"Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink"

This quote is from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published originally in 1857. I imagine there are a few people in Gloucestershire and other places in the UK who can empathise with the ancient mariner and his lament. Fair enough, you might say, they are in a dreadful plight, flooded at home with little or no clean water in the immediate future. Strange then, that I was rather angry at a headline on the BBC website "How to cope without running water". Angry? Yes. We live in a privileged society where we take clean water for granted. We even use it to water the garden, clean the car, bathe a muddy dog. Yet there are millions of people in this world who live their entire lives wishing for a cup of uncontaminated water. It has been said that if you could cure Aids in Africa by giving everyone on that continent a cup of clean water you wouldn't be able to do so, not because water lacks the curative properties but, because there is not that volume of clean water.

What has this to do with a green lifestyle? To me, it's a state of mind. One that says I shouldn't be wasting something here that is infinitely more scarce in another part of the world. If we were more careful with our use of water here, fewer resources would be used for purification, for pumping, for all those activities related to getting that water to run out of the tap. Fewer resources used in the UK ultimately means that they are available for use elsewhere.

Is it not obscene that in 2006 the UK market for bottled water was 2.28 billion litres? When there is normally perfectly good water in the tap. Why do we use that same clean water to flush the toilet? When are houses going to be built with re-use of 'grey water' as standard? We live very comfortably when all is said and done. When you brush your teeth tonight, why not turn the tap off while you're brushing? You can use a single glass of water for the task instead of the 15 litres a minute going down the plughole. However indirectly, small changes here will have an impact further afield eventually. Remember that stone thrown into the pond and how far the ripples spread.

I have run out of carrier bags! For many, many years I have minimised my use of carrier bags. Today I finally seem to have achieved my objective of having no plastic carrier bags in that stuffed collection somewhere that we all seem to have. The trouble is, now what do I use as bin liners or to separate the contents of my recycling crate? It would seem extremely silly to buy (plastic) bags for these purposes. Perhaps I should ask for more green crates so that I have one for each type of recycling?

On the other hand, I am having to reduce the level of recycling following Kingston council's plea that we don't put lower grade plastics into the recycling, despite them being recyclable. I had an exchange of correspondence a while back with a supplier of eggs which were in plastic containers. The company said the boxes were recyclable. I pointed out that may be so but it didn't mean that my local council would recycle them. I have been proved right, unfortunately.

I'm not convinced that things will change at any great speed. Where is the pressure on government to find funds to encourage greater plastic recycling? Perhaps we should dump all our empty yoghurt pots on the steps of Westminster?

In the meantime, when will Kingston start doorstep collections of cardboard across the borough? I don't have a car as part of my 'green' way of life. So, I can't take bulky items to the local dump on my bicycle. Luckily for me, there is a local recycling point that does take cardboard. However, judging from what I see my neighbours throw out with their rubbish every week, not many people know of its existence. How do we win this battle?

When did I first actively 'do' something green? I was thinking about it and then suddenly, it came to me: going vegetarian. That was in October 1988.

I'd long had the idea that it would be a 'good idea' but never got round to finding out more. I'd been working away from home quite a lot, eating hotel food and buffet lunches. I was feeling bloated a lot of the time and was probably gaining weight. It occurred to me that I could get the hotels to do the hard bit and only eat meat at the weekends. So that's what I did. What I didn't expect was to lose the taste for meat. One Sunday lunchtime, a meal specially cooked as the in-laws were visiting and I found I couldn't eat the chicken. I just couldn't. From then on, I was vegetarian.

Whenever people have asked why I'm vegetarian I've answered that it's for ethical reasons. Having a degree in biology, I've chopped up a fair few animals of different shapes and sizes, so it's not as if I have a soft spot for small furry animals. I'm not even 100% against animal experimentation.

It's that, if fewer people in the world ate meat, there would actually be more food to go around.

As far back as 1991, the august body that is the World Health Organisation said: "Farming policies that do not require intensive animal production systems would reduce the world demand for cereals. Use of land could be reappraised since cereal consumption for direct consumption by the population is much more efficient and cheaper than dedicating large areas to growing feed for meat production and dairying. Policies should be geared to the growing of plant foods and to limiting the promotion of meat and dairy."

At the height of the Ethiopian famine in 1984-5, Britain imported £1.5 million worth of linseed cake, cottonseed cake and rape seed meal. Although none of this was fit for humans to eat, good quality farmland was still being used to grow animal feed for rich countries when it could have been used to grow food for Ethiopians. An acre of cereal produces five times more protein than an acre used for meat production; legumes such as beans, peas and lentils can produce 10 times more protein and, in the case of soya, 30 times more.

I've only ever met one other person who gave the same reason for giving up meat! And she and I were good friends before this was a topic of conversation.

We are often hearing stories about the growing epidemic of obesity in this country. Part of that is due to the amount of meat and associated saturated fats that are consumed. If people cut down on the amount of meat eaten, their health would most probably improve and there would eventually be a feedback loop to people in the developing world and their diets too. Why not try to reduce your meat consumption? There's lots of information available on how to prepare vegetarian meals (beans on toast for example!) and it can be quite tasty. Honestly!

And why is this 'green'? It encourages better use of the world's resources.

I've been thinking more about light bulbs (sad I know). We really should start giving low energy light bulbs as presents. You've wondered hard and long what to get granny for her birthday? Well, why not replace all her bulbs with nice low energy ones? It'll be ages before they need replacing again (less chance of her falling off the chair trying to do it herself) and her electricity bills will go down.

On a related issue, have you ever wondered why shops leave their lights on overnight? Do you ever feel the need to nip up the High Street and window shop at three in the morning? Most of us could see what's in the window by means of the street lights anyway. So, why don't we start asking shops and stores to turn their lights out? It would an amazing saving in electricity and carbon emissions. There would also be less light pollution. I remember reading something a little while back about a study on our local bats. It seems they don't like flying about when it's too light and it seemed that general background levels of lighting were starting to be too high for them. The avid astronomers amongst us would be happier too.

So, buy your granny some low energy light bulbs for her birthday, switch off in your office or shop and see if you can spot any bats!

I know it was a week ago but I'm still smiling. My daughter made me a present at school, a keyring in metal of my initial. That was great, I really like it. However, there was something else too.... a low energy light bulb! I told her that not many people would get one of those as a present. She replied: "Not many people are like you!" I suppose not, really. I liked the idea though; an appropriate, environmentally present, but also one which will last a long time. You can start getting all starry-eyed about it casting light over us too, along with any other philosophical and metaphorical thoughts. On the other hand, it just makes me smile.

Perhaps more people should give light bulbs as presents!

I was thinking today. I had a lot of time to do that as I was stuffing envelopes for hours, which is a fairly mind-numbing task. I'm unemployed at present so I have been filling part of my time by spending a day a week at the offices of Crisis, the charity for homeless people, working with the community and events fundraising team. I consider myself to be quite lucky in my life and what I have. Lucky enough to feel that I should put something back into society. I strongly believe that our society should not have homeless people. After all, we live in one of the world's richest economies so why do we still have street homelessness and 'hidden homeless' numbering around 380,000 people?

So, my thinking was along the lines of: what is ethical living? If you ask someone if they invest ethically, you usually mean do they avoid arms manufacturers, the tobacco industry, animal testing and so on. If you ask about ethical living, then you might get the "I buy Fairtrade products" answer, along with organic fruit and veg and possibly even the odd organic cotton t-shirt. But, should ethical living be more than that? Should it be about respect for each other, not only our immediate friends and neighbours, nor just the people in London or the UK. Should it mean having a respect for the life of every single person on the planet? That might seem a bit far fetched, I mean I'm not that sure I can impact greatly upon Tibetan monks, for example. However, why is that we are happy to live our lives, light bulbs ablaze, central heating up high, all that food wasted every week (you've heard it on the news it must be true), the 4x4 on the drive when one third of the world's population has no access to electricity and another third has only limited access? Is that ethical? And should we be trying to limit the growth of third world economies through capping their carbon emissions?

The Green/Ethical question was going round in my head (along with worrying visions of envelopes and wonderment at the lack of imagination of church names) following the recent Panorama programme about The Ethical Man: a reporter from Newsnight. It seems he had been told to "go green or else" and "to live ethically" for a year. However, the programme really did seem to concentrate on carbon footprints and less on what you might think of as the 'ethical' issues. But then, there are overlaps, aren't there. Reduce carbon emissions (give up your car say), less global warming, sea levels don't rise quite so high and the inhabitants of low lying islands won't have to leave home so soon. Buy Fairtrade and help put some investment into communities that can develop their standard of living, improve schooling etc. Buy organic and reduce the amount of expensive chemicals used to grow our food. Eat less meat and feed more people directly from plant sources. Save your used postage stamps and pass them to a charity that can sell them on (there are still stamp collectors out there!). We have a lot to share if we think about it. It's also there to be wasted too. Sadly.

Green thoughts, ethical impact?