Low Impact

www.ecofoot.org can help calculate your ecological footprint

For many readers of Low Impact, the concept of an “ecological footprint” won’t be anything new. Basically, your footprint is the amount of the Earth’s resources that are necessary to support your lifestyle.

So, for instance, if you eat a lot of meat, use a lot of energy and buy a lot of consumable goods, you require a lot of the Earth’s resources. By contrast, if you use renewable energy, eat mostly plant-based foods, and buy relatively few material goods, you make less call on the Earth’s resources.

It’s always going to… Continue reading

Solar cell technology isn't standing still

We hear about all the money being invested in “clean coal” nowadays, and very little about developments in the renewable sector. You’d be forgiven for thinking that green technologies are a little stagnant right now. I mean, there’s only so much you can do to improve on a turbine to catch the wind, or a wafer of silicon to catch the sun, right?

But there’s a lot of energy (excuse the pun!) going into building better, cheaper and more efficient green energy sources. A great example of this is in an article published recently on IEEE Spectrum entitled “First Solar: Quest for the $1 Watt“. Continue reading

Climate Change is a global problem, but it will have local impacts

We’ve all heard the predictions of how climate change could impact the planet over the years ahead. The number of heatwave days will increase by a certain amount. The average global temperature will increase by a certain number of degrees. The average sea level will rise by a certain number of centimetres…or metres.

We read these statistics, and we recognise that they’re bad. But it can be hard to relate those abstract numbers to our day-to-day existence. The numbers are global, but our daily experiences are local.

An interesting development is that of… Continue reading