Evergreen Online

The Newsletter of Wirral Green Alliance

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Digest Edition

August / September 2001

In this month's online edition:

Don't Put a Tiger in Your Tank: The Esso Boycott story.
Living in the Plastic Age: Britain's increasing use of plastics & Wirral's poor recycling of them.
Green Arena 2001: Les Bufton's review of our new event at the Wirral Show.

DON'T PUT A TIGER IN YOUR TANK


Esso, the largest corporation on the planet are working hard to wreck international action on global warming.

Esso (aka ExxonMobil in the US) gave more money to get George Bush into the White House than any other oil company. Esso's payback has been swift. Within weeks of becoming US president, Bush ditched the only international treaty on global warming.

UN scientists say that if the global warming caused by burning oil, coal and gas goes unchecked, there will be a massive increase in storms, floods, drought and disease. Esso still deny that burning these fuels causes global warming. They plan to spend $7.9 billion this year looking for new oil reserves and not one dollar on clean renewable energy.

Esso think that thay are too big for the rest of us to stop them from wrecking the planet. They're wrong. Bush may not be in your back yard but Esso are. They are the the world's number one global warming villain. If we are going to stop global warming, we have to stop Esso. Don't put a tiger in your tank. Boycott Esso.

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 Greenpeace protest at Esso's distribution plant. Purfleet, Essex.



Campaign packs are available from: Stop Esso, Freepost LON 18448, London N1 2BR.
Email info@stopesso.com      Web: www.stopesso.com
Living in the Plastic Age

A new report published by the Environment Agency; Plastics in the Environment illustrates Britain’s poor record for recycling plastics and our increasing consumption of plastics.

Domestic waste accounts for the largest proportion of plastic waste and 80% of all plastic products end up in landfill sites. In total, Britain produces almost 3 million tonnes of waste plastic every year. 60% of this originates from packaging. To give a rough idea, 1 tonne of plastic is equivalent to 20,000 two litre drinks bottles or 120,000 carrier bags.

It has been established that consumption of plastics is increasing at the rate of 4% per year. This is clearly unacceptable. The Environment Agency is urging waste authorities to operate kerbside collection schemes for plastics yet in Wirral we have no plastic recycling facilities at all. Again this is unacceptable.

At present it seems that all we can do is to refuse excessively packaged products and re use old carrier bags. Each year we use 7 billion plastic bags in England and Wales. This works out at more than 300 bags for every household.

We can also help by giving unwanted plastic goods (eg toys, CDs, records) to charity shops so that they can be re-sold.

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  • The biggest use of plastics is in packaging where they are used to wrap almost half of all packaged goods.
  • Their use in buildings is growing, eg in window frames and flooring. Plastic foam insulation saves as much energy in year as was used to make it.
  • Plastics make up nearly 10% of the weight of a car, saving fuel.
  • Fridges, freezers and other large electrical domestic appliances account for a quarter of the plastic used by the electrical and electronics industry.
  • Plastics are used in more than 80% of new toys.


Showing the Way !

Earlier this year the decision was taken that it would not be feasible for us to organise our own Summer Green Fayre this year. Then came the invitation to be represented at the famous Wirral Show. Having been involved with the Summer Green Fayre over many years, both at Royden Park and in Arrowe Country Park, we approached the idea of being at the Wirral Show with some trepidation as it was so different to our own Green Fayre. We faced questions as to why, but we only had to look to our remit as a charity to find the answer - “to advance the education of the public about the environment and about the protection of the environment”. With an anticipated quarter of a million visitors to the Wirral Show, we hoped it would be an ideal opportunity to let people who might never have visited the Green Fayre know who we are, what we believe and what we do.

At the Western end of the promenade we managed to create some semblance of a Green oasis away from the noise and bustle of the rest of the Show. There were two marquees: one which had our own display, stalls from some of our corporate members and other exhibitors; and the Co-operative Marquee which was home to the Co-op, the Dynamix Theatre Group and on Sunday afternoon a welcome return of the Co-operative Orchestra. We were entertained in the large marquee by the Lynx Theatre Group (thanks to Merseytravel) and the Wirral Academy for Performing Arts, doing a popular encore of the “chickens” scene from their performance at Ness Gardens. We were also invited to put up a Tots Plots display in the Health Links tent. Our own stand had displays of all that we are involved in and a giant green telephone to advertise our environmental advice line. Thanks to Steph, Jim and Phil for all the hours of work spent producing the displays and generally getting everything ready for the Show. We were also able to raise some welcome funds by selling water sprinklers, growing kits, plants, Green Pages and the ever popular bric-a-brac.

We all had an extremely busy weekend and we were very pleased that the preliminary feedback from exhibitors was so encouraging. Those of us who spent time at the Show were convinced of the value of being there, and ideas for next year are already being discussed. Those of you who told us how much you missed “Green Grub” will be pleased to know that we missed it too and that it’s in our thoughts for next year! Now that we know what can be achieved, we would like to use this year’s experience as a springboard for the future and next year involve more of our members in spreading the word – the Green word, that is. If you’d like to be involved, then please get in touch with us at the Centre.

Thanks are due in no small part to our sponsors and to those who represented us (complete with the new Centre for Sustainable Living T-shirts!) on our own stall – Steph, Jim, Phil, Carol, Barrie, Mark, Dave, Pete, Chris, Anne and Les.