Writing an article on the death of bees I discovered (whaddayaknow – you can actually learn stuff at work), that the death of this puny little insect would have a tremendous impact on Europe's food production and environmental stability.

The logic behind it is pretty fool-proof. Bees are the Barry White of the plant world. Most plants are pollinated by them. No plants means no food. Obvious, really.

But what can the EP do about it?

For starters, the EP called on EU countries to pool their research on disease prevention and research funding should also be increased. Rules on veterinary products for honeybees should be made more flexible and incentives should be provided to pharmaceutical companies to develop new products to treat diseases such as the Varroa mite. Another factor affecting bee health is the presence of toxic agents, such as pesticides, so training should be provided to reduce their use.

Roughly 80% of plant species and food production in Europe depends on pollination by bees and more than 600,000 EU citizens work in the beekeeping sector (directly or indirectly).

Not bad for a buzzing little thing smaller than a bottle cap.

Why don’t we recycle plastic bottles? Or do we? Why do we actually use plastic bottles in any case, when we could have filtered water? Why are the lights in the corridors constantly switched on? Discussing with colleagues, we often comment about how the Parliament, the ‘green champion’ when it’s about making laws for the others, could be much more energy-efficient and eco-friendly. Not to mention, as people always do when Parliament’s carbon footprint comes up, the consequences of Parliament having to work in three different locations. But maybe that we look too much at the half empty glass. And we know too little about the half full one.

5 big things

I vaguely knew about the existence of EMAS. I decided to understand what the ‘Eco-management and Audit scheme in the Parliament’ concretely does to make us greener. And what more could we do.

A geothermic heater installed in Parliament's Strasbourg building (Source EP website)

Here the 5 big things that we should know about the green side of the Parliament. Next week I’ll tell you what remains to be done. 

1. Parliament committed to reduce its CO2 emissions of 30% by 2020. There are several systems to monitor what we are doing. In concrete they show that from 2006 we have already reduced our footprint by 13% per person. 

2. New buildings – such as the new KAD – are being built following the strictest international environmental standards. As a result, KAD will be almost 100% autonomous as for the production of electricity, thanks to a combination on renewable sources ‘that can be defined as almost revolutionary’. In practice, for example ‘rain will be used to water green spaces and for certain WCs of the building‘ and ‘basic consumption of hot water in some periods of the year will be granted by solar panels‘.

3. The Parliament declares to use ‘100% green electricity, saving more than 25.000 tonnes of CO2 per year’.

4. More than 55% of our waste is recycled or reused.

Efforts are made also in the field of mobility (bikes and electric vehicles, for example) or IT technologies. You can find much more in the brand new EMAS brochure ‘Greening the EP’.

Surprised? Disapponted? Is this enough? What else can we do! Next week I will try to understand how can we do better. WE: not only ‘the Parliament’ or EMAS, but each of us. Because, as we repeated X times to our readers during the elections, the European Parliament is YOU! ;)

Incandescent light bulb!

“The European Parliament decided to replace the incandescent light bulb with the energy saving ones by 2012″ , was one of the topics debated last week. Well, I have to admit I have never foreseen the importance of such a little detail like a light bulb, nor that I would write about it. As a matter of fact, one of the great things in our web team is that you never know what you are going to get to write about (but that could go as a different story).

So what about incandescent light bulbs? Let me just say (and I am quite sure you will agree with me) that although you use them every day in one way or another, you never actually acknowledge the light bulbs only when they burn out and then you know you have to change them. What kind of type do you have at home? Personally I have no idea, we know and like them only because of their different shapes and colours.

But the truth is the following: using energy-saving light bulbs instead of incandescent ones enable European citizens save every year approximately the annual electricity consumed in Romania, in the same time cutting emissions of CO2 with around 15 million tonnes. Still thinking it is not worth writing about it?

Fluorescent light – the new cool!

And there are lot more other ideas we could start doing in order to save energy, but I will not dive into topics like timed thermostat for heating or refrigerators or ovens, since I am sure we are all clicks away from specialized websites that can give us more information on it.

Meanwhile, I will be going to the shop to buy myself a new green colour light bulb as the old one has just burned out…