Eco Worrier - Times Online - WBLG

2008 Carbon Calculator Round Up

Phew! Someone else has done this, so I don’t have too. And it's a job well done by Pinko Mag (never heard of them until today, but I like it).

Click here to find its list of the various ways you can tot up your carbon-evilness and which works best. Thank you Ben Wyskida for sending me the link!

Personally, I’m not a great one for getting in a fix about the exact size, to the last gram, of my carbon footprint. Most people, if they think about it, probably know their weak spots and what they should be doing to change them. Don't focus on the sums, just do it, as a certain multinational sports company says.

Battle of the drafts

I’m waging a war against drafts.

Keeping doors closed and curtains drawn when it gets dark is the least of it.

My obsession started with a few simple measures. A curtain rail was erected above the front door, hung with a thick, velvet curtain and a couple of draft excluding sausage dogs were positioned strategically around our flat  (like this one from Refab). But it was not enough.

I started to squeeze blue-tack into key holes and down the side of offending doors. I wanted to try cling-film around the bay window and stash a pile of old clothes around the bottom of the back door, but the Eco-Sceptic boyfriend said the flat was better off a little chilly.

My mother has cling-filmed herself in this winter with this product. The verdict? She’s not convinced that it keeps her old, cold house much warmer, but it does make a spooky flapping noise in the breeze that alarms guests. Of course, the obvious answer is proper double-glazing, but sometimes it’s forbidden on old period properties – as is the case with our bay window. Then what? I’d love to know your tips. 

UPDATE: just discovered thegreenguy has been taking on insulation too. Read his post here

The latest green flex

A lip balm called Eco Lips landed on my desk today. It’s a nice enough thing, sweet-tasting with a clever little clip so that you can fasten it onto your trousers if you have the good fortune to be on the slopes * or doing some other vigorous winter sport that turns your pockets upside down. But why eco?

Well, the ingredients are 95 per cent organic, which is nice to know, as is the fact that it is free of all those paraben, petroleum combinations that Greenpeace warns us about. But what really jumped out of the press release was the fact that the Iowa-based company – yes, sorry, it is American (not because America is bad but because it's a shame it has to travel so far) – is trying to establish solar power for its offices.

It is a long way from being off-grid - for which read that it has probably only taken the first steps - yet it strikes me that this is the latest green flex. A company's way of marking itself out as green. Yes, a rival company might be off-setting; it might be organic and/or fair trade, and it might be lighting its HQ with low-energy bulbs, but does it have a whopping great panel or a wind turbine on the office roof?

Not all companies make a song and dance about it. Here are a few places in the UK that have renewable energy, and you would never even know.

* yes, I know about the environmental hazards of skiing, and I'll back to them soon, I promise (just after my annual two weeks in Val D'Isere)

Marks and Spencer’s Fondant Au Chocolat

Because it’s January, I decided the blog could indulge in a bit of chocolate worship. My defence of this shameful product promotion is that the cake is made almost entirely of Fairtrade ingredients. The sugar, the dark chocolate and the cocoa powder are all Fairtrade. The remaining ingredients are simply free range egg, butter and wheatflour.
You are supposed to cook the cake for 15 minutes, but we in the Body&Soul office at The Times didn’t get that far.

Chances are, if bring this home with you on Valentines Day – or before - you will be loved in return.

Fight against patio heaters

Bravo B&Q. As the retailer that shifts the highest number of patio heaters in the UK, its decision to stop selling them is a brave one. It follows pioneering anti-patio heater retailers Wyevale and Notcutts, the first to announce that they would no longer stock the CO2 belching beasts.

Here’s what The Energy Saving Trust says about their carbon footprint: a propane patio heater with a heat output of 12.5kW will produce around 34.9kg of CO2 before the fuel runs out (after approximately 13 hours). This is equivalent to the energy required to produce approximately 5,200 cups of tea.

Since the smoking ban, pubs have gone mad for patio heaters, thinking it will draw in customers. I've taken to telling them it won't. If your local sets up a troop of heaters outside, like mine did, it makes sense to tell the landlord you don't like them. I know it’s nice to be able to sit outside in the evening, sipping pints, but for that we’ll have to wait a few months.

Talking of things that shouldn’t be sold, don’t forget that you only have ten days to send in your nomination for The Landfill Prize.

Help buying a new bike

Having hung on to an old, ropey bike for far too long (it was second hand when we bought it in 1995), I’m beginning to toy with the idea of treating myself to a new one. Not necessarily new-new, I’m quite happy with second hand, but at least something with decent breaks that doesn’t injure my back every time I lug it down the steps to our flat.

But it seems that choosing a bike is a complicated business. There’s so much you need to know. I want to be taken seriously by the lycra-clad geeks in bike shops, you see, not treated like the clueless, fair-weather cyclist that I am.

So I am delighted to have come across a new book by Green Books called Cycling to Work: a beginner's guide. It has a helpful section on Buying a Bike, outlining the different types. Hybrid, road racers, mountain bikes – I’m up with all the lingo having read it in bed this morning. There’s also a bit on Bike Maintenance with instructions on how to do basic things like mend a puncture and tighten your break cables. Stuff that usually involves a trip to a bike shop for me. Even better, I found the Why Cycle website which has a jargon busting section. So armed with new knowledge, I set out this weekend, to investigate my options. Will it be a stolen bike, sold on the cheap at London's Brick Lane? (yep, bad karma). A new bicycle from a proper shop? (expensive and not very green). Or an online deal from one of the discount bike sites, or even Ebay? (Dodgy business, buying a bike without seeing/riding it first). Watch this space.

Hugh's Chicken Campaign

Interesting video, but not for vegetarians. Watch here

If my linking skills are everything I hope, you should be able to click here to find this BBC3 documentary, Kill it; Cook it, Eat it

Nominations, please, for the Landfill Prize

Been given a particularly pointless Christmas present? Here’s a way of making sense of it. You can enter it in for the Landfill Prize, a genius idea set up by my colleague, Times writer John Naish. His book Enough, which looks at our voracious appetite for stuff, is about to be published.

As one of the judges, I can reveal that we will be looking for “the most pointless, frivolous, over-complicated and wasteful consumer objects of the last 12 months”.
One such contender that is sitting on a desk in front of me is the battery operated salt and pepper mill, sent in by a PR company hoping to impress. I hate it. It makes a noise like a power drill every time you season your sandwich and you are deprived of the opportunity to exercise thumb and middle finger when you grind your salt.

How do you rate your veg box?

Firstly, thanks to Alison Blenkinsop for pointing out this website devoted to preventing the unhappy sequence of events that leads to vegetables ending up in the (compost) bin. It contains dozens of recipes for using up every imaginable vegetable as well as a search engine so you can find your nearest veg box scheme. This was a subject I covered in my Body&Soul column here, which has sparked some debate, not least from Olivia Abbot who is deeply suspicious of veg boxes. "I think you should warn readers that they should question the origins of food in veg boxes just as they would from a shop and not assume that because it's delivered to their door it's necessarily local produce."

Top 10 Green Wheels to watch in 2008

Buying a new car is not exactly a laudable green resolution, but driving an old banger can be even worse - as I wrote here. Old cars are seriously inefficient; it’s not worth bribing your MOT man to keep a decrepit but much loved beast on the road.
For anyone upgrading, here are the top ten green wheels nominated by What Green Car, an independent guide to green cars.
Find them and the links below - or, for more info and the full report, click here.

Do you have any green resolution?

What a predictable bunch we are. According to a Mintel survey, this year’s most popular New Year’s resolution is to exercise more. I’ve got nothing against the odd walk in the park, but really, have we nothing better to do than improve our waistlines?  Apparently, only 28 per cent of us plan to reduce our energy use and a mere two per cent of us are going to cut back on how much we fly. Odd, really, when eating beansprouts and sweating in the gym is much less fun than taking slow train journeys across Europe, making your own compost and having minuscule electricity bills.

Your green resolutions, please? Mine are as follows:

Get involved with community green action. So far, I’ve been a lone warrior. Time to team up with other eco-conscious types in East London.

Revert to Ecover laundry liquid. After taking part in an eco life swap for RED magazine and living like a non-green for a week - which involved buying non-green products - I have got hooked on the sort of fabric softeners and sweet-smelling (but plastic encapsulated) liquid pods that I previously had not allowed myself to consider.

Eat less meat – and when I do, only the most ethically virtuous organic, corn-fed variety.

Sort out the weedy no-go zone of my garden. What I’d really like to do is shadow a gardener for a couple of hours and watch green fingers in action in my own garden, or join an affordable horticultural evening class. Anyone got any ideas on how to go about finding either?