MyEnviroMind

Some say that money makes the world go around. If such and such is true then what can we do, I wonder, to make our journey enjoyable? We all know the American Dream of a journey, filled with laughter, love and smiles, the sort you see on holiday cruise adverts. How do we make our journey through life - day to day - just as satisfying? If you read last week's blog, you may be able to recollect how Bhutan has put it's people's welfare and environment at the forefront of all its policies. In this way, a place is created for people to achieve happiness. Complete satisfaction that is. Today, going off on a tangent from last week, I'm blogging about banks and building societies. In the developed world, we seem to put heavy emphasis on $, £ and €. It's unlikely that our core driver will ever steer away from money so, in accepting this we ask, how can money provide us with sustainable happiness? In a society that sits on the hands of the exchange rate, we rely on

Wedged between two of the most densely populated countries on Earth, China and India, lies the country of Bhutan. With it being oh-so easy to passively admire the Himalayan mountains and scroll to a new Photoshopped image online, would you stop and allow yourself to be surprised to know that Bhutan is the only country on Earth to be carbon-negative? Today I watched a 2016 TEDTalk presented by Bhutan's Prime Minister, Tshering Tobgay. You can clearly see that his honesty and passion derives from the love of his nation and respect he holds for each individual life. With dignity, he spoke of the path Bhutan has taken and the morals kept at the root of all actions. This is a person proud of his culture, his country and all of humanity. In reality though, it's quite sad that after all this time, society is only just starting to take real notice of these Bhutanese role models.  Found on the walls of Thimphu's School of Traditional Arts are the words that citizens of Bh

Neonicotinoids - heard of them? Nicotine-based pesticides have been banned and un-banned since 2013. Now, there's chance for a re-ban as a new study emerges. These 'neonics' have been in use for over 30 years and the results of studies are extremely varied; some saying neonics have no affect on bees, others say that bee colonies will die because of their use. Could this study finally give us some answers to rely on? Well, no. Biology is nowhere near as straight-forward as the textbooks make it out to be. The £2.7m study was funded by 2 agrochemical companies. This alone makes me question the reliability of the data. Nonetheless, funding has to come from somewhere and at least one company could call out the other should any fraudulent activity occur.  Bee varieties typically found in Europe http://bumblebeeconservation.org/about-bees/identification/ Sample tests of neonic impacts on bees only occurred on patches of oil-seed rape in Hungary, Germany and the U