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Calculate your carbon footprint
We’ve all got one – a carbon footprint – our own personal measure of how much carbon dioxide we create, an individual invisible record of how much we contribute to climate change.
Our personal emissions of greenhouse gases are changing the climate – every time we burn coal, oil or gas for energy. More than 40 per cent of CO2 emissions in the UK come directly from what we do as individuals – heating our homes, turning on the lights, driving our cars.
But knowledge is power – when we know how and why we create the carbon dioxide we do, then we also throw a little light on how we might create less of the stuff.
And the UK government is making it easy with a simple to use carbon footprint online measuring thing. You can do it for yourself or you can do it for the household in which you live. It’s easy, takes just a few minutes.
Go Generous here by clicking where it says ‘Calculate your carbon footprint’.
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Relieve The Postie - Get Your Bills Online Instead
Bills. We can’t stop them coming — and despite your best efforts, the postman refuses to stuff them back in his bag. But there is a way of paying them that at least helps reduce the postal services’ carbon footprint.
Many banks, utility and other commercial suppliers now offer an option of sending you your bills electronically, which usually involves simply logging onto their website. You can then also pay them online.
The Royal Mail encourages this via their ‘Bills Online’ website, which allows you to manage all your bills from one site. They even send you automatic reminders when your bills are due; now there’s something to look forward to… It’s all explained here
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Ditch The Disposable Items
Did you know that batteries are among the most non-biodegradable and toxic items we dispose of?
Did you know that almost 5% of all waste that local authorities deal with is made up of disposable nappies?
So why not make a start on disposing less stuff by switching to rechargeable batteries or washable nappies wherever you can?
Whether it’s batteries (which we can all do) or nappies (which is not relevant to all of us), please consider the origins and destinations of the stuff we use.
Read about how to dispose of your non-rechargeable batteries.
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Recycle Your Inkjet Cartridges
We dump 350 million empty cartridges each year into landfill sites and miss the opportunity to save ourselves millions of pounds.
Inkcycle will pay up to £5.00 for every ink jet cartridge you send for recycling. Remember, every cartridge that we recycle helps reduce landfill usage and improves the environment for everyone. More here
Alternatively, Oxfam have a scheme with LaserXchange which raises them £40,000 a year through people sending in empty ink-cartridges. For every suitable cartridge received, LaserXchange will donate £2.50 to Oxfam, and £1 for every suitable inkjet cartridge. More here
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Unplug Your Chargers - reduce your emissions
Did you know that 95% of the energy used by the UK’s mobile phone chargers is wasted energy? Only 5% is actually used to charge phones, the rest is used when the charger is plugged into the wall but not switched off at the socket.
That’s over 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions that could be avoided if we all just unplugged our chargers after use.
Amazingly, this is the equivalent of almost 500 football pitches’ worth of forest every year. Incredible!
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Switch it off at the Plug. (Don't Stand By.)
The number of TVs in the UK is estimated to reach 74 million by 2020, meaning that there will be more televisions than people to watch them – or maybe we’ll be watching more than one at once.
But Britain is a nation on stand-by. We waste the equivalent of around two power stations’ worth of electricity each year simply by leaving TV sets and other gadgets on standby mode.
When electrical equipment is in sleep mode it uses roughly 7TWh of energy and emits around 800,000 tonnes of carbon. To put it another way, the entire population of Glasgow could fly to New York and back and the resulting emissions would still be less than those from devices left in sleep mode. (That’s a lot of Glaswegians in Manhattan, by the way.)
A survey by the Energy Saving Trust found that the average household has up to 12 gadgets left on standby or charging at any one time. It also showed that more than £740m of electricity was wasted by things being left ticking over. They found that 1 in 7 people questioned thought putting devices on standby was actually more energy-efficient than switching them on and off. However, they say: ‘This is largely a myth. There may have been some issues with very old electronic components, but it is certainly not the case with today’s consumer electronic goods.’
Estimated annual CO2 emissions from devices left on standby (source: Energy Saving Trust):
- Stereos – 1,600,000 tonnes
- Videos – 960,000 tonnes
- TVs – 480,000 tonnes
- Consoles – 390,000 tonnes
- DVD players – 100,000 tonnes
- Set-top boxes – 60,000 tonnes
So, let’s ban ourselves from selecting the ‘small red dot’ mode. When it’s off, make sure it really is ‘off’, and not in some vague ‘place’ in between that actually causes damage to the environment.
Visit the Energy Saving Trust website here
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More tea vicar? (Don't overfill your kettle.)
Wwhenever you fill up your kettle to make yourself a relaxing cuppa, or stimulating coffee… STOP AND THINK:
Is this the amount of water I need to heat, or will I be boiling extra water?
Overfilling a kettle wastes valuable energy and contributes to climate change. In fact, it wastes enough energy in a week to light a house for a day or run a TV set for 26 hours. Thirsty tea drinkers could also save 90 seconds each time they boil a kettle by putting in the required amount of water. Just think what you could do with all that extra time on your hands!
If you need to buy a new electric kettle, think ‘tall and thin’. The narrower the base of the kettle the less water that’s required to cover the elements. This means you are less likely to heat water you don’t need. And make sure there’s an external measuring scale, to tell you how much water you need per cups desired. Or invest in an Eco-Kettle.
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Party On ... Without the Plastic
Having a party? Don’t use that plastic rubbish, it’s a disaster. Buy biodegradable plates, cups, cutlery – whatever you use at parties – instead.
The trouble is that polystyrene, convenient though it is, is not very convenient for the planet. It never biodegrades.
This action is particularly relevant to families with young kids on the never-ending round of parties in school term time – but where the kids lead, the rest of us must follow.
Why not suggest to your workplace or school or University – or your local café – that they could use biodegradable products instead of polystyrene ones for their takeaway food and drink?
Here are a couple of companies offering starch-based, biodegradable catering utensils with whom you can Go Generous:
The products these companies provide will biodegrade in a couple of weeks, so Mother Earth can join the party too! (Sorry, very corny gag.) -
Get a water butt!
Each year the demand for water rises as our standard of living improves. We now use 70% more water than we did 30 years ago and it is estimated that the average person uses 150 litres of water every day. On average a person in the UK uses three times more water per day in their home than someone living in Africa.
Almost 100,000 litres of water falls on the average rooftop every year. Using this instead of treated drinking water is better for your garden, its wildlife and the environment…… so grab yourself a water butt!
They are a quick and easy solution to collecting a good supply of water for plants, so that you don’t waste valuable tap water.
- You can collect and store rainwater in any watertight receptacle as it falls.
- Avoid the danger of small animals falling in and drowning by fitting a lid.
- For maximum impact, connect your water butt to the guttering leading from your roof. Many custom built water butts come with a simple connection kit which takes minutes to install.
- You can buy wooden or plastic water butts. Some have a tap in the bottom which makes it easy to fill a watering can or possibly fix a hose.
- If you have a simple barrel design you will need to scoop water from the top. Make a fine mesh lid to prevent debris and small animals falling in the water while allowing the rain to collect. If you don’t put a lid on, put a plank inside to act as a safety ramp.
(Taken from the BBC website ‘science and nature’ pages.)
If your water supply is provided by ‘Wessex Water’, you can apply for a free water butt trial (for 60 days). Even if it’s not, there’s lots of helpful information regarding water efficiency on their website
- You can collect and store rainwater in any watertight receptacle as it falls.
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Get A Free Home Energy Report: Save Two Tonnes of C02 (and £250!)
It’s a doddle, takes a couple of minutes, is totally free and then you get a clever report on how you can save energy, money and the environment by making modest changes in your humble abode.
The ‘Online Home Energy Check’ is run by The Energy Saving Trust, a government body set up to ‘encourage energy efficiency and the integration of renewable energy sources into the economic fabric of our society (blah blah blah) … promote better insulation and heating efficiency for buildings and homes… champion small-scale renewable energy, such as solar and wind power.’
The point is that to generate the energy we use to keep our homes in business, we burn fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) which produce ‘greenhouse’ gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) which are changing our climate and damaging the environment.
Reducing the amount of energy we use at home can reduce by several tonnes the amount of of C02 created – and can save us up to £250 each year on energy bills (it says here).
All you do is fill in a tick-box form online to indicate the vital statistics of your des res and then they do a quick calculation before sending you a personalised report listing the ways you can reduce your energy consumption.
Go Generous with Your Home Energy here
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Switch to Green Household Cleaners
There’s no doubt about it – we live in a chemical world.
Tens of thousands of ‘cleaning’ chemicals are manufactured, used and released into the environment every day. Many of these man-made chemicals have never been properly tested for their safety and many have been linked to serious health problems in humans and wildlife. Phosphates in detergents pollute rivers and streams where they can lead to an overgrowth of river plants, ultimately starving fish and other aquatic life of oxygen.
Hazardous chemicals have had a global impact – they have contaminated the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat, and can be found in natural ecosystems from the tropics to once pristine polar regions. So why not switch to biodegradable, phosphate-free, non- petrochemical based household cleaners, such as Ecover or Bio D (now available in many supermarkets).
Want to crank it up a notch? If merely switching products isn’t enough of a challenge, how about making your own household cleaning products. It’s easier than it sounds. Some basic essential ingredients:
- White vinegar: A natural disinfectant, stain remover and reduces mineral and lime deposits. You can use white wine vinegar, but white distilled vinegar is cheaper. Don’t use malt vinegar – your home will end up smelling like a chippie!
- Bicarbonate of Soda (aka baking soda/sodium bicarbonate): A miracle cleaner. When mixed with water it forms a slightly alkaline liquid, which cuts through grease and dirt on almost any surface. Used neat it’s slightly abrasive and can be used to scrub problem stains. Vinegar and soda can be mixed together for maximum cleaning strength. (Baking powder works just as well.)
- Lemons: The citric acid in lemon juice makes it perfect for bleaching, disinfecting, deodorising and cutting grease.
- Olive Oil Great alternative furniture polish. Don’t worry about using the extra-virgin type, the most basic will do.
- Top tip: Combine your ingredients in spray bottles and shake well to dissolve.
Click here for more details, and ‘recipes’.
- White vinegar: A natural disinfectant, stain remover and reduces mineral and lime deposits. You can use white wine vinegar, but white distilled vinegar is cheaper. Don’t use malt vinegar – your home will end up smelling like a chippie!
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Dry clothes outdoors.
Drying clothes outdoors rather than in a tumble drier can help save money and the environment. OK, not everyone has access to a clothes line but if you do, this is one simple way to be generous with one of life’s necessities – laundry.
The thing is that sunshine and wind (at the time of writing) is completely free at the point of use. And borrowing their energy to dry your clothes is a modest little symbol of how we need to borrow their energy for so much else if we are to tackle climate change. The Environment Agency estimates that £88m is spent on powering tumble dryers alone in the UK every year.
Go Generous with your laundry, hang your knickers on the line. (Thanks to Rachel for this action, which has garnered the most votes from Generous Members in our ‘Suggest An Action’ area. If you want to Suggest an Action – or vote on some existing suggestions – click here)
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Put Eco Balls in your Washing Machine
Eco balls offer a whole new way of washing clothes that do away with the need for earth-damaging detergents and conditioners. They can also save you a small fortune in washing powder. You might be skeptical and not want to switch wholesale, so why not try using them every other wash or for certain types of wash (eg bedding and towels, for instance)?
Eco-balls care for your clothes, your washing machine and your environment. They are natural, environmentally friendly, efficient and cost-effective, and deliver a clean, fresh, sensitive alternative to conventional washing powders that pollute our water supply, reduce the lifespan of our washing machine and break down the very clothing they’re supposed to care for.
Just put three eco-balls in your washing machine instead of detergent / powder. Together, they produce ionized oxygen that activates the water molecules naturally and allows them to penetrate deep into clothing fibres to lift dirt away. They are reuseable for over 1,000 washes and make the average cost of a wash about 3p. There are no harsh chemicals and so there is much less pollution. You can also shorten your rinse cycle to save water and electricity.
They will not fade bright colours or damage clothing fibres. Because they are hypoallergenic they are suitable for sensitive skins/eczema (including babies and children). They soften clothes even in hard water, meaning fabric conditioner isn’t as necessary either. And because they are anti-bacterial they also kill Escherichia Coli and Staphylococcus Aureus.
They were voted one of the Ten Best Green Household Products by The Independent January 2005.
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Ladies: Consider a mooncup!
The Mooncup is a reusable menstrual cup around two inches long, made from soft silicone rubber. It’s worn internally like a tampon but collects menstrual fluid rather than absorbing. Unlike tampons the Mooncup is NOT a disposable product, so you only need to buy one.
It will hold 30ml of fluid, which is roughly one third of the average total produced each period. A light seal is formed with the vaginal walls allowing the menstrual fluid to pass into the Mooncup without leakage or odour. A user would probably find that they need to empty their Mooncup less frequently than they currently replace towels or tampons.
Unlike pads and tampons the Mooncup menstrual cup is reusable, eliminating the need to carry bulky spares. With proper care the Mooncup will last for several years.
Imagine the towels and tampons that you might be disposing of in landfill sites during those years!
One Generous member says: “I have been successfully using one for the past few months and highly recommend it. What I like about it is its simplicity plus the fact that it works brilliantly! Just think of all the tampons/towels you would get through in a year. I have given all my supplies away and feel much freer as a result.”
They are available from larger branches of Boots and good independent health food shops, at around £18.99.
If you can’t do without, you can buy non chlorine bleached biodegradable tampons, pads and towels.
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Turn Off The Tap When Brushing Your Teeth
Did you know that turning the taps off when you brush your teeth, can save up to 5 litres a minute? If the entire adult population of England and Wales did likewise, this could save a total of 180 mega litres a day – enough to supply nearly 500,000 houses. Saving water at home, in the garden or at work takes very little effort, but makes a surprisingly big difference. In general, this involves simply cutting out the amount of water we are wasting through our day-to-day habits.
It’s about consciousness – the more we become aware of our ordinary everyday actions, the more we can choose to modify to look after God’s good world. Even when cleaning our teeth.
There’s more on saving water at home at the Environment Agency.
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DIY vegetables!
If you don’t have a garden, think about getting an allotment or use a garden window box.
Is one allotment too much for you? How about sharing it with a friend, and make lots of other friends with the other alotmenteers.
Not only is it good food, good exercise and organic (if you choose to grow them that way) but it cuts down on transport and all that inherent problems with pollution and waste. You also often grow surplus and what better to do with that but to give it away. Generous on all fronts we think!
Grow2eat Supported by the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners.
Month by month advise on what to do in your garden Garden Organic
If you want an allotment, the best thing to do is contact your local authority who will have a list of available plots. Plotholders Guide produced by the Government
Linked actions: Try To Shop Local, Organic, Animal-Friendly and Fair Trade Shop Small – look for local suppliers instead of always using online multinationals See If You Can Join A Local Food Cooperative Compost Your Leftovers Plant A Tree Last chance to plant some bulbs
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Plant some bulbs
Make someone smile with flowers. Take up your trowel and plant flowers.
When the Summer has ended, the time for planting ugly looking bulbs is upon us. But these brown odd shaped things, magically transform into an inspiring array of colours, just when we need it! The long winter with its cold wind is forgotten in an instant. So go on simply get a very cheap plant pot if you are a student or don’t have a garden, or you did once but it got covered in paving slabs, and fill the it with soil, plant a bulb and leave the reset of it to the miracle of nature and in spring it may even make you smile too.
Advise: Good and easy things to plant include: the famous daffodil, crocuses, tulips, snowdrops and for the more adventurous of you, onions – admittedly these do not have the same aesthetic appeal but they are useful and you could still make some one smile by giving them away.
a lovely gardening site: www.hdra.org.uk
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Improve your home's energy efficiency
- Put reflective surfaces behind your radiators.
- Turn your thermostat down 1 degree (alt:Turn your thermostat down to 21C)
- Treat your hot water tank – give it a jacket! (It only costs a few pounds and pays for itself within months.)
- Line your curtains (with material from a charity shop, if possible!) Also, closing your curtains at dusk will stop heat escaping through windows.
- Check your loft insulation is sound.
- Look for cavities… around 33% of the heat loss in your home is through the walls. Cavity insulation can often be added.
- Check your boiler – if it’s over 15 years old, it’s probably time you replaced it with a new energy efficient one.
- When the days are shorter you’ll be relying on your lights more. Trade up your ordinary light bulbs for energy saving ones.
- Stop draughts and stop heat escaping by filling gaps under skirting boards with newspaper, beading or mastic sealant.
- Double-glazing cuts heat loss through windows by 50%.
Why? All these save energy and stop the planet from warming up (and will probably save you money in the long run… feel free to give any money saved to those who need it more than you do!)
Link: The energy saving trust can put you in touch with free advice for your local area.
Related actions:
Switch To Good (Green And / Or Socially Resonsible) Energy
Switch To Energy Saving Lightbulbs
Unplug Your Chargers – reduce your emissions -
Compost Your Leftovers
Composting is great because it is fairly simple and is a direct way that we can have a beneficial effect on the environment.
On the one side, we are rapidly running out of landfill space and soon organic materials will be banned from landfill sites altogether. On the other, these materials are too good to be thrown away and the most responsible thing to do is to treat them as a useful product rather than a waste. If you need any other reasons: it can be a community building enterprise; it can teach your children about the world in their back garden; and it can be a source of worms if you are feeling very hungry.
Put simply, what we are doing by starting a compost heap is like creating an incubator for all the helpful bugs in our garden. So we need to ensure that we keep them happy.
So, there are only really two things to remember about composting. First, keep it aerated. The bugs need to breathe, so make sure there is lots of air mixed in. The two ways of doing this are ‘turning’ and ‘adding big bits’. Turning is the technical term for mixing with a fork. Adding big bits is the technical term for adding big bits (sticks/logs). These will take a long time to disintegrate, but at the same time will allow the air to get to the rest of your compost.
Second is a bit more technical. The bugs need the right balance of carbon and nitrogen. ‘Urrgggghhhhh…’ I hear you cry, ‘I hate chemistry’. So this is all you need to know: brown things have lots of carbon and green things have lots of nitrogen. If you have too many green things in your compost bin, it will go manky. So for every handful of grass, vegetable peelings or green leaves that you bung into the compost bin, try to put some cardboard (torn into little pieces), card egg box, thin sticks chopped up finely, dust from the vacuum cleaner or a bit of newspaper. Garden composting is an inexact science, but if you are using a lot of fruit, all grass clippings, have lots of flies, or it is all looking chocolate brown and slimy, you need more carbon.
Then, probably a couple of times a year, you will end up with nice, crumbly, dark compost to spread on your prize geraniums. There are other things that can be done if you do not have space for a large composting bin, by the way.
Almost the whole known world will be falling over themselves to tell you about home composting. Local councils love it (it saves them a whole lot of trouble) so a good place to start is to talk to your local recycling officer and/or look at their website. You might even be able to buy a nice shiny plastic composting bin at a special knockdown price (depending on where you live).
Otherwise, the Henry Doubleday Research Association give good general composting hints.
If you are really keen, my friend Nicky Scott has produced a very readable booklet called ‘Composting for All’ published by Greenbooks for a few pounds.
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Switch To Energy Saving Lightbulbs - perhaps set a target for your home this year
Most of us use light bulbs designed about 100 years ago, which produce nearly as much heat as light. And with the heat comes the carbon dioxide, further raising the global temperature – tho’ you might not notice it!
In most homes lighting accounts for 10 – 15 per cent of the electricity bill. UK households use £1.2 billion worth of electricity on lighting every year. Electricity consumption by domestic lights and appliances has nearly doubled since 1970. And it’s set to increase by 12 per cent by the end of the decade.
By buying an energy efficient lightbulb you can cut energy wastage by over 75 per cent. That’s around £7 a year on the average energy bill or £65 over the bulb’s lifetime.
It has been calculated by someone that if every house in the UK fitted three energy saving bulbs the energy saved could light all our cities at night. Plus you get lower bills.
How about switching six over in a year?
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Shower More, Bath Less
Take one less bath a week
According to the Environment Agency, a 5-minute shower uses about a third of the water of a bath – can save 50 litres every time. (Although power showers can use more water than a bath in less than 5 minutes.)
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Go Meat-Free One Day A Week
Our diets have a bearing on the sustainability of our planet. It’s been calculated that the length of time the world’s petroleum reserves would last (with current technologies) if all human beings ate a meat-centered diet would be just 13 years. They would last 260 years if all human beings ate a vegetarian diet. Maybe we can make a generous step in that direction.
More here from a gently persuasive Jonathan Porritt
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Energy Efficient Cooking
Unless you’ve got your cooker hooked up to a wind turbine, or some solar panels on your roof, chances are that it guzzles the electricity or gas every time you use it! All energy used (and wasted) in our homes contributes to climate change.
Anyone fancy a ‘raw food’ diet ? (Not likely to be an Action many Generous members would buy.)
So here’s a more practical thought: when you cook your pasta, bring it to the boil, stick the lid on, then turn the heat right off. It will cook! Honest! It might take a bit longer than if you left it simmering, and you’ll have to keep an eye on it, but after a bit of experimenting you should find that you know how long it will take. It’s simple but effective… what about trying this also with rice, or when hard boiling eggs! Remember, every little we do makes a difference!
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Sort Out Your Unused Paint - then give it away
Did you know that the UK wastes 6.2 million litres a year? On average, every household in Britain has more than 17 tins of paint and other decorative coverings hidden away in cupboards, sheds and lofts (according to research by Save Waste and Prosper) and we don’t know what to do with them. It’s estimated that this unused paint is worth around £155 million in the UK alone.
Thrown away, paint usually ends up in landfill sites where its toxic components leak out and pollute waterways. Of course, using this unwanted paint would avoid this environmental cost. But what can we do? Well, there is now a national network of more than 40 paint recycling schemes across the country – encouraging people to recycle their unwanted paint by collecting it and redistributing it to charities and other community projects. Ask your local authority about schemes in your area and get down your shed – now!
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Get Rid Of Some Of Your Books
Many of us have books we no longer read – and some we are no longer ever likely to read. And many of us buy books new – nothing wrong with that!
However… perhaps a percentage of our book-buying could be done second-hand – and maybe it could be funded by selling some of our surplus books online. Even better, perhaps we could help plant a tree each time!
Well, that’s the idea behind greenmetropolis.com.
By recycling used books not only are we saving existing trees, we’re actually planting new ones. How? GreenMetropolis.com donates 5p for every book sold to the ‘Plant a Tree’ scheme run by the Woodland Trust – the UK’s largest tree planting charity.
Sign up at their website.
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Put A Save-A-Flush Device In Your Cistern
Each flush of the toilet wastes 12 litres of water – but if you put a brick in your cistern you can save up to 3,000 litres a year, which is 35,000 cups of tea!
Special magic bricks called save-a-flush or hippos are offered free to customers by many water suppliers. Log onto your suppliers website and see if they provide them. If they do not, use the ‘contact us’ link to get in touch and ask them why they don’t.
And while you’re waiting for them to get with the action – either use a real brick – it has the same effect.
If your supplier allows you – Thames Water for example provides up to 100 free of charge – make a bulk order and give them out to your friends and neighbours or distribute them at church. (Jacqui, for example, has already received a hundred and is discreetly slipping them into cisterns across London. She has now ordered more under another name. We will keep you posted.)
Don’t forget to tell us if you do the action and let us know how many you have distributed.
Incidentally if you are changing your toilet check out dual flush toilets which give you the choice of a quick or long flush.
And if you want to know who you local water supplier is check here.
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Switch To Good (Green Or Socially Resonsible) Energy
Change energy suppliers to a more environmentally or socially responsible one. Changing suppliers is easy these days – what’s more difficult is deciding which one to change to.
Fortunately help is at hand from those nice people at Friends of the Earth, who have rated and explained some of the complexities of green energy and marked the different suppliers’ greenness.
If you are looking for social responsibilty in your energy buying, we recommend Equipower – after all, it’s founder Phil Levermore was one of our original Generous members.
Equipower attempts to right the hidden social injustice perpetuated by many suppliers who charge low-income users – generally those on PrePaid Meters – more for their energy than those on higher incomes, who generally pay by direct debit. Equipower charges all customers the same price for their energy – no discounts are offered for direct debit payments and higher rates are not charged to those using prepaid meters. So how about sacrificing your direct debit savings and helping keep someone else warm this winter.
