Tuesday 31 March 2009

Carbon watchers for March - Reuse


The theme for March is reuse.
Gloucestershire Carbon watchers did things a little differently by launching this month's theme as a competition. The winner of the best reuse idea will win a solar powered charger and two runners up will get some microfibre cleaning cloths, which don't require any chemical detergents.

About 70% of household waste can be recycled or composted, but not everything. Some items of waste are made of more than one material, which means it takes so much energy to recycle that it outweighs the benefits. For example, a crisp packet can be made of plastic film and paper, which cannot be easily separated.

By re-using as many items of 'waste' before recycling or disposing, it helps us reduce the amount of 'real' or 'residual' rubbish we create.

We do quite a lot of reuse in our household, but really we try to stop at the 'reduce' point if possible.

Some of my suggestions included

An old coffee jar has a ball of string placed inside it. The lid has a hole made in it, large enough for the string to be fed through and this prevents string becoming a tangled mess in the drawer - you can just pull through the amount you want and cut it off.

We buy honey in bulk - in 7lb containers which have a lid. My daughter uses these to store pens and arts and craft supplies.

I never buy any jiffy bags, bubble wrap or envelopes because I carefully open all post and reuse them. In fact I've had to give away two large boxes on freecycle because I gathered so much stuff. So I've saved things from the landfill AND saved money!

we have a tree house made from 'gash wood'. All of it scraps left over from building projects which would otherwise have gone into the skip. When our neighbour saw us building it, he gave us the final piece - a corrugated sheet of metal made the perfect roof!

I kept all the annoying plastic ties for our daughter's Christmas presents and these are being used as either cable ties around the house, to help train roses and will be used for this years tomato plants.

All glass jars are kept for jam and chutney making later in the year. many are freecycled too because people ask for them.

We occasionally get a mange tout or mini sweetcorn craving. I try to buy local, seasonal produce, but sometimes you want a treat. These come in plastic trays, so we reuse these trays as drip trays for houseplants.

We've found that the plastic lids from a particular brand of filter coffee are the right size for using as open tin covers - the sort of covers you buy for putting on top of half a tin of cat food to keep it fresh.

I reuse yogurt pots for freezing home made soup and storing leftovers in the fridge,

We use candle stubs for lighting the fire. Only a little bit at a time LOL!

I never buy clingflim; I reuse things in the house for wrapping sandwiches such as cereal pack inners, old bread bags, ryvita packets - these all last a long time before finally falling apart.

Pringles containers are used for pen pots by my daughter.

Old towels are cut up and made into flannels or used as spill cloths in the kitchen to save buying kitchen towel.

Hubby never gets rid of an outworn electrical applliance without salvaging stainless steel screws, flexes, the fuse, the plug and any other useful parts.

We have various odd things in the garden as planters - an old belfast sink that was dumped in my old house, old saucepans with missing handles, rusty bakeware and anything else like that gets a few seeds planted in it.

There have been some great suggestions from other people too, so I'm wishing everyone luck and hoping we can all inspire one another to think before we bin :)

Sunday 1 March 2009

Feb electricity usage

I'm still a bit stunned. Yesterday I spent an hour creating a spreadsheet for my electricity usage. I'm not very adept at using spreadsheets, so I was tearing my hair out by the end of it. Anyway, I know have one that works - go me!

That's the good news.

The bad news is that even with trying to reduce our usage as much as possible over the month we have used 524 kwh, which equates to £64.75
We have a capped rate, and I think it's cheap (11p inclu tax per unit plus 13p daily standing order). The fluctuation of prices means I feel better on a capped tariff, but maybe it's time to shop around. Perhaps I'd be better off paying more and not having a daily standing charge. I find the whole thing a minefield to be honest which leads to procrastination.

My goal is to join a green provider, but there is no way I can finance that at the moment. We'd have to get our usage right down because they are generally more expensive. (in my limited knowledge)

Feb update

I'm going to do a catch up with February - nothing like the first day of March to be doing that!

Regarding electricity; I've been taking daily readings and it has become apparent that a tankless water heater will be our next major job. We are currently having the immersion on for one hour in the morning and then not putting it on again unless someone wants a bath. In the summer I hope to get a tankless water heater installed, but if not, I think we can leave the immersion off altogether unless taking a bath. we can wash the dishes in water boiled in the kettle.

Water. I made a call to Severn Trent about reducing our bills. I thought we could get a discount because we are on benefit. Apparently we can if we have a child with a medially diagnosed illness; so I got that totally wrong. He took me through a quick guestimate online and told me that we were better off sticking with what we had rather than switching to a meter. We currently pay about £220 a year for water and he reckoned that on a meter we would spend over £300.

I have to admit, I was shocked at that. There are only three of us and I don't think we use a lot. I told him we had 3-4 baths per week, 1 shower, 3 loads of washing, no dishwasher, no hose pipes and we flushed the toilet 9 times a day.
I read somewhere that within the next few years everyone will have to switch to a meter. I think this is a great idea for conservation, but it might not be for our pocket! We have resources though. We have tentatively talked in the past about strengthening the bathroom roof (it's downstairs and a flat roof) and installing 3 water butts up there to flush the toilet and feed the washing machine.
We also have a well under our dining room floor; DH used to be a water treatment engineer, so he knows what to do to sink a pump and test the water for potential use. We also have a spring 4 miles away, so we could start using that for drinking water.

We had a visit from someone from GLos Carbon Watchers to create us an 'action plan'. I was disappointed with the visit. Don't get me wrong, the lady was lovely and I spent a happy hour chatting with her, but I did not leave our meeting with any useful information or a 'plan' other than the one I have come up with myself. She took details of things she should already have details of, such as my meter readings and the actions given by the ACTon and Energy Saving Trust home energy report. All of these were sent to the office over a month ago

I'm kind of hoping someone will come in and have this wealth of information about things I know nothing about. Maybe I'm too good at researching!

She couldn't give me any advice about an efficient woodburner, there are no grants for double glazing - which seems crazy, and I was given a load of glossy leaflets and two thermometers for the house, although I told her we already had thermometers and we needn't worry about the house getting too hot as it rarely gets over 20 degrees anyway.

So I received no helpful information and ended up with some glossy papers and thermometers to recycle. (I'm asking myself what is in the thermometers; is there anything bad in there? )

The lady did indicate to me that of the 40 households taking part in the pilot scheme, she was basically 'talking to the converted'. So I think if you had no knowledge at all, this would be a great scheme to get involved with. But if you already know your energy efficient bulbs from your incandescent and know that your immersion and heating is likely to use the most energy, you're basically on your way to reducing your footprint anyway.

I'm just finding the whole thing is lacking clarity and organisation. I'm sure these people are trying their best, but I get disjointed emails, there is nothing happening on the forum, it seems that messages don't get shared in the office and the monthly postcards stating the focus for that month arrive in the middle of the month!
Still, I guess it's the pilot scheme and until you jump in feet first there is no way to find out. You can't learn unless you make mistakes, right!?