Most of us are guilty of not recycling enough, and unfortunately this is a global issue. An issue that is progressively getting worse, and the damage caused is becoming almost irreparable. Society has become accustomed to living a consumer driven lifestyle. Meaning that we buy products with the view of throwing them away once they are no longer of functional use. Although the UK recycling rate is (currently) gradually increasing, since a majority of our environmental laws derive from EU law; there is much scepticism as to whether the UK Government will prioritise recycling once we exit the EU. The UK recycling rate for Waste from Households (WfH; including IBA…
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Five New Year’s Resolutions for Environmental Practitioners
It that time of the year unfortunately, the festive season is over, winter is in full swing, at least if you are in the northern hemisphere and finances are generally low (at least until February!). However now is the time to set some environmental new year’s resolutions. In this post I’ve come up with a few ideas for environmental professionals. Some will be relevant to you, some not but at least it is a starting point, why not write your own list, but hopefully this will give you some ideas. Pick one impact that your organisation has on the environment, even something small and reduce this impact and tell people…
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It’s That Festive Time of The Year, Environmental Practitioners Let’s Be Positive!
It’s the time of the year when we all start to feel a bit happier than usual, holidays are on their way and as such we can all recharge our batteries and spend some time with our friends and family. I think it’s easy when you are involved in environmental management to be miserable. In some ways I wonder if I am in the business of gloom and doom, after all the process of training people about environmental management generally starts off with a long trawl through how humanity is destroying the environment. From climate change, to waste production to plastic pollution etc we seem to be having a significant…
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NEBOSH Environmental Certificate Practical Assessment – Passing First Time
In this post I thought we could look at what you need to do to get a good mark in the NEBOSH Certificate in Environmental Management practical assignment (called in NEBOSH speak EC2). The assignment pass mark is 60% and you complete the assignment on your own and as such there is no set duration, although NEBOSH state it should probably take around 3 hours. There are two parts to the assignment these are completion of a NEBOSH provided review questionnaire followed by a report. 100 marks are available in total. Read the Guidance The first action you MUST complete is having a good look at the guidance available for…
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Preparing For The NEBOSH Environmental Diploma Exam
Preparing well for the NEBOSH Diploma in Environmental Management exam is essential if you want to do well, so in this post we are going to look at things that you can do to increase the chances of success in the exam and improve your confidence. The exam that you must complete is 3 hours in total and you have a choice of 5 questions out of a total of eight. The pass mark for the exam is 45%. Essentially doing the best you can in an exam is about two key factors: Having a good knowledge of the subject, and Being able to apply your knowledge to an exam…
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The Risks in a Lead Workshop
Outside of health and safety, I have an interest in old buildings and their conservation. A couple of years ago, on a field visit as part of a course I was doing, I went on a tour of the stained glass conservation workshops at Salisbury Cathedral. Here they repair and refabricate stained glass panels for the historic windows in the cathedral and for other churches in the surrounding area. The coloured glass pieces are held together by lead strips, cast, extruded, cut, bent and soldered together by a small team of craftsmen. As I was reasonably familiar with the health effects of lead from a theoretical and control point of…
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The Sun Has Arrived and It Is Great For Us, Isn’t It?
We wait for them during the entire winter and most of spring, but finally they have arrived, those nice, warm sunny days. They get us thinking about holidays and sunbathing; they boost our morale and make us feel happier. This is the time of the year where we start to envy those working outdoors such as construction workers, gardeners and postmen… We think they’re lucky because they get to enjoy all those benefits the sun brings all day long, but are they? Overexposure, as well as regular and prolonged exposure, to the sun can cause sunburns, skin ageing, eye damage and skin cancer. It may also affect the immune system.…
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Finding Info about The Environment Where You Live or Work
NEBOSH Diploma in Environmental Management Element 7 In this blog post I take a look at the key sources of information that can be accessed to understand the environment in an area. As you might be aware, it is generally a legal requirement for environmental information collected by public bodies to be made available to the public. Pretty much all of this information can be accessed for free on the internet. First we’ll look at the Environment Agency, who operate a site known as ‘what’s in your backyard’. Here you can access a broad range of environment related information covering issues such as flooding, nitrate vulnerable zones, landfill sites and…
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Are More Flood Defences The Answer?
NEBOSH Diploma in Environmental Management Element 11 The recent floods in late December 2015 and early January 2016 have been some of the worst on record. Many thousands of people have been affected and the cost of damage caused by the floods is projected to be over £1.5 billion. I thought in this blog post it would be interesting to take a look at what causes flooding and how flood risk can be managed. Historically, flooding was reduced by the building of flood defences for communities with little consideration of keeping water in uplands and flood plains. Such techniques might include building flood barriers (think the Thames Barrier) and installing…
