Archive for November, 2008

Pollution Threatens British Beaches

Friday, November 21st, 2008

British beaches were once something to be proud of but according to Surfers Against Sewage (S.A.S) almost 1/3rd (32.3%) of English and Welsh designated bathing beaches failed to meet UK guideline standards for water quality during the 2008 bathing season.

An article on the S.A.S website states that out of 495 designated bathing waters in England and Wales 160 could not meet the tougher of two water quality standards set by the European Union to protect public health and the environment from faecal pollution at bathing waters.

You would think that these guidelines had just come in to existence but they have actually been set for 32 years under the 1976 EU Bathing Water Directive. It is understood that changes in UK weather conditions are causing the problem, making it increasingly difficult to meet the standards set out by the directive.

In the last 2 years Britain has seen extremely wet summers, which has highlighted how vulnerable our nation’s beaches are to the adverse effects to water quality after periods of heavy rainfall. The government have put massive investment into the nation’s sewerage infrastructure but it has had little effect on curving the problem of water pollution.

The S.A.S point out in their article that a solution which reduces the impact of heavy rainfall on future water quality results, should not just fall on the shoulders of the nations water companies but it will require co-operation from a large number of authorities.

(more…)

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Environment | No Comments »

2008 Update

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

Hi fans of the logblog

I’ve just put the remaining 3 trees into larger pots for the winter and its reminded me that I’ve not given you an update about the tree planting for a while… so here goes.

So far we have planted

50(ish) into pots to give to the team

A dozen directly into the field

And a couple of hundred (by hand) over the last few years

Behind Schedule

As you’ll remember - what we wanted to do was to plant 8,000 this year… but we didn’t :-( .

The problem being that the winter lasted for so long (especially in the north east) last year that when the spring finally came (you plant trees at the start of spring) it was too wet to mechanically plant the thousands that we had planned to.

What we should have done was just let the contractor plant them when they wanted, they are local to the area so can tell at short notice if its the right time to do it.

So, I have given permission to the contractor to plant 8,000 (ish) baby spruce trees on the site next year… this will be done between Feb and March - they’ll let us know when its done.

For those of you that don’t know about the project - we are planning to plant 50,000 trees over the next 5 years. As these trees grow they will remove 1 million kgs of CO2 (and other nasty stuff) from the atmosphere each year. This is by far (we think by a factor of ten) in excess of what K International produces in its business activities - thus making us carbon neutral.

Thanks
Rich

Posted in Updates | No Comments »

New Design for thelogblog.co.uk

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

As (I hope) you have noticed we have just relaunched thelogblog with a new design.

Its all based on Wordpress, uses a theme that was designed in our own multi-language design studio and brings the site right up to the minute in terms of technology.

Please let us know what you think.

Posted in Updates | No Comments »

Is the Ocean Becoming a Dump?

Saturday, November 1st, 2008

The ocean has always inspired awe among humanity.

When you stand on a beach and look out, the expanse of water seems to be limitless. It’s easy to see why ancient sailors believed in sea monsters and mermaids.

Unfortunately, as vast as the ocean is, it is not large enough or deep enough to be immune from the effects of human carelessness. As the New York Times reported on Sunday, the sea has been inundated with our trash-a problem that keeps growing every year, thanks to the massive amounts of plastic that we buy, use and throw away every year. If there are sea monsters and mermaids somewhere in the depths, they are ticked off! (more…)

Posted in Environment | No Comments »