I've bought several reusable plastic bags over the last year and, some how, I've never got round to actually reusing them. Instead they've been folded neatly and left in the kitchen. Utterly useless. However, at the beginning of last week as I popped into Asda's for my daily 'I've forgotten something from the weekly shop' catch up, I remembered to pick one up. The day before, you see, I'd used two plastic bags and promptly thrown them in the bin afterwards. I realised if I did that five times a week on random items then I could use up to 10 bags per week. And if I used that volume every week, it was entirely likely I could use 520 plastic bags per year.
If you'd like to add your voice to the growing number concerned about the Trident replacement issue, which is detailed on the CND site, there are already a lot of petitions and protests to get involved with, many of them accessible from your desk. Designer Katherine Hamnett of choose life fame is leading a letter writing campaign at her website, which provides all the info you'll need to lobby your MP, but you've only got one more day to do it. If you want to be closer to the action, however, CND will be holding an emergency lobby of parliament on the day of the vote.
Doing my weekly 'big shop' this weekend, I think I counted two other people reusing carrier bags. And despite the racks of bags-for-life and notices on every aisle promising brownie points for bringing your own bag, I still had to fight the shop assistants' attempts to put my groceries in a plastic bag at the checkout.
So I was heartened to see that someone's started this online campaign to get more people into the habit of having a shopper-bag on them at all times. Carry on Carriers set weekly 'challenges' to readers, and have produced this lovely little video which I think should be a compulsory part of checkout training...
There are 9 million children on this planet who are refugees. Of the 6 billion people alive on Earth today, 2.1 billion of them are children. If you can't do the maths, by our calculations that means that 0.4% of the world's children - or nearly one in every 200 - are refugees.
In an attempt to do our part to help combat this problem, Hippyshopper is taking part in Click4theCause, a collaboration between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Microsoft.
For every web search made using Click4theCause, Microsoft will donate money to the ninemillion.org campaign, which provides refugee children with education and sports programmes.
Black rhinos are among the most endangered species in the world, but their number went up by one on Monday when Sita, a rhino at Devon's Paignton Zoo, gave birth live on webcam.
If cooing over the baby rhino has you wondering what you can do to help endangered species (other than naming the calf), check out the latest book from natural collection.
This site is a real gem, and a must-see for anyone who's ever been seized by the desire to do something to make the world a better place but not known where to start. From the people behind Change the World for a Fiver, We Are What We Do describes itself as 'a new movement dedicated to inspiring people to use their everyday actions to change the world', and just browsing it made me feel much more empowered and positive about my own, individual impact.
It's crammed full of tips, and includes an 'actions tracker' that rewards you for good deeds and allows you to keep tabs on how well you're doing towards changing the world. In this respect, it's a bit like a cross between Brownies and Danny Wallace's Random Acts of Kindness.
Join the BBC's Nest Box Challenge and help the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) with its wild bird survey.
You can make your own box (instructions on the site), or pick up a free kit at one of the BBC nest box events being run around the country on the 17th and 18th of February.
Once you've got your bird home installed, click here to register it and then see who moves in...
I've bought several reusable plastic bags over the last year and, some how, I've never got round to actually reusing them. Instead they've been folded neatly and left in the kitchen. Utterly useless. However, at the beginning of last week as I popped into Asda's for my daily 'I've forgotten something from the weekly shop' catch up, I remembered to pick one up. The day before, you see, I'd used two plastic bags and promptly thrown them in the bin afterwards. I realised if I did that five times a week on random items then I could use up to 10 bags per week. And if I used that volume every week, it was entirely likely I could use 520 plastic bags per year.
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Debate continues to rage over the government's plans to go ahead with a new generation of 
Black rhinos are among the most endangered species in the world, but their number went up by one on Monday when Sita, a rhino at Devon's Paignton Zoo, gave birth live on webcam. 
