Have you been on shoetringmag.com recently? If not, why not?

Have you ever been stuck for cash and don't want to have to get someone to lend you some? Well here's the answer. It's also a good guide for how to go environmentally friendly. Shoestring Magazine is run by Melissa Massello and was started up in 2008. Since then it has had visits from a wide variety of people but is especially popular with university students, who, with all the costs of university, can find themselves looking at the site for cheap buys but what they probably don't think of is that they are saving the planet in their own small way at the same time.


The site gets 140,000 visitors per month. The site includes articles about Lifestyle, Shopping, DIY, Food & Drink, Entertainment and Home and Garden. Other sections include Money, Travel and Kids and Pets. The site has a newsletter called The Gumshoe Files and it also has a writer for each topic and with one million six hundred eighty thousand views a year, it’s a pretty popular site.

Although when you think about it, it comes down to the argument of whether the site itself actually harms the environment. Looking at the site and using the computer to edit things on the site, probably will but the site itself will most likely do no harm to the environment. I’m not trying to criticize the site or its owner but this is an argument that will probably never be resolved. In the meantime while you think that one through, you can go on the site and have a look around. You never know, you might find some useful tips to reduce your carbon footprint and save you money.

Richmond School are at the top of the Environment A-list

A group of Year 10, 11 and 12 students from Richmond School in North Yorkshire are working on raising awareness of the environment in their local area. A lot of Climate change awareness is done on a much larger scale but good things come in small packages. The group has been working together since December 2009. So far they have been working on what environmentally friendly things will be included in their new school and had talks from the Green Party, T.R.Y (Transition Richmond, Yorkshire), and a Swale dale National Park Ranger about what is being done already in their local area.
They are currently working on things to include in a window display in the Ken Warne’s in Finkle Street in Richmond. The display will be about Activism and the arts. They are asking students in their school to create things such as poems, art work, models and creative writing. The theme for the display will be “Our town in 2020”. Group leader Arlene Garnett said “The project is to use the Arts to express environmental concerns. We have been offered the TRY window at Ken Warne’s for a display on Rich in the year 2020.” They are also looking for songs, drama and dance for assemblies in school.
The group has also been doing a site audit of the school in order to get signed up to Action Aid 10:10 – Powerdown. The aim of this will be to cut the schools emissions by 10% over a year. They are now signed up to the project and are working out how they will manage to do it. If they have success with that they can get a visit from the Carbon Trust who will survey the school. They will then be given advice on how to reduce their carbon footprint even more.
A lot of environmentally friendly features are included in the new school that is being built. These should include some sort of environmentally friendly power such as solar panels and the new hall has windows that open and close according to the heat in the room. The group has been for a tour round what is currently being worked on in the new school and have put questions to the builders and planners who are working on it.
The groups work so far shows that work on environmental issues can be worked on in smaller groups and on a smaller scale than some of the deals trying to be reached on reducing CO2 levels. After all it will be our future it will effect.

Newspaper Vs News site: Which is greener?

In the UK alone we buy millions of newspapers every day. Each day the Sun and the Times newspapers are bought by 4.5 million of us, but would reading online newspapers and news websites decrease how much we contribute to Climate Change when reading the news? The Sun's website gets 1.3 million people browsing it per day. If everyone who buys those two newspapers looked on the website for the Sun, surely we would do less harm to the environment, or would we?

We may save a lot of paper but unless we burn all the newspapers, it's not going to do much harm to the environment. The average computer uses up to 500 watts and a CRT or LCD monitor uses a maximum of 150 watts. This will use a lot of fossil fuels but not everyone has access to the internet or even a computer. According to information released in September 2009 by internetsworldstats.com, there are 46,686,900 internet users in the UK. News websites such as BBC News and Sky News get thousands of visits every day.

Producing newspapers isn't all that harmful to the environment, but transporting them is a big problem. According to the Royal Mail, there are at least 12,134 branches of the Post Office in the UK. There are hundreds of post vans delivery news and other private transport firms who collect and deliver to newsagents. How many people then drive to the newsagent to collect their papers is unknown, but at least most local deliveries are by young people on foot or bicycle.

There's no clear winner when deciding which form of news reading is more environmentally friendly, as we don't have all the information to back it up. However, in my opinion, newspapers are more environmentally friendly because of the amount of fossil fuel used in providing the electricity to run a computer. What do you think? Feel free to comment with your views.