Bio-diesel
Bokashi Bin
EcoButton
Eco Kettle
Eco-Wool
Fuel Economy
TetraPak Recycling
Water Butts
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Bio-diesel
A couple of us have tried it out. Martin with little joy:
I tried it in my Rover 75 with disastrous results. Ok it was cheap to buy – about 95p a litre and the first tank a 50/50 mix with fossil diesel was ok but I thought the engine was whining a little, but the second tank full, about a 60/40 mix was bad news – my car broke down twice and the second time needed a new and very expensive fuel pump. Not for me until the quality is much improved and consistent and the car manufacturers give it the ok.
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Bokashi Bin
Used for pickling all of your raw or cooked food waste, including meat and fish scraps, so it can be dug into soil or a compost bin as an enricher. It also provides you with a liquid plant food, or drain cleaner. You can read more about the Bokashi bin (and buy one!) from www.wigglywigglers.co.uk.
Tom has bought one and found the following:
We empty all our food waste into it, except for bones, and then sprinkle in a handful of the bokashi bran, press it down, and seal the lid back on. It's easy to use, and we don't get any smell from it. On the plus side it keeps food waste out of landfill and enriches your soil. It could be handy as well if we start to see charges being introduced on our general waste. The downside is that you need to buy it in the first place, and then continue to buy the bran after that - though you can easily order the bran online from a number of places (including wigglywigglers.co.uk). We have only ordered the bran once so far but at a guess it works out at about £2 per month.
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EcoButton
You can read more about the ecobutton at www.eco-button.com. Here are Tom's findings:
Cost: £10 - £15
Practicality: The idea is that by hitting the button when you have finished using your PC it will go into hibernation. This massively reduces down the amount of electricity being used by your machine. For this purpose the button is excellent. When you come back to your machine and resume you even get a nice display telling you how much electricity you have saved, and how much money - providing you have configured the software with the costing details from your electricity supplier. However,
the problem I found, using the ecobutton, was that internet / network connections were not closed or managed satisfactorily and I was regularly having to reboot PCs and modems.
How Green: The theory is very sound. From their website:A domestic user running a single computer can make a valuable contribution to the environment by saving up to 135kg of CO2 per year and approximately £50.00 in electricity per year by using the ecobutton™ regularly. There are approximately 20 million home PCs in the UK so collectively, through nationwide power saving routines, it could be possible to stop 2.8 million tonnes of CO2 from passing into the atmosphere through computers otherwise being left running idle at home. It is going to depend on how you used your PC is the first place i.e. do you always turn it off anyway? For us we calculated we would save between £60 - £100 a year per PC.
Verdict: I bought one of these buttons with the aim of easing the end of day shutdown of all the PCs we use at the shop. My conclusion is that you are better using the built in power options within the operating system, rather than buy a gadget such as this. This way, the network / internet connection will be managed correctly, you can configure your machine to go to hibernate after a period of inactivity - so forgetting to hit a button wouldn't matter, and also it will cost you nothing! Instructions on how you can set up your PCs power management are avaiable on the internet. Here is a link for power management in Windows XP.
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Eco Kettle
You can read all about the Eco Kettle at www.ecokettle.com.
It is an Energy Saving Trust recommended product. We have bulk bought a few and all had a go.
Our reviews are slightly mixed. The overall consensus is that it does serve the purpose of making you think about how much water you are boiling - as you have to plunge the required amount, indicated by the gauge on the side, from the reserve chamber into the boiling chamber. However, you don't actually need this kettle to do that, you can acheive the same result with any kettle with a gauge on the side. The advantage with the Eco Kettle is that you don't have to remember to be conservative - it forces you to. Of the 6 of us that have tried them, 1 did find there was a plastic taste from the kettle but otherwise the reviews were generally positive.
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Eco-Wool
A non-irritant, non-allergenic insulation made from 85% recycled plastic bottles. You can read more about it at www.eco-wool.co.uk. At the time of writing it is also on a half price deal at B&Q - selling at about £7.50 a roll.
Martin's take:Brilliant – did my hole loft in the spring increasing my depth of insulation from about 3 inches to 8 inches. It is easy to lay and doesn't itch or aggravate your skin ... Hoping for big reductions in my gas bill this winter. And Tom's:
Dead easy to work with, I just laid it straight over the old sunken insulation. It was also the cheapest in B&Q at the time.
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Fuel Economy
Jane has been looking into how much she can save on her commute to work:
I drive to work – I wish I didn’t have to but I work in the community and need my car. Over the last year I - like everyone else - have noticed how expensive it is to fill up and have seen a tank of fuel rise from £30 to £35 and now over £40.
One day I decided to look on the internet for a fuel calculator to see how much it actually costs me to drive to work. I found a website: www.fuel-economy.co.uk and put in the figures. I discovered that if I get an average 40mpg the trip costs me £4.22. If I do 45mpg it costs £3.75. 50mpg costs £3.37 (this is with fuel costing £115.9/litre).
I have eased off on the accelerator pedal and drive a little more steadily (60-70mph on the motorway rather than 70-80) and I make sure I accelerate and decelerate steadily. The journey doesn’t seem to take me any longer but I have noticed a difference financially – I can get 70-80 miles more from a tank of fuel – that’s over 25% more miles per tank. It’s great to save money while doing my bit for the environment!
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Tetrapak Recycling
TetraPak cartons encompass a wide range of beverage and food cartons and are typically used to store milk, orange juice, custard and so on. In Mawdesley they can not currently be placed in the green recycling bag - If you currently do this then they are sorted by hand at the waste transfer station and end up in landfill.
The Green Team have looked into a recycling station to be placed at the Village hall for residents of Mawdesley to use. Unfortunately, TetraPak are at their limit on the number of recycling stations they will supply to the Chorley area so currently will not support it.
There is a clear benefit to recycling TetraPak cartons - For every tonne recycled 900kg of CO2 is saved. The energy reclaimed from a single carton is enough to run a 40W light bulb for 4 hours! Not to mention it's less waste going to landfill.
There are currently two options for recycling TetraPak cartons for Mawdesley residents:
- Save them up, compress them and post them to a TetraPak recycling facility. Unfortunately normal postal charges apply. You can print the postal labels off using this link: www.tetrapakrecycling.co.uk/downloads/labels_oct_06.pdf. The address is:
Recycling - TetraPak
C/o Perrys Recycling
Showground Road
Bridgwater
Somerset
TA6 6AJ.
- Save them up and take them to the nearest recycling station when you are passing - Avoid making a separate trip! Our nearest is at the railway station at Croston. The Rufford recycling site does not currently support TetraPak recycling.
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Water Butts
Jane & Andy have invested in some water butts. Here are their findings:
We have purchased 4 water butts allowing us to collect up to 500L of rainwater, which we use for watering plants, cleaning cars and flushing toilets. The butts come with a kit to connect them to the downpipe and can be linked together. You need to buy a stand so that you can get a watering can or bucket under the tap.
Our original outlay for the 4 water butts, stands and connection kits was probably around £120, however we have reduced our (metered) monthly water bill from £36 to £8 (and hope to reduce that further) so will redeem the cost within a few months.
Kits are available from www.wigglywigglers.co.uk as well as hordes of other suppliers.
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