One of the best ways to do your bit for the environment is to get out of the car and onto your bike for short journeys around your neighbourhood. There are loads of little journeys you can make that don’t really necessitate using the car. Moreover, riding your bike around is really good for your health.

However, it’s a little bit difficult if you don’t actually have a bike and you don’t have the ready cash to get one. Fortunately, wink bingo has a promotion on at the moment geared towards getting people on their bikes.

The Wheely Big £1k promotion at wink bingo is all about giving you the chance to win a cool grand so that you can spend it on bikes for the family. This is a great investment because it will help you keep you and your family active and it will reduce your carbon footprint so that your personal impact on the environment becomes significantly less.

Wink bingo is not the only place you can win cash. Other bingo site release new promotions all the time and if you want to be at the cutting edge of what’s available then ohmybingo.com is the place to go.

The Welsh Assembly Government’s (WAG’s) Sustainability Committee has produced a report claiming that the country’s fragile eco-systems are potentially at risk due to a lack of government action and resources.

The report was commissioned in response to a petition from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), who called for an examination into the reasons why the government’s targets on halting the loss of biodiversity had been missed.

As well as accusing the government of lacking the political will to follow through on its pledges, the RSPB also recommended that a series of actions be taken by the WAG in order to restore the country’s lost biodiversity.

Consumer electronics giant Apple has reportedly come under fire from a coalition of the most influential environmental groups in China.

The campaigners – who call themselves the Green Choice Initiative – accuse Apple of numerous infringements on environmental and workers regulations. Their allegations include pollution, poor working conditions, toxic fumes harming worker’s health and the dumping of environmentally damaging waste.

Apple has refused to issue any direct comment on the accusations, citing confidentiality as the reason for its silence.

The green coalition has issued a recent report analysing the company’s responses and transparency when it comes to accusations that Apple is responsible for damaging environmental practices.

An article in the Daily Mail recently highlights a family of super-green recyclers, the Strauss family from Longhope in Gloucestershire, who threw away just one carrier bag full of waste all year.

Richard and Rachelle Strauss and their daughter Verona made a concerted effort throughout 2010 to reuse or recycle every bit of waste they possibly could. This involved buying food products with minimum or no packaging, composting all food waste and recycling everything in sight.

At the end of the year, all they threw away was a small bag containing used pens, broken toys, photo negatives and razor blades.

This is an extreme example of eco-living perhaps, but it is an inspiring one nonetheless.

The London 2012 Olympics promised a great deal in terms of green operations, but it looks as though organisers will not meet the environmental pledges they originally aimed for.

Going for Green – a new environmental report on the Games has suggested that organisers will have to do much more work in the coming months to ensure they meet the ecological targets they originally planned.

The report has outlined shortcomings regarding the number of electric vehicles procured for the event and concerns surrounding renewable electricity.

Darren Johnson, chairman of the Environment Committee, said:

We fully support London 2012’s ambition to be the most sustainable Olympic and Paralympic Games in recent history, and there has been some excellent work towards that goal.

However we don’t want to see environmental standards compromised in the run-up to what I am sure will be a fantastic Games.

We need to see clear targets for re-using temporary materials, more detail on how organisers will promote sustainable travel and plans for recycling facilities on site and around London.

It’s actually getting easier nowadays to lower your carbon footprint because lots of industries are trying to do the same. Take the car industry, for instance. New cars that come onto the market tend to have much greater fuel economy than their predecessors and this is something we ought to take advantage of.

This is one of the only times when doing what is ethical is also the easiest thing to do. Remember, better fuel economy is not only good for the environment, it also saves you money. Lowering your carbon footprint is a great way of solving both your financial and ecological concerns.

Leicestershire and Rutland county councils have become concerned about the decline in numbers of the harvest mouse, and have prepared around 200 tennis balls with penny-sized holes for the mice to nest in.

People are being asked to contact the local council, notifying them of where they see the little creatures, so that the “mouse houses” can be put up.

Now, mice are not my favourite creature, but they do look pretty cute in their bright yellow/green little house. Their breeding season starts from late May and lasts until October – so they will be looking for the right place to set up home to raise the young ‘uns about now.

If you want to pitch in, get in touch with the council, and they will get you the details.

There are numerous examples of situations where experts are called in, and they are unable to fix the problem, and then a “lucky passer-by” comes up with the brain-wave that saves the world (seen many times in numerous blockbuster films, and seen more and more in real life too).

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill has had numerous failures from the experts, but it has also inspired numerous members of the public to get in touch and offer their suggestions; by 2 June, BP had received 31,600 suggestions from members of the public on how to plug the well, or deal with the oil slicks already in the sea – which is an impressive amount of contact from the general public.

Now not all of these suggestions will actually be taken to the board for consideration, but from the sounds of it, BP does take suggestions seriously.

Of the 31,600 ideas, 8,000 have been submitted on paper. BP then puts the plans through a four-stage process. The first is a primary evaluation to weed out ideas that have already been considered or are just not possible. The second stage is classification into categories such as “dispersants” or “mechanical”. The third stage is a more detailed technical review and the fourth stage is field testing.

BP says they now have 235 ideas currently in stage three and four, just short of 3%.

Some people might laugh at the idea of interested amateurs trying to help the experts solve a problem of this size, but who would really turn down help when the cost is so great?

As a country girl at heart, I believe that the great outdoors has a massive impact upon my life – it is where food comes from, it is where I go to relax, it is where I could earn a living – it impacts up on all areas of my life, and I choose to protect that as much as I can.

Now, for a city boy, such as my partner, that is not necessarily the first thought he has. He sees the green belt around our town and thinks “people need affordable housing, build them there, what can it hurt?”.

I see this as damaging to our way of life – this space is vital to our ongoing survival, not just from a resources point of view, but from a psychological point of view as well. Less space = cranky people. Looking after the natural world, in all ways, helps keep people in tip top condition.

Studies are conducted on a regular basis into all manner of things, but this one really amused me!

Professor Jonathan Evans (from the Centre for Evolutionary Biology at the University of Western Australia) carried out the study into the reproductive skills of tropical guppies, and the findings are described in the Royal Society journal, Proceedings B.

Apparently, guppies are a good species in which to study this, because “the males engage in two types of reproductive behavior – courtship displays and non-consensual or “sneak” mating”. The study found that the males who performed sneak mating were less pretty, but has faster swimming sperm in comparison to their prettier counterparts.

Although the prettier of the species may get more “action”, they are less able to reproduce; I feel that there is a lesson in there somewhere…