The first UK Green Film Festival....

The UK Green Film Festival is being held for the first time this weekend. The festival will showcase films and filmmakers dealing with environmental issues and climate change themes. A few of the films being shown include FernGully, Godzilla and Plastic Planet. It will include the nationwide premiere of the film 'Planeat', a story about a quest to find a sustainable, healthy diet (which doesn't sound quite as thrilling as say, Godzilla, but should be fairly interesting....).

• 2011 Green Film Festival Timetable

Join the Fish Fight....

Luckily for me, I am not a seafood fan....not because of any sustainability arguments (although there are many) but just because I honestly can't stand the taste. As I was so fond of reiterating during my childhood when well-meaning relatives would try and encourage me to eat fish, prawns, lobster, calamari etc...."nothing from the sea please! I don't eat anything that swims or lives underwater". But this isn't really about my fussy eating habits. This is about Greenpeace's current campaign to improve the sustainability of UK tinned tuna, and they are doing incredibly well but they are still appealing for consumers to help them even more and influence, in particular, John West and Morrisons, to raise their games.

Many of us are familiar with the dangers of certain commercial tuna fishing methods and the impact they have on sharks, rays and other marine species. If you want to know more, I suggest you check out the Greenpeace website (www.greenpeace.org.uk/fishfight) and/or check out Hugh's Fish Fight which is being shown again tonight at 10pm on More 4.

A fantastic number of supermarkets and manufacturers have joined the campaign and improved their methods but for some reason John West and Morrisons are lagging behind. The simplest thing you can do of course is not buy John West and not shop at Morrisons but you can also join the campaign by writing to them via the Greenpeace website. With so many supermarkets improving their methods there really is no excuse for others not to do the same, so make sure you voice your disapproval and let them know it's not a minority 'treehugger' concern but something that everyone is aware of and not prepared to accept!

Keep one Onya (groan....)......

I am truly appalling at remembering to take my own bags with me when I go grocery shopping. Although I generally do manage to take my own bags along when doing a ‘big shop’, I tend to forget when it’s just a general popping in to get a few groceries, or when it’s not for groceries at all but clothes or books or toiletries etc. And I have all manner of cloth/hemp/plastic shopping bags but the issue is just that I don’t take them with me when I’m not anticipating a major shopping trip.

Hence my purchase of an Onya bag. It’s the best ‘fold-up’ bag I’ve seen/bought predominantly because it’s made out of parachute material so it can be stuffed into its own little pouch in a couple of seconds (I used to have another synthetic fold-up bag but it seemed to require advanced engineering skills to return it, folded and neat, into the little pouch it came with). Visit www.onyabags.co.uk. to check out their range. I have the original Onya which is the perfect size to keep in my bag for general purchases.

Plastic bags just seem such a ridiculous way of causing environmental damage when really, they’re so easily avoided. I still forget to carry my Onya bag with me sometimes, and have to use plastic ones, but I’ve definitely cut down and managed to avoid unnecessary leftist environmental guilt! ;)