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🐌CURMUDGEONS' CORNER XIV🐌

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  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,090
    No idea about the old phone but I suspect its design and construction are not as demanding of fancy minerals, chips and batteries as the new ones and it ain't broke so I don't need to "fix" it.   It is very rarely used and I often forget to keep it charged. 

    As for coir, yes it has to be shipped half way round the world but at least it's a natural by-product of a renewable coconut crop and doesn't involve digging up stuff that has taken millennia to create.   There are alternatives to peat which are closer to home - bark, wood fibre, anaerobic digestate, bracken, sheep's wool waste and green waste compost.  Now the RHS has set a date for banning its use that will concentrate the minds of the growers who supply to their garden centres, gardens and shows and I think the alternatives will improve rapidly in texture, quality and usability.



    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • Hostafan1Hostafan1 Posts: 34,889
    Obelixx said:

    As for coir, yes it has to be shipped half way round the world but at least it's a natural by-product of a renewable coconut crop and doesn't involve digging up stuff that has taken millennia to create.   There are alternatives to peat which are closer to home - bark, wood fibre, anaerobic digestate, bracken, sheep's wool waste and green waste compost.  Now the RHS has set a date for banning its use that will concentrate the minds of the growers who supply to their garden centres, gardens and shows and I think the alternatives will improve rapidly in texture, quality and usability.



    "I think the alternatives will improve rapidly in texture, quality and usability."

    When that happens, I'll happily buy it
    Devon.
  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,090
    You may have no choice @Hostafan1, other than making your own and sieving it and sterilising it.

    I suspect the stuff we get here is mostly green waste compost as I do get some interesting weeds in it.  A couple of years ago I had a weedy persicaria sprouting in every pot.  Last year it was that nasty small-leaved clover with teeny yellow flowers. 
    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    We try to live lightly on this planet ... it's many years since I bought a brand new car, although I used to ... now I buy 'pre-loved' cars and have them maintained locally using reconditioned parts wherever possible.  I've flown very little in my life and it's ten years since the last time.  We eat seasonally, buying from local producers as much as possible and growing as much as we have room for.  I make many of our clothes from ethically produced materials and we repair possessions where possible rather than replace them.  What savings I have are invested ethically and we use renewable energy whenever possible  :)

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • Hostafan1Hostafan1 Posts: 34,889
    Obelixx said:
    You may have no choice @Hostafan1, other than making your own and sieving it and sterilising it.

    I suspect the stuff we get here is mostly green waste compost as I do get some interesting weeds in it.  A couple of years ago I had a weedy persicaria sprouting in every pot.  Last year it was that nasty small-leaved clover with teeny yellow flowers. 
    I know it's going to be banned, but the critical word is " happily " 
    I feel we're being taken as mugs buying overpriced rubbish until the get the mix right
    Devon.
  • JennyJJennyJ Posts: 10,576
    I suspect it's not the mix of raw materials that's the problem but that they aren't always letting the wood shreds, green waste etc rot down for long enough and then not screening it with a fine enough sieve or whatever the industrial equivalent is, so the end result is more coarse and twiggy than I'd like. They'd get more bulk from the same input than they'd get if it was done properly. Demand's been high this last year or so, and being a grumpy old so-and-so I suspect that in some cases the process has sometimes been "optimised" to get maximum product out of the door as quickly as possible.
    Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
  • KT53KT53 Posts: 9,016
    Why is it than when accusations of wrongdoing are made against male actors/presenters/celebs etc they are immediately removed from their positions and any programme involving them is pulled.  This is long before anything is proven against them in court, but Ellen Degeneris' shows continue to be broadcast? 

    Not double standards being shown surely?!
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    Is anyone else puzzled at how Dom Cummings can claim to have documentation of all his allegations?  

    If I'd retained paperwork or stuff on a computer relating to a previous employment I've a feeling my former bosses would've had my guts for garters. 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • Chris-P-BaconChris-P-Bacon Posts: 943
    Hostafan1 said:

    Coir v peat: calculating its carbon footprint.

    We asked Craig Sams, Founder of Carbon Gold, to explain why coir is a better choice for the planet.

    “A tonne of peat represents 2 tonnes of CO2 in transport costs to the UK (usually from Lithuania or thereabouts). Same for a tonne of coir even though it travels further as coir has a much lower moisture content – you add the water here in the UK.  

    A coconut tree sequesters about 2 tonnes of CO2 every year in its wood and in the soil and after 100 years is almost always used as a building material so that carbon is sequestered in a house or other building.The coconut tree itself produces a highly concentrated nutrient-rich food and also a hard shell that makes activated charcoal for water purification and the outer husk is the coir, which used to be burned but is now pressed into bricks and shipped to growers in Europe and elsewhere.So there is the economic value and calorific value to coconut which you don’t get with peat – all you get is the coir equivalent.A rough estimate is that a tonne of peat costs the planet 2 tonnes of CO2 and a tonne of coir actually adds to the planet’s store of CO2 by 3 tonnes, so a 5-tonne difference.OK maybe that’s optimistic, but in principle it is true."

    Optimistic back of a fag packet maths but you get the idea.
    Nothing in there about the fuel used to harvest / process and transport  it
    And still comes in a plastic bag. 
    It's a myth that all natural or organic by-products are automatically environmentally viable and sustainable.
    An increase in peat free compost production potentially faces the same issue that growing crops for biofuel now faces. In so much that habitats are starting to lose biodiversity and chemicals used for biocrops can be harmful to the environment. Coir (and other peat free alternatives for that matter) may start to be farmed specifically for compost rather than obtained as a by-product because of demand. 

  • punkdocpunkdoc Posts: 15,039
    @KT53

    This is something that is worrying me too.
    Whilst men have undoubtedly abused their power over the years, there now seems to be a kind of "all men are guilty " movement and men are removed from their work , as soon as an allegation is made' long before any guilt is proven.
    Even if the allegations are subsequently dismissed, it is often impossible for these men to return to their work.
    How can you lie there and think of England
    When you don't even know who's in the team

    S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
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