Conservation Volunteering Blog
Greenwashing - unless we start buying less stuff our recycling becomes someone else's pollution?
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Monday, 04 May 2009 19:44
Is household recycling conservation?
The word conservation is often used or misused - when what we often mean is preservation.
Conservation is usually used in reference to animals, plants or historical monuments and is seldom used in its wider context - that is to conserve or in another way - not to waste.
In our everyday lives household recycling is as close as we generally get to conservation but there's increasing evidence that it's not all its cracked up to be. I still assiduously recycle but am becoming increasingly concerned that it’s just a sop and misses the essence of conserving the world’s limited resources.
Unsustainable population growth is as unrealistic as unsustainable economic growth - but its politically incorrect to say so
Wednesday, 29 April 2009 00:00
This week David Attenborough (BBC News website, 13 April 2009) had the gall to mention the unmentionable subject of global overpopulation. Its strange that when I was at university in the 1970’s population growth used to be an everyday issue of debate but since then its become a taboo subject that guarantees a flood of hate mail for anyone who dares to mention it.
Questions about how and why we travel?
Sunday, 01 February 2009 21:41
Travelling is in our genes and few of us would pass up an opportunity to see and experience new places. But there’s more to travelling than simply going to new places, there’s the question of how and why we travel?
Travelling can have a passive tourist style, a self-indulgent hedonistic style or travels with a purpose - travels that can change you and the place you visit. Of course some trips may contain elements of all three styles but the point is all travelling is not the same. I’ve spent the past year researching and writing a book on Wildlife and Conservation Volunteering (Bradt Guides, Feb 2009) because of a long felt need (tinged with a sense of guilt) to offset some of the damage we’re doing to the planet.