I’m guessing you’ve heard of global warming 🙂
One of the UK breakfast TV channels has been running a “Going Green” spot in an attempt to get people to reduce their household carbon footprint. Tips include:
- Shower rather than taking a bath.
- Turn off electrical equipment at the wall, rather than using standby. Apparantly, if everyone in the UK turned off their TVs at the wall, rather than using standby, we could close down a couple of power stations.
- Use energy saving light bulbs.
- Turn down your central heating by a couple of degrees. A reduction of 1 degree can typically save 10% of your heating costs.
- Recycle as much as possible.
I feel kind of inspired by this so this morning I turned off my TV and PC at the wall. Plans for the weekend include:
- Turn off my fridge at the wall. I’ve had nothing in the fridge or the freezer for weeks, so keeping it turned on is crazy. Of course, some would say I should actually buy some food, but that sounds like a mugs game to me 🙂
- Buy some energy saving bulbs. I have this habit of doing most things in the dark because I’m just too lazy to change bulbs when they blow. Once you get used to not having lighting, you tend not to bother, even when you do have working bulbs. Even so, on the occasion I need a light, it would be sensible to use an energy efficient one.
- My heating is already set quite low, but as I’m hardly ever in the house I figure I can go down another couple of degrees without much bother. I have thermostats on my radiators which are set real low in the rooms I don’t use. I guess they should go down to zero.
- I already recycle all paper and cardboard and my area has a green rubbish collection for garden waste, but I’m a bit slack with everything else. I rarely have glass, like bottles, in the house, so I don’t naturally think of recycling it. From today, I will recycle all glass, cans and plastics.
- Most importantly, I’m going to try to be more aware about what I buy. It’s far to easy to buy products with loads of packaging. You don’t need to recycle if you don’t buy the rubbish in the first place.
I guess it’s only right that we all try to minimize the impact we have on the planet. I know industry and transport are the really big polluters, but every little helps!
Cheers
Tim…
Do you drive, though?
Yes, I know cars are a problem.
I do drive, but it’s a little car, not a fuel guzzler, so I don’t feel quite so guilty as the 4×4 brigade.
Even so, I’m taking steps to reduce fuel consumption even more. Unfortunately, public transport sucks, so that’s not really an option for me. I guess it’s a chicken and egg situation. People won’t use public transport until it improves, but it won’t improve until more people use it 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
This is going to sound amazingly stupid, but I’m a Yank so bear with me:
What exactly do you mean by “turn it off at the wall”? Do you mean unplug it from the outlet?
If so, Geez, I’d lose all my presets on my TV and VCR! And my PC would start running the CMOS off the battery, cutting its life! Can’t have that! 😀
I agree with you, recycle everything you can. If you can’t recycle it, think twice about buying it. We just bought an energy-efficient refrigerator and freezer last year, always try to look for the most efficient ones that get the job done.
In the UK, we have to have an ON/OFF switch on every plug socket, so we don’t have to physically unplug it, but it amounts to the same thing.
Yes, it’s a bummer about presets, but I guess I’d rather loose them than the planet 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
“I have thermostats on my radiators which are set real low in the rooms I don’t use. I guess they should go down to zero.”
Be careful if it gets down to freezing where you are. If the water in the radiator pipes freeze, they’ll bust the pipe and when it thaws you’ll be in for some BIG bills.
My house isn’t that big and it’s well insulated, so I guess there’s enough warmth coming from the other rooms to keep the temperature high enough 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
This is much better than the usual tips we hear:
1. Condemn big companies.
2. Tell the government to do something about it.
3. Complain to everyone that will listen to your “holier than thou” attitude
🙂
Bill, I suspect the settings wouldn’t be lost by turning it off? All my electronic gizmos, video watchamacallits and audio whatsits have two ways to turn off:
one is the standby.
the other is the off button.
At least over here so maybe we’re weird Down Under? Possible.
Anyways, the saying here from the power saving and greenie folks is:
“hit the off button, don’t use standby”.
I do, and I have yet to lose a setting that way.
Then again, we get power outs just about every month. When that happens, I have to ask the kids to re-program the whole lot: they can do it without instructions, I can’t!
Ah well…
Turn down your central heating by a couple of degrees. A reduction of 1 degree can typically save 10% of your heating costs.
So if I lower my heat 11 degrees, the power company will owe me money?
my word: kmdag – new rapper out of South Central LA.
noons said….
All my electronic gizmos, video watchamacallits and audio whatsits have two ways to turn off:
one is the standby.
the other is the off button.
OK, the only device I have that has a standby mode is my dvd player, and I don’t use standby. Everything I own has a “power off” button pretty much, and that’s what I use. I guess I am unfamiliar with standby mode and “switching off at the outlet”. I always make sure lights are out in unoccupied rooms, the thermostats are set to minimum comfort when possible, and we try to be picky about energy-efficient appliances. Everything we buy that is recyclable, gets recycled. My one gripe is that because of my situation, I need to drive a minivan, and I’d much rather have an economy car that gets great gas mileage and has low emissions. I guess we can only do what we can.
😀
Using low power diskless PCs in the workpace can reduce the amount of energy used down to less than that of a lightbulb.
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PlasmaNetix enables diskless computing and is based on free software.
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These are all very simple and easy steps that we can and must take.The switching off in the wall is a simple habit which has to be adhered to now.The energy saving lights are really going to help if all of start using.