July 2009
Turn On Turn Off
Mapping tools for car free travel Sex sells coal
Meat free Mondays (and vegan Tuesdays)
This month we challenge you to go meat free on Mondays. For the veggies amongst you, we challenge you to vegan Tuesdays. For the vegans, we challenge you to find a sustainable alternative to soya (and make it readily available).
The Belgian city of Ghent has given up meat on Thursdays, but that's not alliterative, so we suggest Monday as an alternative. The entire city of Ghent is doing its bit to combat obesity, cruelty to animals in industrialised farming and climate change. We think you'll agree, that they're all three bad things. If Ghent can do it so can you and there's a whole website dedicated to helping you do it which will even tell you which vegetarian wine suits your new found veggie meal.
Turns out eating meat is one of the most carbon intensive things you can do (the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has worked out that meat is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, followed by transport which is responsible for 13.5%). So the logical thing to do is quit meat on Mondays.
As with every monthly challenge, we'd like you to get in touch and tell us that you're doing it and how you're finding it. What we'd most like to know this month is your favourite veg(an)etarian recipe, send 'em in to . Remember, meat free Mondays aren't just for the month, they're for life.
Staycations
Last month we challenged you to holiday in the UK. This month we were totally flabbergasted to learn that the average festival-goer will spend £600 on a weekend. We blame designer wellies and throwaway tents. But between wwoofing and wild camping, there are cheaper ways to do it. We’ve already witnessed Welsh suntans this summer. We hope you enjoyed your turn as Brits at home and found some far flung forgotten corner of this land to escape to.
Wonderous Worldmapper
Worldmapper is a collection of expanding, shrinking and dripping world maps, where territories are terrifyingly re-sized using data other than land area. See the world resized according to population size, literacy, life expectancy, condom use, aircraft passengers, import and exports of cigarettes and alcohol, nuclear weapons, books published and books borrowed and about 572 other things. It is indeed ‘the world as you've never seen it before'.
Peru
Rodrigo Sanchez-Chavarria, a Peruvian poet living in Minnesota, wrote these words about recent clashes between indigenous peoples and police in Peru.
Today my heart stopped
My blood spilled
On land that will be given
To oil companies that will rape it
Brand it, and sell it with my name on it
With my hands I write these words for the homeland
Months into a peaceful protest by Amazon Indigneous groups, against new laws which open up 70% of the Amazon to exploitation by foreign companies (including logging, biofuels, mining and oil), the protesters were violently dispersed by police, leaving deaths on both sides.
Sign the petition to Alan Garcia, president of Peru, to stop the violence and support the Amazon groups in their struggle to protect the forest and their way of life.
Photos by Ben Powless.
Wheely good times in WalesThe Wild West cycle tour are halfway through their trip around Wales, here’s the latest from our correspondents on the road:
We enjoyed the longest but most beautiful cycle ride so far to Newcastle Emlyn. The magnetic attraction of the pub at the end of the ride was too much for some of the tour members, particularly due to the mountainous climb to our home for the night. The Dyfed Permaculture Farm was a little piece of paradise that was well worth it! We stayed in a huge barn complete with bucket shower, log burning fire and compost toilets (with a lovely "thanks for your contribution" sign)!
This is an excerpt from the Wild West Tour Journal, if you want more, email with the subject 'Where's Wild West?' to receive weekly updates, or follow the tour as they tweet their way around the Welsh coast, and receive such choice updates as, the compost toilets are full but it's ok because we're leaving and other gems like, last night the cooks dabbled with a new grain. But even though we opened our hearts to it, amaranth turned into an alien goop to scorn us. You'll wish you too were there amongst alien gloop and full compost loos.
And finally
This month we will mostly be tinkling away on pianos hidden around London.
Jo, Hanna & Liz
The Otesha Project UK
www.otesha.org.uk
P.s. As the Wild West tour wiggle their way around Wales they've been handing out postcards to those they meet. People write on the postcard something that they've done to make their lives a little bit more sustainable and send them back to us at Otesha HQ, where we're building a nice collection of postcards on the walls. This month our favourite postcard was from Freya, who's taking very short showers and wins a bar of Fairtrade chocolate.