Being Green

Being Green - 21 May 2021

John Richards talked to Prof John S Compton, geo-chemist and emeritus professor of geology, UCT, about the geology and natural history of the West Coast, the basis for his new book West Coast - a Natural History. The publisher is Earthspun Books. Website: johnscompton.com

21 May 2021 7 min

Being Green - 14 May 2021

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s regional director for Southern Africa, Professor Hubert Gijzen, visited both the University of Cape Town and the Cape Floral Region Protected Area on Tuesday to assess the damage following the devastating mountain fire in April. As UNESCO has accorded the Cape Floral Kingdom…

14 May 2021 8 min

Being Green - 07 May 2021

John Richards talked to Prof John S Compton, geo-chemist and emeritus professor of geology, UCT, about the geology and natural history of the West Coast, the basis for his new book West Coast - a Natural History. The publisher is Earthspun Books. Website: johnscompton.com

7 May 2021 6 min

Being Green - 30 Apr 2021

This week in Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Anton Hanekom, Executive Director of Plastics SA, the umbrella body for the industry in South Africa. Just over two weeks ago, government gazetted new regulations regarding plastic bags. From 2027, all plastic carrier bags and flat bags used in the country…

30 Apr 2021 7 min

Being Green - 23 Apr 2021

Suddenly for very cogent reasons there’s been a lot of talk about the “urban edge” this week, and the twitterati have had a field day with instant judgments of the ‘us and them’ variety. They need to leave instead of cluttering up the suburbs with homeless infrastructure like makeshift tents…

23 Apr 2021 4 min

Being Green - 16 Apr 2021

This week in Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Alison Davison, Head for Waste Minimisation for the City of Cape Town, about a pilot project to divert organic waste from landfills. In South Africa, a third of the food produced is never consumed and 90% of it ends up in…

16 Apr 2021 6 min

Being Green - 09 Apr 2021

You quite often see big ocean-mining vessels tied up alongside in the harbour, with – to me at any rate – intriguing engineering gear towering up out of their innards, and specialized pumps and mining what-not on display. And somehow there’s also a tinge of apprehension about what exactly happens…

9 Apr 2021 5 min

Being Green - 02 Apr 2021

This week in Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Australia-based South African author, Jax Moorcroft, about her book, The Flexitarian Foodie, published by Penguin. A flexitarian diet is one in which you eat mostly plant-based foods, and only occasionally meat and other animal products, and is widely considered to be…

2 Apr 2021 6 min

Being Green - 26 Mar 2021

The energy landscape has been thrown into high relief by the Coronavirus pandemic. Of course we know that, the “economy” has suffered a major disruption, income from tourism plummeting, shutdowns and lockdowns, economic shocks of all descriptions have had their effects across the board. Conservation of biodiversity just one of…

26 Mar 2021 5 min

Being Green - 19 Mar 2021

In Being Green this week, Glynis Crook speaks to Michal Šťastný of the Safari Park Dvůr Králové in the Czech Republic about an experimental project underway at two zoos on opposite sides of the country. To make up for the lack of interaction under Covid-19 restrictions, they are live streaming…

19 Mar 2021 8 min

Being Green - 12 Mar 2021

They are throwing huge boulders into the sea just off the coast of Britain, near Brighton in the English Channel. Who are they? GREENPEACE, the environmental activists and botherers. Why are they doing this? Well, it really annoys the British fishing industry, and the fishing police get very cross.

12 Mar 2021 4 min

Being Green - 05 Mar 2021

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Georgina Smit, head of technical at the Green Building Council of SA, about a pop-up building that is currently on display in the Green Point Urban Park. It was the winning design in the ultimate ‘clean green home’ competition,…

5 Mar 2021 6 min

Being Green - 26 Feb 2021

Some environment-related news events and community happenings that have turned up in this bizarre period of we-are-about-to-be un-locked-down but not-just yet. The green energy debate has continued to run in circles in America, despite (or perhaps because of) the announcement from President Biden that he would re-enter the USA as…

26 Feb 2021 5 min

Being Green - 19 Feb 2021

The race for South Africa’s Green Economy is on, though you would be forgiven for not really noticing it. But it is happening, say proponents of the Green Economy, and they’re getting on with it while most of us have our heads buried in the complexities of vaccine politics.

19 Feb 2021 5 min

Being Green - 12 Feb 2021

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to arborist and Chairman of the Friends of the Arderne Gardens, Francois Krige, about efforts to save a 150-year-old Cork Oak which fell over recently. It is one of six so-called Champion Trees in the garden, a designation given to…

12 Feb 2021 7 min

Being Green - 05 Feb 2021

In Being Green, we go back to a story from last year about hundreds of elephants dying in Botswana’s Okavango Delta region. Following tests in specialist laboratories in South Africa, Canada, Zimbabwe and the US, the authorities announced the cause to be the ingestion of cyanobacteria at water holes. In…

5 Feb 2021 7 min

Being Green - 29 Jan 2021

Hullo fr me, JR & Bng Grn. With The Vaccine on the horizon – hold thumbs – perhaps we can breathe a little easier. And now that the dust is settling around the U S Capitol and the White House (Is it?), my mind returns to the big picture.

29 Jan 2021 4 min

Being Green - 22 Jan 2021

Table Mountain is so very much part of our lives as Capetonians that perhaps we almost forget that we have this incredible UNESCO World Heritage Site right in front of us, dominating the city. In Being Green this week, Glynis Crook speaks to Marie Abraham, environmental control officer at the…

22 Jan 2021 6 min

Being Green - 15 Jan 2021

The news gets better every day. Well we have to believe in something. The negative psychological toll on our mental well-being in this time of the plague is difficult to quantify, but I feel it is huge.

15 Jan 2021 5 min

Being Green - 08 Jan 2021

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Gabriella Leighton of the Urban Caracal Project. To find out more about the organisation’s work, you can go to: www.urbancaracal.org.

8 Jan 2021 6 min