfectly easily share other facilities with other guests.

Squeezing our houses into smaller areas.

We are firmly told that the house on a quarter-acre plot, with a picket fence and a big back yard is totally out of date. Now city houses are set so close, that one could leap from one roof to the next.  Those houses that manage a backyard at all, have a tiny one.

As a consequence, the way of life of families in the cities have changed. Now conscientious parents take their kids to the park every day so they can have some exercise and outside play.

There are new ways of being a child.  While my generation had space to roam in, today's children learn to line up to take their turn on the Flying Fox. 




There are positives. Children learn to get along with others at an early age.

But I pity them. We had so much more freedom than children do now.  Making our own little campfire and boiling up apples from the apple tree. Having a cubby house under the spreading boughs of an old pine tree. Dogs and cats and horses.

Even in a town, there were areas of free land where the kids would meet each day. Not structured playgrounds, but open areas where no-one cared if you built a bonfire or maybe 'jumps' for pushbikes.  Sliding down the slope on home-made billy carts or playing 'dams' at the edge of the creek.

Getting dirty, being free.  Kids these days are not very free.




We are told that people prefer city living and they prefer living in apartments.  I think it is more that they choose the best they can with the money they have, and that often means a small apartment.


Eating lesser quality food.

Veganism

Old-fashioned vegetarianism is apparently no longer enough. It's been around too long. Now the trendies are declaring themselves 'Vegans'  - not even permitted milk or eggs. It is stated to be 'healthy,' though I doubt it. Humans have evolved as omnivores, and we know that meat is a more efficient provider of energy than plant foods. Look at an animal meat eater, such as a leopard or a lion. It will hunt, eat, and then lie around for hours, even days.  

Herbivores, on the other hand, are forced to graze all day to take in enough energy to sustain themselves. And look at primitives in areas where there is insufficient game to have a good feed of meat now and then. They turn to cannibalism, often of enemies, occasionally of excess wives. Except in desperate circumstances, that is in the past, when people were limited to what they could source locally. These days, vegans have a wide source of foods, and most manage to have enough protein to sustain health.

It is very trendy to be Vegan, and more and more people are taking up that choice, and feeling morally superior because they do.  

How much is it pushed and how much is it chosen? Hard to say, but certainly it is easier to feed an enormous population if they don't want a decent feed of meat most days of the week. 

Eating Insects.

Every now and then, someone will declare that 'with the increasing population,'  we will have to start eating insects, as it is 'no longer sustainable' to be meat-eaters.  There was even an episode of  the cooking reality show, 'Masterchef,'  that featured crickets as part of the menu, and many of the contestants demonstrated eating the things, and nearly all (maybe all?) featured them in their 'dish,' even though it was not stated as a compulsory part of the brief.

I would have loved to see the pep talk they had, off camera, to say just why they had to serve - (oh dear) - crickets! 

Eating all of the animal and all of the vegetable ‘because we can no longer afford to waste.’

On TV,  25^th March, 2018, there was a programme about a chef who liked to cook up odd things to show how he abhors food waste.  Chicken rectum anyone?  Offal, not just liver, kidney and brains, but uterus?  Really?  The bitter parts of vegetables because one should not only eat the edible part. Cabbage leaves, not just the cabbage.  (The reality is that in selecting just those small parts of the animal, he probably wasted far more than the average cook at home in the kitchen.) 

And the commentator obediently said that whatever he sampled was delicious, and was probably making a horrible face off camera!  

There is a lot of talk about 'food waste.'  They invariably blame all of us, but nearly all householders waste very little edible food. 

We do eat only the parts of the food item that are generally regarded as edible.  Banana skins get thrown out, and so do apple cores and orange peel.  Bones, gristle, and often the excess fat of a cut of meat gets thrown out. The only way they can come up with the figures they accuse us of 'wasting' is if they count this as waste, rather than normal food preparation.   



Supermarkets and restaurants, of course, waste far more. 

No waste is good, (actual waste, I mean)  but fretting about it as if we were in the midst of the 1930s Depression?  That only comes about because people are fearful that there will be inadequate food to go around.  

Growing pretend meat in test tubes. 

With the burgeoning population (they always say this, as if there was no choice,)  we may no longer be able to have the area of grazing lands where sheep and cattle graze.  

At the moment, growing 'flesh' in the laboratory is horrendously expensive. It is quite impractical to produce commercial quantities.  The presenter of the TV programme I happened to see,  said that, nevertheless, it would become more efficient and it was 'inevitable' if we wanted to eat meat in the future.  Because why?  Because of our 'burgeoning population,' of course.  

There are plenty of articles about lab-grown 'meat.' Below are just two links to articles. 

https://www.wired.com/story/lab-grown-meat/

https://www.wired.com/story/lab-grown-meat/

So we see declining standards of living because of a burgeoning population.

Mass immigration

But here's an idea. How about we control our population, and then we won't have to tolerate an erosion of our living standards? 

The birth rates in Western countries is already only at, or even below, replacement.  In third world countries, it is very high, and the living standard low.  And so enormous numbers of people emigrate, looking for a better life.  And this is why our population is soaring.

But taking in immigrants does not ease the pressure of population in their home countries. There are always more babies in those countries, especially as in most of the worst areas, contraception is either unavailable or against the religion. 

So now, too much pressure is put onto Western nations, who have to try to cope with the never-ending floods of immigrants, some of whom find it difficult to integrate, and more who choose not to try. 

Instead of accepting millions of new immigrants until we end up as poor and overcrowded as the worst nations are now, we should aim for a stable population for ourselves by a strict limit on immigration, and provide as much education and family planning clinics as possible in their countries of origin. Not many mothers really want a dozen children.  In many countries, they have no choice.

There is nothing wrong in looking after ourselves. I do not want to lose our land to more and more development, I like to see grazing stock, and I want my children and grandchildren to have the option of country living if they choose it.  

Don't be fooled by the pretense that things are merely fashionable when they are disguises for declining standards of living

Plastic bags are good for the environment:

Remember the olden days – metal garbage bins filled with unmentionable and very smelly rubbish – food scraps, meat, fish, vegetable – and sometimes worse. If left for very long, there would be maggots starting to appear, and always – blowflies circling the bin, looking for entry.

Then along came plastic bags, free with the groceries, and food started being enclosed in plastic bags as a routine. Smells vastly reduced, and no more breeding of blowflies. You may not have noticed, but there are far fewer flies around than there used to be. (Though in South Australia there are still a lot – they’ve banned the giving away of plastic bags in South Australia.)

But you cry  – they are bad for the environment. They kill fish, do not decompose, are around forever,  take up too much space in landfill…

So, one by one.

Killing fish.  We kill far, far more ourselves, both to eat and others that get caught as a by product of the catch. I don’t know how many fish are so stupid as to eat plastic bags,  but like most other animals, fish are more intelligent than they are given credit for. Certainly do not throw plastic bags into the sea – or any other rubbish. But they are an infinitesimal proportion of the rubbish that goes into oceans. The problem has been vastly exaggerated.

They do not decompose?  Maybe twenty years ago they were slow to decompose, but this nonsense about them lasting 10,000 years or whatever... Well, really!  These days you’re lucky sometimes to get your groceries home without the plastic bag falling to bits. And so many have holes in them so that they cannot be re-used. Plastic bags are one of the most useful things around  -  for holding groceries, for storing things, for containing rubbish, especially smelly rubbish – think of not just meat or fish scraps, but babies’ nappies, women’s sanitary pads, old people’s incontinence pants, sick people’s stoma bags…   We are told to use paper instead, maybe old newspapers.  Maybe those who tell us this have not noticed that wet newspapers fall to bits?

They take up space in a landfill.  Well, yes, they do – enclosing lots of other rubbish. I bet those who work at a tip are grateful for plastic bags – the work would be a lot more horrible without them.

No. The fuss about plastic bags is just a way of pretending to care for the environment while never tackling any of the actual problems. Most things we do to 'save the planet' are either futile or worse, have the opposite effect.

Example:  Take the older cars off the roads. They give off more ‘greenhouse gases’ and use more petrol.  But:  Making a single new car sends out more greenhouse gases and uses more resources than the tiny amount of difference between the running costs of a new car as opposed to an old car.   Balance sheet – better to keep the old car.

Example:  Make the old-fashioned light globes impossible to obtain, therefore forcing people to buy the new ones that are supposedly more energy efficient. But: the old light globes were very efficient. Even in rooms where they were used all the time, they lasted years, and accounted for a very small proportion of electricity used by a household. And the new ones  have problems – they take a while to be bright enough, meaning that in places like toilets and bathrooms where you need the light for only a short time, it is not efficient.

More seriously, they are a safety hazard. The new ones can’t be used with dimmer switches, touch lamps or sensor lights.  (I have heard that there are new varieties though now.)  I have seen smoke issuing from a light with a dimmer switch when a new light bulb was put in, but then luckily the bulb blew, too soon for it to start a fire. But if even one house fire was started like this, the smoke put into the atmosphere would exceed the emissions supposedly reduced by the switch.  There have been a lot of  fires in recent years blamed on ‘electrical problems.’ It is a few years since the old-fashioned light globes became unobtainable, just about the time when some of them finally blow. (They usually lasted between 3 and 20 years, depending on what room they were in and how much used.)  So how many of these ‘electrical problems’ are caused by using the new light bulbs with an  older fitting that is unsuited to it. As far as I know, there have never been any warnings about this.

One more thing – a lot of light fittings simply would not accommodate the new globes, meaning that people had to buy new light fittings – which had to be manufactured, using various resources, and then moved to where they were needed, using trucks or ships or trains, all of which require power. 

Balance sheet -  very much on the negative side.

Water savings. 

Water is a finite resource, they tell us. Use it wisely. But actually – water goes around and around. It gets evaporated, it condenses and returns purified as rain. I learned that in primary school. Could we be making a mistake trying too hard to conserve water? 

Example:  closing over bore-drains.  Open bore drains for irrigation used to ‘lose’ a lot of water to evaporation. They were also a resource for wild animals and birds. They are being closed over, so no more evaporation and no more watering points for the animals. Swimming pools are supposed to be covered, watering of gardens and laws strictly limited, all to reduce ‘losses’ from evaporation. Could it be contributing to reduced rainfall?  I do not have the answers, I have not done the studies, but maybe it’s time to at least ask the question.   

There are other ways that trying to reduce water use has a poor effect:

Example: dual flush toilets. I don’t know about every dual flush toilet, but I am far from impressed with ours. It was a few years ago now that we needed new toilets, and it’s the only type they seem to sell these days. They are inefficient, Too often, two or even three flushes are required to do the job, which uses more water than a single efficient flush. 

Example:  Not always flushing:  There was a new saying put about last drought - ‘If  it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down.’  Think of the smell, think of the yellow stains, requiring more powerful chemical to make your toilet clean again, - it's poor on the balance sheet for that alone.  But also, it is apt to cause problems with the sewer pipes -  if there is not enough water to sufficiently flush the pipes, then there will be blockages which require more power and more water just to clear the blockage and flush the pipes.   

Example: Save water by collecting water in the kitchen sink. We saved water that way and put it on the garden – until we noticed how the water pipes were beginning to smell. ‘Environmental flows’ are needed for water and sewer pipes as much as they are needed for rivers. 

Example: Save water by having a bucket in your shower to try and collect some of the wasted water.  I tried this once, didn’t collect much, and nearly tripped over the dammed thing. Never again. A few days later, a surgeon was on the news advising against it. Just one old person with a broken hip because of it, would use more water than was ever saved with this practice. Good intentions maybe, but risky and ineffective.

A few things utterly futile:

People want to do the right thing, but seize on things that are useless.  ‘Earth Hour.’  For one hour in the year, switch off lights.  It started in Australia and has spread overseas. I don’t know how many robberies are timed for ‘Earth Hour’ or how many people are hurt knocking over things in the dark, but in any case, how could anyone think that turning off the lights for an hour could have any effect when for every other hour, things are so very lit up. I saw an image of an American city not long ago, and it appeared that every square yard for every building was illuminated. Not that is wastage on a ground scale. 

So what can we do for the environment if whatever we try is either futile or has the opposite effect?

The root problems that we encounter are from two causes:

The first is that all countries are driven by the Economics theory that growth is good. It appears that economists do not believe that there could be any such thing as stability. So every year, GDP (Gross Domestic Product) has to be higher than the previous year. Every year, profits of every business should go up. Every year, people need to buy more things whether or not they are needed, spend more money, upgrade their mobile phone, their car, have a bigger house… When ‘consumer confidence’ drops, and spending is reduced, it is spoken of as a real concern. The economy, as it is at the moment, depends on everything being more and bigger and even more – every year.

And every year, there should be more people to drive more growth and give us a healthy economy. And this, of course, is the big, big, BIG problem that we have to cope with. There are too many of us – too many people needing electricity, too many people needing shelter and water and food. We need to develop a new theory of economics that does not depend on constant growth, and we need to convince people, especially religious leaders, that zero population growth, as was pushed fifty years ago, is essential. If it had been adopted then, we might have been getting closer to a stable population now.

THE BEST THING WE CAN DO FOR THE ENVIRONMENT IS TO HAVE FREE AND EASILY AVAILABLE CONTRACEPTION.

In third world countries and in first world countries, surely it is better to have two children you can rear properly than to have ten that you rear in poverty.

 There are too many people, and this is the cause of every single environmental problem that we have.

We can keep trying. Wind power's good, certainly better than the disastrous 'Hydraulic Fracturing' or 'Fracking' that is used to extract coal seam gas.