Native bees

Australian native bees are easy to care for. They need
1) A hive box
2) Sun in the morning
3) Shade in the afternoon
4) 18 deg celsius to fly
They are an easy to care for pet and they give a delicious honey.

Native Bee Hive in workshop - OATH design

You can find Hive designs at sugarbag.net website. 
A good book about native bees and keeping stingless bees is The Australian Native Bee Book by Tim Heard (ISBN 978-0-646-93997-1).

Light a candle

The Observer has an article about people becoming anxious about the climate emergency. I don't think being anxious helps the planet.

One of the factors of the emergency is biodiversity.

The local environment group plants native plants along a creek creating habitat for native animals. We also remove the worst weeds. The community enjoys the improvements. We feel good and the environment improves.

It is better to lit a candle than to curse the darkness.

The article refers to the Imperial Colleges Grantham Institute which has list of nine actions for ordinary folk:

Incidentally the book mentioned in a previous post gave similar answers with analysis: Time to eat the dog? - the real guide to sustainable living by Robert and Brenda Vale- ISBN 978 0 500 28790 3

Cough Cough

I'm coughing, the neighbours are coughing.
The towers of the city are barely visible though the smoke haze.
All day the heat has been intense though the sun has been dim.
The sunset was dim and diffuse.

Bushfire has made this city unhealthy and unpleasant.
Burning coal to extend bushfire season and make fires more frequent and more intense seems to be a bad idea.

Plastic bathroom

My bathroom practices seem to generate a lot of plastic waste.
So I am attempting to reduce the amount of plastic I throw away.

1) Snore strips
To aid my breathing at night I was sticking plastic strips across the bridge of my nose let more air in. But it meant that there was waste plastic every day. I now use a nasal spray. The spray still has a plastic spray on top of a glass bottle so it is a reduction not an elimination.

2) Cotton tips
I remember that when I was a child they were rolled-up paper with cotton on each end. Now most brands are plastic sticks with cotton on each end. But, good news, the rolled up paper ones are available - only one brand in one size packet and not the jumbo containers of the plastic ones. Still available is available and still pretty cheap.

3) Soap
I have been using liquid wash from a plastic bottle with a pump dispenser. Soap bars are still available but try finding one without palm oil. Palm oil mostly comes from plantations that used to be rainforest. Even Palmolive seems to have mostly palm with little olive. But some research revealed The Australian Olive Oil Soap made without palm oil and no plastic packaging.

4) Shampoo
My beloved has found a that the hairdresser will refill bottles with shampoo and conditioner at a reasonable price. The formula supplier produces a product without palm oil and is committed to ethical/green principals. The brand is Everescents.

5) Next is shaving without a disposable plastic razor. I shave with a safety razor for the first time last night.

Seasonal Music

I enjoy the holiday by avoiding shopping and going to parties with my friends and family. This year I am preparing the music playlist for the family dinner.

I like to put together Xmas songs that are not the usual songs. Bing Crosbys songs for example are played so much that I have banned them. And the Wham song Last Xmas is sung by everyone. So when I go to op shops I look for any unusual Xmas CDs, Sometimes there are one or two songs that are not old carols and are not the common fare.

So far I have about 6 hours worth of unusual Xmas songs gleaned from nineteen different albums. Including:
One of the family album by Graeme Connors
The O.C. Mix 3 Have a very merry Christmukkah  album from the TV series
Christmas with Kamahl
A winter symphony by Sarah Brightman

$ - Unit of measure for Emergency

Extract From The Guardian website:

Emergency = R × U = p × D × τ / T

In a comment article in the journal Nature, Schellnhuber and colleagues explained that to understand the climate emergency we needed to quantify the relationship between risk (R) and urgency (U).

Borrowing from the insurance industry, the scientists define risk (R) as the probability of something happening (p) multiplied by damage (D).

For example, how likely is it that sea levels will rise by a metre and how much damage will that cause.

Urgency (U) is the time it takes you to react to an issue (τ) “divided by the intervention time left to avoid a bad outcome (T)”, they wrote.

Then looking at the units of measure:
      p is a number - no units
      D (Damage) is in dollars
      τ and T are time and cancel each other out.
So an emergency is measured in dollars.

That is something politicians can understand.

Enduring Plastic

Plastic can last a long time.
In 1988 or 1989 when I was renovating a old Queenslander (style of timber house) I bought a tool box from the discount table at the local Mitre 10 hardware store.
I still have it and with a clean it could pass for new. It was made by Cooper Tools and was branded "Home Improvement" from the name of Tim Allens TV show.

My yellow toolbox at thirty years old.

I think it could last forever.