Recycling - its not all rubbish!

Rubbish. Litter. Garbage. Waste. Refuse. Whatever you call that pile of stuff sitting in a slowly decomposing pile in your bin - it shouldn't be there. No, really - there should really be almost nothing in there.

Why? Because as a responsible, morally-guided, green person, you should always be automatically examining what you are about to bin. Can I reuse this piece of paper? Can I get this radio fixed? Can this banana skin be chucked on the compost heap? If the answer to any of your
questions is no - you only have one choice - it must be RECYCLED!

Unfortunately for the planet, we live in a materialistic, consumer society where we feel no guilt at throwing away perfectly useful items and buying new ones; always striving for the latest, shiniest gizmo or shoe, electric toothbrush or phone. But even if we do, we have still somehow got to get rid of the old one. Let me introduce you all to the wonder that is recycling.

The dictionary describes recycling as:


re·cy·cle (rē-sī'kəl) tr.v., -cled, -cling, -cles.

1. To put or pass through a cycle again, as for further treatment.
2. To start a different cycle in.
3. 1. To extract useful materials from (garbage or waste).
   2. To extract and reuse (useful substances found in waste).
4. 1. To use again, especially to reprocess: recycle aluminum cans; recycle old jokes.
   2. To recondition and adapt to a new use or function: recycling old warehouses as condominiums.

Couldn't have put it better myself. Recycling is when you take something used, and extract everything useful out of it, whether you do it yourself or the council does it for you. "But!" I hear you responding - how do I know whether I can recycle this - or whether this will compost? Fear not, for if you go onto the recycle-more website you will find the answers.

www.recycle-more.co.uk

http://www.recycle-more.co.uk/nav/page549.aspx - a complete list of all those difficult things you don't know what to do with.

http://www.recycle-more.co.uk/nav/page551.aspx - a complete guide to composting.

Recycle! The possibilities are endless!

Lightbulbs - the saga continues!

Firstly - apologies for not having posted for a while - I'm sure all eleven people that have so far looked at my blog will be deeply miffed - but as a student I'm forced to do exams once in a while (poo).

Anyway, we need to move on. Post before last, I spoke a little about the wonderful thing that is the light bulb. The purpose of this post is to develop that one - as I am a little concerned about how much factual info it actually gave. So these are those reasons why YOU should buy energy efficient light bulbs:

• 10-15% of energy use in the average house is for lighting. Now obviously if you're one of those people that lives in the dark, or perhaps one of those fools who decorates their house with lots of bright flashy things, that's going to be different - but whoever you are you will be spending heaps of shiny pooonds (that's pounds with a Scottish accent by the way) on lights - so any saving must surely be good!

• You can save a whole £9 a year (!!) for each energy saving bulb you install. Lets just examine that figure. Nine pounds! You could buy like 9 whole 99p sweets - and still have 9p left over. Now multiply that by the average number of bulbs per house - 20-ish - and you can save £180! Woot!

• They last longer. Much longer. According to the Almighty Wikipedia.co.uk, you would have to replace an ordinary incandescent bulb AT LEAST 6-11 times in the lifetime of one fluorescent bulb.
  

• They are soooo much more efficient than the crummy one Thomas Edison came up with. Those only have like a 5% efficiency - in other words - they waste 95% of the energy they use as heat, whereas an energy saving bulb has an efficiency of up to 60%.

• If every household in the US switched just 3 bulbs, the country would reduce electricity demand by the equivalent of 11 coal-fired power stations and save $1.8bn!

• They are way cooler-looking, and will earn you loads more brownie points when you get up to heaven.

So why don't you? Get out there and buy fluorescent bulbs. Now. You've got every reason to. Finally, here are a couple of links:

http://banthebulb.org/ - a great anti-incandescent-bulb-blog
The energy saving trust on light bulbs
Light bulbs direct
The light bulb company

A quote and a half...

"I have come to believe that we must take bold and unequivocal action: we must make the rescue of the environment the central organising principle for civilisation. Whether we realise it or not, we are engaged in an epic battle to right the balance of our Earth, and the tide of this battle will turn only when the majority of people in the world become sufficiently aroused by a shared sense of urgent danger to join in an all-out effort."

Al Gore, Former U.S Vice-President

Let there be light!

The light bulb. It has to be man's greatest invention. It can do so much - from being a moth attractor and killer, to providing a means of distracting guards as you scale a 20ft concrete prison wall (step 1 - take bulb in hand, step 2 - throw bulb in gently curving arc away from you, step 3 - as bulb shatters on the stone floor, run!). In times of great need and darkness, the bulb has also been known to give off light!

So wouldn't it be a great idea to have a bulb that not only did all these things, but also saved the planet? I give you - Super-Bulb!

No really, we've all heard about energy-efficient light bulbs - but let's be honest - who's actually gone out and bought them so far? In my house, despite my struggle against my so-called 'parents', we have a total of one...two....three...four....no energy efficient light bulbs installed. Actually, I lie - they've just put one in our porch - but that was only because the bulbs out there break about once a week.

So nobody's buying them. Why? I urge you - get down to the shops on your carbon-free feet and purchase at least six. Now. No don't argue with me. They cost the same as regular ones. They use less electricity. They have to be changed about once a millenia. They save you loads of dosh. They save the planet. They give you a talking point for those embarrassing moments when you can't think of anything to talk about with your guests/family/friends/girl-friends/dogs etc.

Buy them. Buy them now!

Green Life - Here We Come!

Right, okay - let's get this green life of yours up and running. I've spent enough time blathering on about totally random stuff, so we need to get down to work:

The first step

Well, as all of my lovely readers are obviously educated, intelligent, business-minded people, they will understand that the very first thing we need to do is to analyse and examine what we're working with. So this is the very first step on the long road to saving the planet - look at your life, and try to think what you do that a) is good for the environment b) particularly bad for the environment. In fact there are often a lot of things that you do that are good for the planet, without you even realising it. For example, you might have one of those new energy-efficient boilers, or perhaps you always turn your electrical gizmos off when you're not using them.

If you have at least five things on your good list - well done! Give yourself a medal. Now take it off and start doing some some real things to help our planet.

For something a little more thorough and specific - check out the Global Action Plan quiz-questionnaire-greeness-test-thing, GreenScore:

http://www.greenscore.org.uk/

Go green! Woot!

The basics of green living

Green living is defined by The Twin Cities Green Guide as:

'A lifestyle intended to ensure that one's impact on the environment is as minimal (or as positive) as possible'

Well apart from the fact that I don't go in for the whole royal-family-speak - 'One must always brush one's teeth...etc,' I think that it pretty much sums up green living. Basically, you follow a lifestyle that respects the planet around you, and does not harm the environment. Simple, you say. Err...no.

You see that there is no way on earth of living on earth that doesn't have some sort of impact on the planet. Without going into too much about the whole inter-being idea that we're taught in RS at our school, it is safe to say that pretty much every little thing we do will affect the environment in some way or another. Whether we build a house (which could destroy wildlife habitats); go for a drive in the car (pollution, greenhouse gases etc etc); or even throw a scrabble piece into a distant privet bush (it could startle a rabbit, which jumps out the bush, is eaten by a fox, which then chokes on a bone and dies - it's body then pollutes a small pond which a Golgafrinchan personnel officer drinks from and dies... - if you still haven't read THGTTG you should crawl off somewhere and die...).

If you managed to discern anything meaningful from the above paragraph, then I'm surprised because there wasn't meant to be any. But anyway, leaving the Glogafrinchans behind us - there is still the issue that there is no way that we can adapt our lives so much so that they don't damage the environment at all - firstly because it's impossible, and secondly because if we did, the whole world's economy would collapse and there'd be no point in having a life anyway. The solution? Instead of adapting our lives so they become green, we have to make the green ideas fit into our present lifestyles.

How? What? When?

Basically instead of following a green life, we have to integrate green aspects into our lives. There's no need to go all hippie - just a change at a time:

First week - you could replace all your light bulbs with energy efficient ones
Second week - you could consider installing a water butt
Third week - how about a compost heap?

By 2008 you could find that all your gas/electricity bills are down, your car runs on toothpaste, and fridge is generating electricity for you...