Monday, November 23, 2009

Zero Waste in Wales

I went to St. Arvans in Monmouthshire today which was apparently the first zero waste settlement in Wales.

I am currently writing a feature about waste for my course at Cardiff University, and it will explore the alternatives to landfill.

It seems that St. Arvans' experiment is due to fail as the local council has found that zero waste also equals zero binmen and consequently a loss of jobs.

I will have a video up on here very soon, but before that here are some photographs:

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The local pub housed the communal recycling bins in their car park...

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All residents were encourged to use the various recycling boxes...

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Just as we left, the clouds parted for the first time...

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Sunday, November 8, 2009

YouTube videos harm music industry

I haven't been able to play music on my computer for about a month now because the poor thing is getting old.

Far from tearing my hair out however, I have just resorted to using YouTube to supplement my listening to radio stations such as Radio 1, BBC 6 Music, Classic FM and Radio 3.

It occured to me therefore, that the decision to allow official music videos back onto YouTube could be really damaging to the music industry.

I have never even thought of illegally downloading tracks that I like, but I similarly hadn't even thought about not using YouTube.

I don't think music videos should be banned from YouTube however. If one type of video is banned due to commercial interests, a precedent may be set that might hinder the free flow of content on the social media site.