Soap Opera

If you stay in a hotel / motel kind of thing, where they have those little guest soaps, do you take with you the one that you have used?

If not, why ever not? I just wrap it back up and pop it in my wash bag. Otherwise, it is just going to get thrown away. Seems such a waste!

So many bags?

I am tidying out a messy cupboard today and wondering how I have so many plastic bags. It was a long time ago - several years - that I joined the growing number of people who choose to use reusable carrier bags everywhere for whatever kind of shopping they do.

In the last 6 months (because I can't remember much past that) I have accepted one new carrier bag with a big sigh as I couldn't be bothered to repeat myself having told the lady serving me that I DIDN'T NEED a bag, thank you.

So, I really don't understand how I have a cupboard that seems to be full of them. How do they all get here? Do they breed?

I have heard people say that they continue to go shopping without taking their own reusable shopping bags because they find plastic bags so useful for other things. If I am out shopping with them this is the point at which I usually try to thrust one of my spare plastic bags into their unsuspecting arms. As I pull out bag after bag from my bulging cupboard I find I just have to say that IT IS A VERY LAME EXCUSE.

I am pretty confident based on today's haul that anyone would be able safely STOP using 'single use' carrier bags now and they will still have a lifetime's supply of plastic bags. If not, they can always have some of mine!

A use for broken crockery

I save up broken bits of crockery in a tub in my garage and use them to put in the bottom of plant pots over the drainage holes. As we had a nice weekend I decided to get my pots ready for bringing in my geraniums. They are my favourite plant, not least because they need very little watering even in dry weather and if you bring them in to a shed or a conservatory or a cool windowsill in your house, then they will go on getting better and better, year after year.

A word of advice when you put your crock into your pots: wear a thick pair of gloves so you don't cut yourself!

New Year’s Resolution

This time last year we decided to get rid of our rubbish bin. It was feeling a little sad and underused already so we gave it flash label "Plastic Recycling" and bought it a friend "Metal Recycling". In addition to this we had a basket for burnable rubbish, a compost bin, various containers to collect bits to put out for the birds, and the bottles collect in a cupboard until someone can be bothered to carry them out to the kerbside collection bin.

Okay, we do get some funny looks when someone asks "where's your bin?" but we are all getting used to saying that we don't have one.

Feeling smug that we had no rubbish, I felt tempted to ask for an extra recycling bin. However, I realised that was probably not the answer. Just as rubbish has a cost, so does recycling, and the thing that is going to drive manufacturers to reduce packaging is consumer demand. So, as a consumer, I decided that I was going to demand less packaging. Most shop assistants no longer give me strange looks when I insist on using my own bag, or plonk my fruit and veg bagless at the till (though I draw the line at sprouts!). I have managed to cut down the amount of packaging I produce for recycling.

However, the sin I plan to attack in 2009 is the food waste.

I have a compost, a wormery and I feed the birds with my food waste, which is better than it going in the bin. I already plan for leftovers to be used as much as I can but I think there is still room for improvement. So among my New Year's Resolutions this year is to focus on food waste.

Want to join me? Have a look at Love Food Hate Waste for some ideas.

How do you charge your mobile phone?

Ofcom report some interesting findings in their UK Communications Market Review 2008.

The report tells us that :

"Although nearly three-quarters of consumers (72%) say that they care about the environment and take it into account in their personal lives, only 39% say that they compare environmentally-friendly aspects when purchasing communications devices."

The report suggest this may be because less than a third of consumers think it is easy to compare energy use of different devices. Ofcom say that Energy Saving Labels are an important way of trying to improve customer knowledge about efficiency, but 50% of consumers say they are not aware of energy labels.

The report says that " only 30% are aware of the obligation for retailers to take back and recycle old equipment free of charge when purchasing a new device under the Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment Directive, and only 7% appear to have taken advantage of this."

Source: Ofcom (2008), UK Communications Market Review 2008: Interactive Key Points available at: http://comment.ofcom.org.uk/cmr08/

Their findings also show that many consumers use unnecessary power by charging their mobile phones up overnight, not switching off broadband wireless routers when they are not in use, and not switching off Television set-top boxes.

I try to charge my mobile phone in the car using energy produced as a by-product. My children tell me they no longer charge up their phones overnight since they realised how much energy this wastes. However, my first New Year's Resolution for 2009 must be to turn off my router. Next on my hit list will be the Sky Box. Problem is I don't understand how it works – how many of us say that though, and it is no excuse. So 2009 will be the year in which I find out exactly when the Sky Box needs to be on and when it doesn't. It is not going to rule my life anymore – I will pull that plug.

Have a look at this:

Ofcom UK CMR 2008 Charts

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: ofcom uk)

Recession Buster

In an attempt to reduce the number of miles we travel taxiing our children to and from their afterschool activities we decided to eat out in the hour and a half we had between dropping off one child and picking up another. So we picked a nearby hotel / restaurant which we knew did good, reasonably priced food.

When we checked with the landlord if he was serving food the reply was 'sort of'. He went on to explain that he really wasn't busy enough on a Monday and Tuesday evening to employ a chef so there was just him on his own to do everything. So he had set up a new initiative. On Monday and Tuesday nights he was serving what he called a "builders' supper" for the overnight guests. His guests would 'get fed' but they would 'get what they were given' so on the Monday night he had served cold beef, cold pork, bubble and squeak and salad to use up the meat and veg left over from Sunday's carvery. Last night's offering was spaghetti bolognaise served with garlic bread and it was going to be ready in fifteen minutes. Perfect! The upside for his guests was that it was just £5 a head. "And that," he said. "... is my recession buster."

Out came two large bowls – one of spaghetti, one of bolognaise - a smaller bowl with freshly grated parmesan and a bread basket piled high with garlic bread. The plates were in a pile by the side and everyone helped themselves to what they wanted and went back for more when they wanted. Delicious!

With the price of fuel these days and the hike in food prices I thought we probably couldn't have driven home and back and cooked spaghetti bolognaise for much less than £10. With the spotlight we've had earlier in the year on the 4 million tonnes of food wasted in the UK every year initiatives like these should be praised. Next week I will probably be eating pasta salad served out of an old ice-cream tub in the car reading my book, but I think before long I'll be back for a builder's supper.

Read more about food waste.

500 Trees

I read recently that it takes 500 trees to absorb the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide that is emitted when a PC is left on all day over the period of a year, so switch it off when not in use.

 
So many people leave their computers on when they are not using them because of the amount of time it takes to load them up when they do want to use them.

 
You can cut down the amount of time your pc takes to load by having a good look at what you are loading automatically at startup. Many computers load more than one virus checker, when just one is sufficient - even if you want to have another one available it doesn't have to load every time you switch on. Do you really need to load MSN or iTunes for example every time you turn your computer on?

 

101 ways to reduce your carbon footprint for free

As I was being 'dissed' yet again for my recycling habits, I came up with the idea of putting together a list of 101 ways to reduce your carbon footprint for free. Free? Yes, absolutely free.

I thought I'd have no trouble coming up with hundreds of little things that we could all do that would be more environmentally friendly but didn't cost a penny. Surely it would be a doddle!

Well, it wasn't.

The ridiculous thing about « going green » is that it so often costs more than not being green. It costs more in terms of time and effort, and all too often, it costs more in terms of hard cash.

There may well be lots of things with long-term savings, but realistically, for many of us on this planet cash-flow comes first. It is the initial spend that we think about, rather than the long-term cost saving.

This, to me, is an important issue governments face that they could do something about but don't. Would it really be that hard to structure all taxation, vat and so on, to always favour the green option?

 

That said, the list is growing …..