Green news & views

It's Light Savers Day and one of the easiest actions that everyone can make is to replace the lightbulbs in the home (and business too) with energy-saving lightbulbs.

Energy-saving bulbs use less wattage, typically 80% less electricity, to produce a similar brightness of light. In addition they also last 12 times longer than your old lightbulbs!

For more information take a look at lightbulbs-direct.com

If you're in your mid-life years, we're sorry... this isn't about turning back the clock...

Today, as part of the EST's Energy Saving Week, it's "Turn to 30 Day" which means simply... when you do your washing, use the 30°C wash cycle.

Now, we gotta say that doing every wash at 40°C is fine, we've never done a "boil wash" ever, but we can't go any lower than 40°C, so maybe when our highly efficient Zanussi needs replacing we'll go for a more capable model :)

Continuing Energy Saving Week, it's Green Wheels Day today and the Energy Savings Trust are promoting green driving tips to reduce CO2 emissions such as:

Would you believe it... today is Boil Better Day?

As part of Energy Saving Week the Energy Saving Trust are promoting that we all use a little less water in our kettles - by only boiling as much water as you need rather than "filling the kettle" we can all be a bit more energy efficient, save energy & save money by simply boiling better.

Right, that's made me thirsty, I'm off to make a cup of tea...

Just in case you didn't know it's Energy Saving Week :)

The Energy Savings Trust is kicking off the week with today, Monday, being "Buy better day" meaning that if you're off out to buy yourself a new fridge (on a Monday?) then make sure it's got an Energy Saving Recommended logo!

See the Energy Saving Recommended products.

Or so they say on the frontpage of the Tesla Motors website.The latest buzz in the green car community is the Tesla Roadster; a sleek sports car that's quick & fast and totally electric powered.

An email from B&Q just popped into our inbox this morning entitled "GO GREEN without going into the red" from those UK giants of home DIY B&Q. They state that

"an average UK house produces enough carbon emmissions in a year to fill six hot air balloons"

...and then they offer a number of solutions to help bring that figure down.

Now, the DIY trade isn't normally known for it's eco-awareness, so for a "high-street" company as high-profile as B&Q to encourage people to buy into the green way of life is very welcome.

At last, the compost bin turned up.
After 10 whole weeks without one, after graciously leaving the other one behind at the last place, we now have our very own 330 litre compost bin. Whoopee.
And it was worth the wait because it was a good price and it's HUGE too.
The local council were offering these composters at a discount; so we ordered direct from the manufacturers, quoted the promotional code and save a few pence too - the money we saved allowed us to get a water butt to collect our rainwater.

Yes, that's right: Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin boss has pledged all the future profits from his travel & transport businesses, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains, toward renewable energy and investments.

One of my pet peeves in this obsession people have with preheating ovens. Why do they do it?

Is it because the fire had to be roaring before it was hot enough to cook the pot on? Maybe the Arga needed to be left a while until the coal was burning efficiently?

But these days we don't have so many of these ancient "appliances" (I still love to cook over a real fire on occasions) and the world has changed in terms of how we consume energy - we need to conserve our energy reserves.