Category: Climate & Environment

Children’s toys and ‘invisible’ e-waste…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Climate & Environment, Digital devices and the environment, e-waste, Education, Information Technology, Toys

One day last week, the Badger arrived early to collect his grandson from nursery school. As he waited, he  couldn’t help a wry smile as the young tots resisted the nursery leader’s attempts to get them to tidy the plethora of toys away. One little girl came up to the Badger with a battered Fisher-Price musical guitar and insisted on showing him how to extract noise from it. The noises from the guitar demonstrated that it was on its last legs! One of the nursery helpers then ushered the little girl away, and as she did so she told the child that the toy was broken and needed to be ’thrown away’. Did they really mean ‘thrown away’, or did they mean ‘recycled’? It was pretty clear that they meant the former.

In due course, the Badger’s grandson, who had been playing with a musical toy in the form of a mobile phone, was returned home to his parents. Afterwards, the Badger found himself cogitating on how different today’s pre-school toys are from those of his generation. No toys for pre-school kids in his day required a battery to function! Today,  however, toys requiring a battery and containing microchips are commonplace. The Badger found himself  muttering a phrase that everyone uses at some stage when they get older, namely ‘those were the days’. His thoughts moved on to the nursery helper’s ’thrown away’ remark. Did they really mean ‘thrown away’ rather than ‘recycled’? Well, since toys top the list of  ‘invisible’ e-waste finding its way into landfill, then, yes, they probably did.  

Many things young children play with today contain recyclable electrical or electronic material that goes unnoticed. The amount of such material in an individual toy may be tiny, but every little bit matters if we truly want a sustainable future. Unfortunately, however, awareness that a child’s toy should be sent to recycling at the end of its useful life isn’t as high as it should be. That’s why children’s toys contribute to the growing so-called ‘invisible’ e-waste in the world’s land fill sites. The Badger thus feels it’s incumbent on us adults to be more knowledgeable and make better decisions when it comes to disposing of broken children’s toys.

The Badger also suspects, perhaps wrongly, that the WEEE’s recent International E-waste Day on the 14th October 2023 passed most of us by. It’s purpose was to shed light on the overall scale of  ‘invisible’ e-waste, see here.  Our awareness of ‘invisible’ e-waste must be improved, and, as the WEEE Forum puts it, we must all be more conscious that we can recycle anything that has a plug, uses a battery or microchip, or has a cable. So, if you hear someone telling a child that a toy should be ‘thrown away’ then tell them to recycle it, and wish them good luck in getting it out of the child’s hands without a tantrum to do so…

Gas boiler, heat pump…net-zero fatigue…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Change, Climate & Environment, Energy and Energy Markets

A smartphone ping announced the arrival of an email from the Badger’s energy provider. It contained a marketing pitch regarding the replacement of home gas boilers with air-source heat pumps. The Badger had already seen a similar pitch on social media, and read the many comments left by others. The email was deleted because, like those commenting on social media, he will not be replacing his home’s reliable gas boiler until the end of its serviceable life, which is still many years away.

Does that mean the Badger doesn’t care about achieving net-zero and green issues? It certainly does not. Like most with children and grandchildren, he’s very conscious of the importance of such issues. He’s simply being realistic and objective, all be it that the incessant net-zero evangelism from UK politicians, activists, and experts, and the actions of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, means that some personal ‘net-zero fatigue’ has set in! This fatigue seems to be becoming more widespread in the general public, ostensibly because the implementation of net-zero policies has reached the point where people are starting to realise the cost to them and the impact on their lives. It appears that grumbling and push back is building, and that most people will not be replacing their gas boiler for a heat pump in the foreseeable future!

Ditching a gas boiler for a heat pump is simply not an option for many, which is hardly surprising when the UK has the oldest housing stock in Europe, with ~80% built before 1990, and 20% built before 1919. Converting this housing for heat pumps is simply unrealistic for most who live in it, especially when the raw installation cost not only surpasses the annual income from the maximum UK State Pension, but also amounts to about a third of the annual income of those earning the average UK wage. It’s not realistic to believe that people will prioritise net-zero above immediate family needs and channel a significant portion of their income to invest in a heat pump, especially when its running costs are not dissimilar to that of a gas boiler.

Although our need to achieve net-zero is clear, a transition from oil and gas needs to be realistic and affordable, targets set by politicians are never met (cf. UK Smart Meters),  and there will be alternatives to heat pumps in the coming years. The Badger’s thus not installing a heat pump any time soon just to help net-zero. It’s not a suitable or economically viable option for his home. If this is a sign that the Badger’s suffering from ‘net-zero fatigue’, is there a cure? Yes, a social and political shift away from evangelistic net-zero idealism to common-sense, pragmatism, and transition realism. But with a UK General Election due in the next year, the chance of any cure seems remote…

Change starts with the individual…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Change, Climate & Environment, Energy and Energy Markets, Learning

The amount of electricity and gas Kilowatt Hours the Badger uses has reduced by 12% and 21%, respectively, over the last year. He’s also used 10% less vehicle fuel. The reductions come from small behavioural adjustments, rather than wholesale lifestyle change. The Badger’s pleased because the savings are helping the planet, and because they illustrate the impact of taking personal responsibility for ‘change’ which is, after all, one of the perpetual rhythms of life which humans have coped with for millennia.

Feeling good about his energy reduction helping the planet, the Badger visited his community’s monthly street market where stalls of locally produced goods, food, and drink interleave with those of charities and campaign organisations. Good weather meant the market was busy. As the Badger nonchalantly browsed the stalls, he lingered a little too long at a climate campaign stall. He was cornered by the stall’s hosts, a mother and daughter who were vaguely known to the Badger as neighbours from further along the road where he lives. Not wishing to be rude, the Badger listened politely to their pitch about the need for more government action in climate issues and moving away from fossil fuels to save the planet.

They asked if the Badger agreed that reducing  the world’s dependency on fossil fuels was beneficial, and if he soon planned to drive an electric car. He answered Yes and No, respectively, and added that a) he wasn’t sure that the whole-life environmental impact of current electric cars was positive, b) that he expected to drive his trusty diesel SUV for the foreseeable future, and c) that he was already adjusting his behaviours to benefit the planet regardless of campaigns by environmentalists! They seemed a little stunned. The Badger asked if changes to their individual behaviours had reduced, for example, their own energy consumption over the past year, and, looking rather sheepish, they admitted they didn’t know. They disengaged when the stall became busier, and the Badger sidled away to continue browsing through the market.

Walking home afterwards, a car pulled up and asked if the Badger wanted a lift. It was the pair from the climate change stall. The Badger declined the offer on the basis that the exercise was good for both him and the planet. The mother grinned and said ‘You’re a proper ecowarrior! You made us realise that we really should be doing more adjustments to our own day to day behaviour to reinforce pressing our climate message to others’.

The Badger’s been called many things over the years, but never an ecowarrior! Just remember, change starts with the individual and is not the responsibility of others. You too are an ecowarrior if you make small behavioural adjustments that will ultimately benefit our planet. Life is, after all, a journey of continual change, and our inherent individual capacity to change is why our species has come to dominate the planet…

What’s colourless, odourless, beneficial and toxic, and runs the world?

Posted on by The Information Badger in Climate & Environment, Digital devices and the environment, Information Technology, Software

The Badger has a small, framed, vintage print of the Periodic Table of Elements from his school days on his desk. It’s been a constant reminder over the years that everything in our physical world is made up of elements in this table. While at his desk listening to a rather frustrating podcast featuring a climate emissions evangelist and a business leader arguing about fossil fuels, the Badger’s eye was drawn to this trusty print. Something said in the exchange between the protagonists in the podcast made the Badger mentally tune out and recall how his school chemistry teacher used to describe elements in the Periodic Table and common chemical compounds. The trigger for this was the business leader saying that ‘fossil fuels run the world economy and hence our lives and will do so for some time yet’.

It made the Badger look at the framed print on his desk, think of his school chemistry teacher, and decide that it’s not fossil fuels but something colourless, odourless, beneficial and toxic, that cannot be touched or felt and that can be produced by any country, that really runs the world and its economy today, namely software! Fossil fuels and industries that heavily use them bear the brunt for most activism on reducing global carbon emissions, whereas software, which constantly proliferates at the heart of our ever-expanding digital and ICT world, seems to have a lower profile on the ‘green’ activism scale. Notwithstanding Microsoft’s drive to be carbon negative by 2030 and the existence of the Green Software Foundation, it feels like the design, development, testing, release and use of software in every facet of life deserves much more quantitative ‘green’ attention if global digitalisation and the processing and storage of huge amounts of data isn’t to become the next generation’s emissions and resource sustainability crisis.  

Some argue that software and global digitalisation can help to cut our overall global emissions by 15% or more.  However, researchers at Lancaster University suggest not only that this might not be so, but also that while ICT has driven efficiency and productivity improvements over the years, the historical evidence shows that global  emissions have still risen relentlessly.  The devil’s always in the detail, of course, and spin and greenwashing are everywhere, but surely there’s a need for much clearer, quantitative, transparent data and public awareness about emissions  relating specifically to the design, production, and use of software – that colourless, odourless, invisible, cross-border item that runs the world?

The Badger’s school chemistry teacher knew nothing about software, but they were inspiring, articulate, a creative describer of matters of importance, and a stickler for quantitative assessment. They would have applied the same approach for assessing the production and use emissions of software as if it was an element in the Periodic Table…and, perhaps, so should we.

Describe the dynamics of today’s digital world in one word…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Change, Climate & Environment, Delivery, Education, IT Project Management, Life, Online Services, Press & Media, Privacy and Surveillance, Project Management, social media, Technology

Would you find it easy or hard to describe the dynamics of our modern digital world in one word? Would one word immediately come to mind, or would you need time to think before deciding? Rather than decide yourself, would you prefer to converge on a word via a group discussion? What would your word be? An ex senior civil servant, in their eighties with a razor-sharp mind, asked these questions in a recent conversation. The Badger took the easy option, answered ‘don’t know’, and we moved on to other things. The questions, however, have bugged the Badger ever since, and so as Storm Eunice buffeted the windows, he settled in his study listening to a playlist of favourite music to decide his answers.

The answer for the first question was ‘it’s hard’. In fact, it took much longer than expected to decide on one word to answer the last question. The answers to the second and third questions came quick and were straightforward. They were, respectively, time to think rather than spontaneity, and deciding for himself rather than potentially succumbing to  ‘groupthink’. The word the Badger ultimately converged on as the answer to the last question was ‘Creep’.

The word has enormous breadth. In materials technology, ‘creep’ is the movement and permanent deformation of a solid under persistent load ultimately leading to failure. Glaciers and lead on church roofs are simple illustrations of the phenomenon. ‘Scope creep’, when requirements drift away from agreed baselines due to client pressure and poor controls, is well-known to those running businesses, projects, programmes, or service delivery. This kind of ‘creep’ often leads to financial problems, commercial disputes, and serious delays. And then, of course, ‘creep’ is sometimes used to describe people who are unpleasant, untrustworthy, insincere, or are just plain odd in their habits, interests, and behaviours.

‘Creep’ seems a more realistic descriptor for the dynamics of our modern digital world than the word ‘change’. For example, our insatiable demand for resources and fossil fuels is producing creep deformation of aspects of our planet to the point of crisis and questions about our sustainability on it. Additionally, digital innovation and fast technological advancement represents a persistent stress on businesses, governments, and the public producing the erosive creep of personal privacy to the point where societal rupture is a risk. Similarly, the need for social media platforms to keep people engaged and active is causing the creep of fact, news, and sensible debate into just disinformation, misinformation, abuse, and entertainment fuelling growing distrust and antipathy. ‘Creep’, of course, can still be used to describe some people, and it seems particularly apt today for politicians and so-called elites!

Oh, and ‘Creep’, by the way, is a great song by Radiohead! What would your one word to describe the dynamics of today’s world be?

Spike Milligan, Nuclear Fusion and Smart Meters…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Climate & Environment, Nuclear Power, Smart Meters, Technology

Two recent announcements, seemingly unrelated, reminded the Badger of Spike Milligan’s quip ‘And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light, but the Electricity Board said he would have to wait until Thursday to be connected’.

The first was that UK Smart Meters will, by default rather than consumer opt-in, automatically send usage data to suppliers every 30 minutes by 2025  so that ‘time of use’ tariffs charging more at peak times can be offered to all consumers. According to OFGEM, the Regulator, ‘It will enable a more efficient, flexible and greener energy system which will save billions of pounds per year on all consumers’ energy bills’. Hmm, that seems doubtful. Smart Meters have hardly been a success for consumers who haven’t seen any savings in their bills to date from their introduction over the last decade. Will people really change their habits and routines after 2025 for consumer bills to go down? It’s doubtful. Apparently, the fire brigade was not consulted about this announcement, and so we can expect a public outcry when there’s a fire tragedy caused by household appliances running late at night or in the early morning.   

The second announcement was the achievement of a fusion record at JET. There’s a long way to go before commercial fusion power becomes a reality, but this record shows that scientists and engineers are rapidly building the knowledge and technology needed to deliver the  low-carbon, sustainable, baseload energy that future generations need. The Badger doesn’t know if the Electricity Board had a say in when the JET experiment was  conducted, but ‘Let there be light (and heat)’ was certainly achieved!

Which brings us back to Spike Milligan, a man with severe bipolar disorder and famous for surreal humour who died 20 years ago. He was an enthusiastic environmental campaigner and the issues of life on our planet would be a rich source for his dark, surreal, humour if he were alive today. It’s entirely possible that Spike might draw on the electricity, greener energy system, and consumer points that emerge from the announcements above to make quips like ‘The Smart thing with a Smart Meter is not to have one’, ‘I want my energy a different colour to go with the décor’, ‘My Bill needs to go on a diet’. Spike would, however, produce better quips than the Badger’s!

Of the announcements above, it’s the fusion record that should give most cause for optimism about our energy future. While commercial fusion power may still be ’30 years away’, the JET record highlights not only the importance of career scientists and engineers working together to build knowledge, understanding, and to solve world problems, but also that seemingly intractable problems can be overcome to provide energy benefit to us all. The Badger’s always been pro-fusion because, as Spike Milligan observed, ‘One day the “Don’t Knows” will get in and then where will we be?’

Digital pollution

Posted on by The Information Badger in Climate & Environment, Digital devices and the environment, Education, Life, Online Services, Psychology, social media

The High Street, closed to traffic, was crowded with people for the  annual Christmas Street Market. The numerous stalls selling craft items, festive decorations, food, and drink were doing good business. A group of ladies from Rock Choir sang songs and the smell of mulled wine hung enticingly in the air. Turnout was impressive. Everyone was enjoying themselves, especially after covid forced the market’s cancellation last year. Amongst the stalls there some booths where charities and campaign groups were drumming up support for their cause. One of these was manned by a millennial climate change campaigner who radiated enthusiasm. The  crowd moved unexpectedly, and before he could take evasive action the campaigner engaged the Badger in conversation!

Their spiel was well-practiced. Fossil fuels are bad, the oil, plastics, and chemical industries are all irresponsible polluters driven by corporate greed, and people who travel by plane or car are killing the planet. The Badger had no appetite for a prolonged debate, so he pointed to the campaigner’s iPad and to heir colleague listening to music on a smartphone and politely said, ‘You should be looking at your own digital pollution’. Movement of the crowd enabled the Badger to move on before the campaigner, slightly taken aback, could respond.

The Badger’s interest in digital pollution was heightened recently by both reading some articles (e.g. here, here, and here) and getting frustrated at a recent surge in irrelevant emails and ‘you might like’ social media content all of which just got ignored and deleted.  Every email, every interaction with the cloud, every search of the internet, every stream of a song or film, every social media post, every piece of online commentary, argument, misinformation, disinformation and propaganda, and every piece of digital advertising and marketing, not only comes with an emissions price, but also pollutes our well-being – as neatly articulated here.  Digital pollution is real; it has an emissions footprint and an insidious effect on our psychological well-being by affecting our emotional and intellectual capacity. On both counts this is worrying because emissions from building, delivering, and using digital technology already make up 4% of global emissions  and some are predicting an eight-fold rise in data traffic by 2030.

Our digital world has many benefits, but it comes with a form of pollution that’s much less obvious than the oil slicks and plastic flotsam we can readily see. Every interaction with data and online content comes with an emissions price and an insidious impact on how we think, feel, and behave. Just keep this in mind every time you use email, search the internet, and use online services and social media. Young campaigners at Christmas Markets should have digital pollution higher on their agenda. If it’s ignored, then in years to come their children and grandchildren will inevitably blame them for inaction on all of its polluting effects.

Welcome to the metaverse…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Climate & Environment, Life, Smart & New Technology, social media, Technology

As the Badger walked to the local High Street to meet friends, the heavens opened dumping lots of rain on anyone without a coat or an umbrella. Luckily, the local train station was just along the road and a quick sprint for its shelter meant a complete soaking was avoided. Sheltering with others in the station’s ticket hall, the Badger messaged his friends to say he’d be late, and then browsed his smartphone’s news feeds until the rain stopped. Everyone in the ticket hall was doing something similar. In fact, the bedraggled crowd looked like something from a zombie apocalypse, but without any blood.  

A news item entitled ‘PC, internet, smartphone: what’s the next big technological epoch?’ caught the Badger’s eye. Its content answered the question by building on a core 2014 suggestion that the tech/IT industry has evolved through three ‘epochs’, each defined by a core technology and a killer app. The three epochs, in time order, were the advent of the PC, the internet, and mobile computing now epitomised by today’s smartphone. If this last epoch is now peaking, then what’s the next epoch technology for the industry? One possibility suggested is metaverses, a term covering a range of virtual realities covering the workplace, entertainment, and community platforms.  Facebook, apparently, wants to become an online metaverse, but that, in itself, is enough to be wary about a metaverse future.   

As the rain eased, the Badger decided it’s unlikely that metaverses, a word that sounds like marketing technobabble, are the next epoch technology. If they are, then we will have to let companies use even more of our data and also accept a further erosion of personal privacy. Many of us will be reticent about doing this given experiences with social media over the last decade. It also seems unlikely that most of us would want to live our personal and professional lives in virtual worlds when, as the pandemic has shown, we crave the touch, smells, textures, physical interactions with friends and colleagues, and the normal rhythms of the real world that we inhabit.   

The rain stopped, and the Badger resumed his journey, walking briskly and dodging the puddles. Just as the destination came into sight, the heavens opened again.  With mother nature exercising its power with another climate change cloudburst, wondering about the next big epoch in the tech industry felt like an irrelevance. A damp Badger finally arrived and chatted with his friends over coffee. None of them are in the least bit interested in metaverses. One, who’s proud of being ‘a digital native and a digital dinosaur’, pointed out that real life is about much, much, more than bits and bytes manipulated by clever hardware and software. They are so right. It’s very hard to see how metaverses can be an epoch technology that will make real life much better.  

Priorities: Space commercialisation or mankind living in equilibrium with our planet?

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Climate & Environment, Life, Space, Technology

The Badger’s always been open-minded, but on the back of the rah-rah about billionaire’s travelling to the edge of space, G.K Chesterton’s comment ‘Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out’ sprang to mind. It may be a step forwards for commercial space activities but with so many problems to solve here on earth, what’s the real benefit to mankind of billionaires puffing out their chests on becoming a space tourist? In fact, what’s the benefit to mankind of space tourism and the commercialisation of space, period?  If you have the luxury of unconstrained independent philosophical thought, then you get to the answer ‘not a lot’ quite quickly. After decades open-mindedly supporting space technology that helps us understand the universe and our home planet, the Badger finds himself questioning the wisdom of the modern ‘space race’ and space commercialisation.     

The modern space race is driven, in one form or another, by entities desiring ‘control and dominance’. There are dreams of harvesting valuable resources from other planets and of humans as a multi-planetary species, but it’s beginning to feel like mankind will have seriously declined on our home planet long before such dreams are realised in a way that brings benefit to the masses. It’s okay to have a vision and dreams, but when it was 1972 that the last person stood on the moon, and presence on the International Space Station since confirms that humans are biologically unsuited to being away from the home planet for lengthy periods, then there’s an obvious case to be made for focusing more on getting better equilibrium between mankind and our own planet than on space endeavours. Future astronauts might, apparently, be ‘gene-edited’ to overcome these biological issues, but that’s no benefit to mankind or our planet today when it really matters. (It could also mean that humans ultimately morph into being the intergalactic ‘plague of locust’ baddies that are often depicted in sci-fi series and movies. That’s not an attractive legacy for future generations).

Hats off to Messrs. Branson and Bezos for achieving their few minutes of weightlessness at the edge of space before returning safely to earth, but their money would be better spent helping mankind live in better equilibrium with the planet they briefly left.  After all, if your home starts to fall apart around you, most rational people will spend their money fixing it rather than buying an expensive luxury that does nothing to address the immediate problem.

With space debris already a growing problem, commercial satellite mega-constellations like Starlink already being considered as ‘pollutants’ of the night sky and disrupters of  astronomy, then perhaps it’s time to reprioritise away from space back to achieving  sustainable, equilibrium between mankind and it’s home planet. Perhaps the time has come not to be so open-minded about the vested interests of space commercialisation that our brains fall out.

Four wheels and a motor…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Change, Climate & Environment, Electric cars

The UK government announced in 2020 that the sale of new petrol and diesel cars would be banned from 2030. Electric cars, powered by batteries or fuel cells, are the future but there’s a very long way to achieve their mass adoption by the public. The marketing of current rechargeable, battery-powered, electric models trying to persuade us to buy one seems to rise weekly. So far, however, none of it seems to have triggered a truly massive step-change in mass demand from the public who, like the Badger, are still a long way from giving up their existing vehicles for an electric alternative.

New figures show that the average age of cars on UK roads is 8.4 years, that only 1.3% are plug-in hybrid or battery electric, and that more than 60% of cars are 7 or more years old.  Indeed, the Badger’s own trusty vehicle is 10 years old, and fossil fuelled. It’s comfortable, practical, reliable, economic, easy to maintain, 95% recyclable at end of life, and it’s used in a climate-friendly way. Electric car evangelists may think this is heresy, but there’s currently no hard-nosed economic case for the Badger to relinquish it for a used or new electric vehicle. Many people appear to have come to the same conclusion and a recent OFGEM announcement about putting ~1800 new ultra-rapid charging points across the UK motorway network’s service stations  is unlikely to persuade people otherwise.  

The transformation of society to electric cars is a marathon rather than a sprint. We may have started on this marathon but there’s an awfully long way to go with lots of opportunity for bumps on the way. Battery technology continues to advance rapidly and batteries with a 5-minute charge time could be in mass production by 2024. If that’s so, then it shouldn’t be a surprise if people decide against spending their money on new or used electric cars that use today’s battery technology. Range anxiety and effective and convenient charging infrastructure remain barriers to adoption. There are also strategic and geo-political issues associated with sourcing many of the materials necessary for battery manufacture. There are also significant recycling challenges  – see here and here – regarding the recovery of valuable elements from end of life batteries.  Whereas the recycling of fossil-fuelled vehicles, where ~70% is of ferrous metals, is well established and straightforward, electric vehicles contain a far greater variety of metals that are much more complex to recover.

There’s much more to the electric car picture than just zero tail-pipe emissions, and that’s why there’s a very long way to go in this marathon transformation yet. That’s also why the Badger’s own trusty vehicle, which still fulfils its primary function of taking occupants from A to B safely with maximum flexibility and minimum fuss, has some years left before it takes its final journey to the scrap heap to be, perhaps, reincarnated as the bodywork of an electric vehicle…