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…