April has arrived (and so has yet another birthday) and votes for the 'most moving tunes on Planet Earth' have come in from across the planet, with 16 different countries so far on the list. As ever more are always needed.
The largest number of votes come from the UK and USA but other countries are well represented in the voting and include Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Phillipines, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Singapore, Maylasia, Norway, Greece, Denmark, and Peru. The most moving tunes on Planet Earth are coming in slowly but surely, which is really great news.
A short documentary on efforts being made by individuals and groups in response to the environmental plastic problem will include 24 Hours On Planet Earth. It's being made by Birmingham University and should be on u-tube to view in May.
Some of you (especially the Aussies) will have heard of Shirley Lewis AKA 'The Baglady' who was instrumental in highlighting the problem of plastic bags in Australia from 2000. She created the first Australian baglady and subsequently baglords. She now campaigns in Northern Ireland and has given her support to the 24 HOPE website calling it a 'brilliant idea'.
I've had a few questions asking for clarification on what it's all about and have updated the FAQ to try and make it easier to understand the purpose of the site without having to read all of it.
Just in case you are still a little unsure 24 HOPE aims to give plastic in the environment a value by paying for it to be picked up for collection, recycling and reuse. By removing the plastic the environment is improved, and so is the local economy. The funding required to pay for the plastic is to be raised via the sale of the complation of the most moving tunes on planet earth collected by the 24 Hours On Planet Earth website.
As ever many, many more votes are required. I'm hoping for a million votes as that will raise the profile of the problem immensely and open up many more options for funding, recycling and reuse.
Until next time
Lionel
Tuesday, 8 April 2008
Tuesday, 25 March 2008
I stand corrected. The Aussies ARE voting!
Yes, I'm very pleased to report that the Aussies are indeed voting, they've just been waiting for me to winge like a typical pom it seems. Thanks guys, I stand corrected.
PS. I gotta say, I so enjoyed OZ I can't wait to go back.
PS. I gotta say, I so enjoyed OZ I can't wait to go back.
YAY!!! The votes are pouring in.
Excellent, excellent news. Votes are pouring in, and they are coming from all over the planet!
It's been brilliant to see Kiwi's, Yanks, Danes, Greeks, Philipinos, Indians and Brits among many others (no Aussies yet I notice) taking the time to register support and vote, and a big thank you to everyone who has e-mailed me with messages of support.
It's a funny thing, I never guessed how just a few messages of support could really make such a positive impact on me. It's absolutely bloody WONDERFUL to find out that people all over the place have the same concerns and such a willingness to share and help out.
I even have to thank the lovely American ladies who threw me out of their local environmental group for not being local enough. You really did make me laugh! There's nothing like a good local group for local people eh!
All along I've been interested in the stories and reasons behind the tunes and it seems others are too, so I've set up a Google group unsurprisingly called 24 Hours on Planet Earth where people can share the reasons behind the tunes. I've started it off with my own reasons but am being mysterious about the actual tunes themselves, I wouldn't want to influence anyone now would I. You can visit it at : http://groups.google.com/group/24-hours-on-planet-earth
Again, a very big thank you to everyone who's taken the time to vote.
Lionel
It's been brilliant to see Kiwi's, Yanks, Danes, Greeks, Philipinos, Indians and Brits among many others (no Aussies yet I notice) taking the time to register support and vote, and a big thank you to everyone who has e-mailed me with messages of support.
It's a funny thing, I never guessed how just a few messages of support could really make such a positive impact on me. It's absolutely bloody WONDERFUL to find out that people all over the place have the same concerns and such a willingness to share and help out.
I even have to thank the lovely American ladies who threw me out of their local environmental group for not being local enough. You really did make me laugh! There's nothing like a good local group for local people eh!
All along I've been interested in the stories and reasons behind the tunes and it seems others are too, so I've set up a Google group unsurprisingly called 24 Hours on Planet Earth where people can share the reasons behind the tunes. I've started it off with my own reasons but am being mysterious about the actual tunes themselves, I wouldn't want to influence anyone now would I. You can visit it at : http://groups.google.com/group/24-hours-on-planet-earth
Again, a very big thank you to everyone who's taken the time to vote.
Lionel
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
Welcome
Here's my very first blog. A bit slow off the mark for a 40 something who has actually taught I.T. before I suppose, but better late than never so they say.
I should introduce myself, My name is Lionel Smith, I live in London for the most part and I've recently returned from a trip of a lifetime (for me anyhow) around the Southern Hemisphere, that has had a profound impact on the way I see in the world around me.
The impact has been so strong that on the day after I returned to the UK I registered the domain names www.24hoursonplanetearth.com and www.24hope.com to make a start at doing something about what I'd finally seen. Please have a look.
I've never had a blog before as I've mentioned, let alone a website, so this is all new to me, please bear with me while I get the hang of them both.
Perhaps, I should get down to the nitty gritty and just let you all know what it was that hit me so strongly that I HAVE TO write about it.
Well, it was what I spent most of my trip trying my best not to notice, what I tried so hard to overlook, what I spent so much time making sure was out of the picture.
PLASTIC BAGS!
Old ones, tatty ones, wind swept ones, bags clinging to cacti in remote deserts, draped over branches in high woodlands, and littering the shorelines of tropical paradise islands. I've seen them all.
Almost everywhere I went (with a couple of notable exceptions - New Zealand I salute you) I spent so much time trying to make sure that the bags weren't in the photos I was taking, that I was eventually forced to open my eyes and really see what was right under my nose.
The sheer scale of the problem first worked its way into my resisting brain as I drove through a Southern African desert and stopped after driving for 3 hours having not seeing another vehicle or person, only to find wind blown bags at the roadside and in the desert scrub. I stopped again 2 hours later after still not seeing another soul or vehicle and as I got out of the car a tatty bag was blown round my ankle.
Bags it seemed had colonised the desert like some insidious plague,wrapping themselves around the scrub plants and clinging tightly to the ancient rocks. I made sure they weren't in my photos of the glorious desert lanscapes.
When I found habitation I just generally asked about the plastic bags and was given as many explanations as people I spoke to. It was down to lazy tourists, public apathy, poor or no public services, no local pride, changes in the government, unemployment, drunks, racial and ethnic group behaviours, bad weather, you name it.
Interestingly almost everyone saw it as a problem, just nobody was doing anything about it, or even prepared to do anything about it except moan or ignore it. That was the first time I think I asked the question, 'If the plastic was valuable, do you think would people would pick it up?' The answer was not surprisingly yes.
I'll cut an extended story short and just say as I continued my journey I noticed the poorer an area appeared to be, the worse the plastic bag and litter problem. In some places I was truely shocked at the state of the landscape. The splashes of colour came from the multi-coloured bags not the flowers. I didn't really want to have that as a memory of my trip, so I continued to ensure that plastic bags stayed out of my photos, taking particular care to get views that were mostly plastic free.
For no apparent reason at the time I kept asking people if they thought the plastic would be picked up if it were valuable. Yes was the answer where ever I went.
I encountered the same problem is on a paradise island in the pacific.
Eager on my first day to dive into the warm ocean on a palm fringed beach with golden sand I headed straight for the nearest seafront and was desperately disappointed at the plastic bags washed up on the shore and dunes and accumulating in the ditches beside the road. Not what I had expected at all! I of course Found a view from one dune that didn't have plastic bags in it and took my pics for the album. Nice clean plastic free photos, no problems on my paradise island.
I found myself casually asking the same question I'd asked before. Locals all agreed that it was a problem, gave all kind of reasons for it, all amazingly similiar to ones I'd heard before, with the unsurprising addition of cruise ships to the list, but all agreed if the plastic was valuable it certainly wouldn't be lying in ditches.
I didn't know it then, but an idea was brewing somewhere in my brain. It just needed a bit of a shock to the system to knock it out.
That came when I visited New Zealand. I had become so accustomed to seeing plastic bags everywhere that New zealand was just the shock I needed.
At first I couldn't put my finger on it. The pristine forests, the golden sand beaches, the green open fields and the flowers beside the roads, even the motorway. Something was different. It gnawed at the back of my mind, and it wasn't just that wonderful sharp edged light New Zealand is so rightly famous for. My camera worked overtime, and for the first time on my journey every image was taken as it was laid out by nature infront of me, no special angles or moving on, no little tidy ups or tweaks. New Zealand was the perfect contrast to where I had come from and what I had seen. It is for me I suspect, also the start of a lifelong love affair with another country.
It was in the plastic bag free, lush and temperate rainforest of the South Island that my random thoughts came together and with the help of a few good tunes blasting out in the car an idea materialised of how it might be possible to make discarded plastic bags valuable.
Why not simply give them a value by paying for them?
That leads to the question where to get the money from?
The special tunes blaring from my i-pod that had squeezed a few tears from me and were giving me goosebumps gave me a possible answer. A compilation of the most moving tunes ever made, to clean up the plastic that is wrapping itself round our beautiful and lonley planet,
A crazy idea perhaps, but I have to try to see if it has support. Perhaps people do want plastic removed from the environment, and perhaps people will be prepared to share their most important tunes for that purpose, and maybe, just maybe people would be willing to pay for CD 's or Downloads of a collection of 24 hours of the most moving music ever created.
It's going to need lot of money and it's going to need a lot of help and goodwill, especially on the part of the global plastics industry, not to mention governments, local authorities and most importantly local people.
It will be real people that remove the scourge of used plastic bags from the environment because it has to be done. Plastic isn't like anything else we've created, (except perhaps nuclear materials) it is not going to go away, our great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will still be able to see we went shopping at Tesco's and Walmart and Woolworths.
I don't pretend to have all the answers to all the questions of how to deal with the plastic in the environment, but I am sure that with enough support and interest in this idea that there will be people and ways and means that will be able help make a start at clearing up the mess we never really meant to make.
Have a look at my website www.24hoursonplanetearth.com and show your support by voting for the four most important tunes of your life.
It's my attempt at trying to make a difference. I hope you will want to as well.
I should introduce myself, My name is Lionel Smith, I live in London for the most part and I've recently returned from a trip of a lifetime (for me anyhow) around the Southern Hemisphere, that has had a profound impact on the way I see in the world around me.
The impact has been so strong that on the day after I returned to the UK I registered the domain names www.24hoursonplanetearth.com and www.24hope.com to make a start at doing something about what I'd finally seen. Please have a look.
I've never had a blog before as I've mentioned, let alone a website, so this is all new to me, please bear with me while I get the hang of them both.
Perhaps, I should get down to the nitty gritty and just let you all know what it was that hit me so strongly that I HAVE TO write about it.
Well, it was what I spent most of my trip trying my best not to notice, what I tried so hard to overlook, what I spent so much time making sure was out of the picture.
PLASTIC BAGS!
Old ones, tatty ones, wind swept ones, bags clinging to cacti in remote deserts, draped over branches in high woodlands, and littering the shorelines of tropical paradise islands. I've seen them all.
Almost everywhere I went (with a couple of notable exceptions - New Zealand I salute you) I spent so much time trying to make sure that the bags weren't in the photos I was taking, that I was eventually forced to open my eyes and really see what was right under my nose.
The sheer scale of the problem first worked its way into my resisting brain as I drove through a Southern African desert and stopped after driving for 3 hours having not seeing another vehicle or person, only to find wind blown bags at the roadside and in the desert scrub. I stopped again 2 hours later after still not seeing another soul or vehicle and as I got out of the car a tatty bag was blown round my ankle.
Bags it seemed had colonised the desert like some insidious plague,wrapping themselves around the scrub plants and clinging tightly to the ancient rocks. I made sure they weren't in my photos of the glorious desert lanscapes.
When I found habitation I just generally asked about the plastic bags and was given as many explanations as people I spoke to. It was down to lazy tourists, public apathy, poor or no public services, no local pride, changes in the government, unemployment, drunks, racial and ethnic group behaviours, bad weather, you name it.
Interestingly almost everyone saw it as a problem, just nobody was doing anything about it, or even prepared to do anything about it except moan or ignore it. That was the first time I think I asked the question, 'If the plastic was valuable, do you think would people would pick it up?' The answer was not surprisingly yes.
I'll cut an extended story short and just say as I continued my journey I noticed the poorer an area appeared to be, the worse the plastic bag and litter problem. In some places I was truely shocked at the state of the landscape. The splashes of colour came from the multi-coloured bags not the flowers. I didn't really want to have that as a memory of my trip, so I continued to ensure that plastic bags stayed out of my photos, taking particular care to get views that were mostly plastic free.
For no apparent reason at the time I kept asking people if they thought the plastic would be picked up if it were valuable. Yes was the answer where ever I went.
I encountered the same problem is on a paradise island in the pacific.
Eager on my first day to dive into the warm ocean on a palm fringed beach with golden sand I headed straight for the nearest seafront and was desperately disappointed at the plastic bags washed up on the shore and dunes and accumulating in the ditches beside the road. Not what I had expected at all! I of course Found a view from one dune that didn't have plastic bags in it and took my pics for the album. Nice clean plastic free photos, no problems on my paradise island.
I found myself casually asking the same question I'd asked before. Locals all agreed that it was a problem, gave all kind of reasons for it, all amazingly similiar to ones I'd heard before, with the unsurprising addition of cruise ships to the list, but all agreed if the plastic was valuable it certainly wouldn't be lying in ditches.
I didn't know it then, but an idea was brewing somewhere in my brain. It just needed a bit of a shock to the system to knock it out.
That came when I visited New Zealand. I had become so accustomed to seeing plastic bags everywhere that New zealand was just the shock I needed.
At first I couldn't put my finger on it. The pristine forests, the golden sand beaches, the green open fields and the flowers beside the roads, even the motorway. Something was different. It gnawed at the back of my mind, and it wasn't just that wonderful sharp edged light New Zealand is so rightly famous for. My camera worked overtime, and for the first time on my journey every image was taken as it was laid out by nature infront of me, no special angles or moving on, no little tidy ups or tweaks. New Zealand was the perfect contrast to where I had come from and what I had seen. It is for me I suspect, also the start of a lifelong love affair with another country.
It was in the plastic bag free, lush and temperate rainforest of the South Island that my random thoughts came together and with the help of a few good tunes blasting out in the car an idea materialised of how it might be possible to make discarded plastic bags valuable.
Why not simply give them a value by paying for them?
That leads to the question where to get the money from?
The special tunes blaring from my i-pod that had squeezed a few tears from me and were giving me goosebumps gave me a possible answer. A compilation of the most moving tunes ever made, to clean up the plastic that is wrapping itself round our beautiful and lonley planet,
A crazy idea perhaps, but I have to try to see if it has support. Perhaps people do want plastic removed from the environment, and perhaps people will be prepared to share their most important tunes for that purpose, and maybe, just maybe people would be willing to pay for CD 's or Downloads of a collection of 24 hours of the most moving music ever created.
It's going to need lot of money and it's going to need a lot of help and goodwill, especially on the part of the global plastics industry, not to mention governments, local authorities and most importantly local people.
It will be real people that remove the scourge of used plastic bags from the environment because it has to be done. Plastic isn't like anything else we've created, (except perhaps nuclear materials) it is not going to go away, our great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will still be able to see we went shopping at Tesco's and Walmart and Woolworths.
I don't pretend to have all the answers to all the questions of how to deal with the plastic in the environment, but I am sure that with enough support and interest in this idea that there will be people and ways and means that will be able help make a start at clearing up the mess we never really meant to make.
Have a look at my website www.24hoursonplanetearth.com and show your support by voting for the four most important tunes of your life.
It's my attempt at trying to make a difference. I hope you will want to as well.
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