It would be great to be able to generate our own energy, either via a wind turbine, solar collectors (PV cells) or even a small watermill in the occasional stream! However, any one of these is some way off at the moment.
What we have done though is ensure that the grid-supplied electricity we use is helping to increase the use of renewables (non-polluting and not adding to climate change) for power generation. To do this we buy all our electricity from Ecotricity.
Some suppliers state that all their power is 'green', which in reality means they buy their power from renewable generators. Whilst their power is generated renewably it doesn't necessarily mean that they are investing in renewables by, for example, building wind farms. Ecotricity, however, are investing in renewable energy to the tune of £7 million this year, and we think they're great as a result!
If you want to read more try this article from the Ecologist http://www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=428
Wednesday, 21 February 2007
Sunday, 18 February 2007
Landfill guilt
We finally managed to find time, the whole weekend to be precise, to sort out the shed. As it's the size of a single garage it's a huge shed and it had been left full of the previous owners stuff - some very useful (such as a back door and laminate flooring that we've put to good use) and some not so (An exercise treadmill!).
After sorting the contents and retaining what we wanted to keep we then had another eco dilemma - what should we do with the rubbish? It was time for the old goat house bonfire to be lit so any wood and cardboard was burned. Scrap metal was taken to the dump, along with rubble hardcore.
After sorting the contents and retaining what we wanted to keep we then had another eco dilemma - what should we do with the rubbish? It was time for the old goat house bonfire to be lit so any wood and cardboard was burned. Scrap metal was taken to the dump, along with rubble hardcore.
The usual shed supply of old paint pots and odd bottles of coloured liquids were the most difficult to get rid of. We made sure any oil was put in the oil collection at the dump but there seems to be no way of getting rid of unwanted paints etc. Did a check on Google but there are no cummunity paint recycle schemes near us so ended up (rather unsatifactorily) throwing the old paint into the general waste at the dump - we now feel guilty about adding to landfill. Surely there must be a better option...
There are still things to sort (and get rid of) including the treadmill but at least we can safely get in the shed now. Time to get Freecycling.
Wednesday, 7 February 2007
Green paint
We spent the weekend decorating our bedroom and have tried out 'green' paint - not the colour of course as the room was already a yucky green! After much deliberating, and a visit to the Green Shop near Stroud, we bought Auro 321 for the walls and (white) Green Paint for the ceiling.
Auro 321 is the most eco friendly as it's petro-chemical free and contains no fungicides - but it does contain essential oils! Using the paint was great as it smells nice enough to eat! We also were pleasantly suprised how well it covered the old walls that were in a pretty bad state with flaky old paint/plaster due to condensation problems. Only time will tell how durable it is but the end result looks good.
The Green Paint has also done a good job - it's not quite as green as Auro it does contain some chemicals but we couldn't find the right white in Auro 321. Unlike Auro this is made in the UK so it scores well on paint miles!
As we've paperered a feature wall (with FSC paper of course) we also tried Auro's wallpaper paste - it's fungicide free and has done a good job.
All in all we recommend these alternatives, even if they are more expensive and dificult to track down. They are much more pleasant to use, and should create a much healthier internal and external environment.
Auro 321 is the most eco friendly as it's petro-chemical free and contains no fungicides - but it does contain essential oils! Using the paint was great as it smells nice enough to eat! We also were pleasantly suprised how well it covered the old walls that were in a pretty bad state with flaky old paint/plaster due to condensation problems. Only time will tell how durable it is but the end result looks good.
The Green Paint has also done a good job - it's not quite as green as Auro it does contain some chemicals but we couldn't find the right white in Auro 321. Unlike Auro this is made in the UK so it scores well on paint miles!
As we've paperered a feature wall (with FSC paper of course) we also tried Auro's wallpaper paste - it's fungicide free and has done a good job.
All in all we recommend these alternatives, even if they are more expensive and dificult to track down. They are much more pleasant to use, and should create a much healthier internal and external environment.
Monday, 5 February 2007
Not as green as it looks...
One of our aims is to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, but currently Hillside is heated via oil fired central heating. This is stretching the point slightly as the house is pretty thermally inefficient so the heating barely copes and needs supplementing by open fires.
Anyway, getting back to the point, we discovered a couple of weeks ago that the 1000 litre oil tank was only half full, which was a major suprise as we had it filled the day we moved in. There is no way we should've got through that much oil in a month! The smell of oil and obvious signs of leakage around the tank were all we needed to see that we had our own mini-environmental disaster to deal with. There's not much you can do to repair a rusting leaky oil tank - can hardly weld a patch onto it - and hence eco dilemma number 1.
We've been expecting a few eco dilemmas but this one caught us by suprise. Should we replace the tank, knowing that we plan to get rid of oil fired heating in future, and if so should we get another steel tank or a plastic one? As we needed to stop the remaing oil from leaking away, and as our alternative heating options haven't progressed yet it was easy to decide we needed to replace the tank. As for steel versus plastic: steel is more easily recyclable and is not derived from fossil-fuel, Plastic on the other hand will not corrode as quickly.
In the end we decided to go with a second-hand steel tank thus avoiding the use of plastic but also recycling somebody else's cast-off that can be recycled further in future if only for scrap. It's painted bright green but isn't quite what we had in mind when we said we wanted to make Hillside greener...
Anyway, getting back to the point, we discovered a couple of weeks ago that the 1000 litre oil tank was only half full, which was a major suprise as we had it filled the day we moved in. There is no way we should've got through that much oil in a month! The smell of oil and obvious signs of leakage around the tank were all we needed to see that we had our own mini-environmental disaster to deal with. There's not much you can do to repair a rusting leaky oil tank - can hardly weld a patch onto it - and hence eco dilemma number 1.
We've been expecting a few eco dilemmas but this one caught us by suprise. Should we replace the tank, knowing that we plan to get rid of oil fired heating in future, and if so should we get another steel tank or a plastic one? As we needed to stop the remaing oil from leaking away, and as our alternative heating options haven't progressed yet it was easy to decide we needed to replace the tank. As for steel versus plastic: steel is more easily recyclable and is not derived from fossil-fuel, Plastic on the other hand will not corrode as quickly.
In the end we decided to go with a second-hand steel tank thus avoiding the use of plastic but also recycling somebody else's cast-off that can be recycled further in future if only for scrap. It's painted bright green but isn't quite what we had in mind when we said we wanted to make Hillside greener...
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