Tumble Dryer

My broken tumble dryer has been repaired. Hurrah! I think it did me no harm at all to do without it for a while. It's good to have a reminder that the old ways of doing things still work. And certainly I got lazy and used the dryer when I could really have hung things on the line instead. But by golly, it's good to have it back.

My Biggest Fan

If you are drying clothes indoors, either through choice or necessity, an electric fan speeds it up considerably but it still uses a lot less juice than a tumble dryer.

When is an A-Rated Appliance Not?

When is an A-rated appliance not an A-rated appliance? When it only last 2 years before irreparably breaking down. Five years ago we bought a White Knight A-rated tumble dryer. As far as I know it was and still is the only A-rated dryer available. We really liked it. It has some nifty features like reverse tumble - it changes the direction it tumbles every few minutes, so your clothes don't end up in a tight sausage, bone dry and hot on the outside and wet in the middle. It has a sensor, so it goes until the clothes are dry then it stops automatically. I used this feature to test the tumble dryer balls a couple of years ago. You can set it to full-eco-mode where it takes all day to get your clothes dry but uses very little energy in doing so (this is the A-rated mode), or you can set it to murder-death-kill-mode where it blasts your clothes dry in an hour or so. But even in this mode it seems very gentle and I have stopped being fussy about what I tumble-dry and what I air-dry because nothing has ever shrunk in this dryer.

But just over two-and-a-half years after we bought it the drum ripped clean off the bearing leaving a huge ragged hole in the back of the drum. We inquired about getting a replacement drum but it was totally uneconomical - it cost more to do this than to buy a whole new appliance. So we bought another identical dryer. After all, we liked the model very much. Maybe it was a freak manufacturing fault which made it fail so quickly. But just in case it wasn't, we took out the optional 5-year-warranty.

It is more "green" to replace a part than to replace the whole appliance

We're very glad we did, because 2 years and 1 month after we bought it, the exact same fault happened again. And this time the warranty-people have ordered a replacement drum. I don't know why it is economical for them to do it when it wasn't economical for us, but hey-ho. I feel a bit ambivalent about this. It is more "green" to replace a part than to replace the whole appliance, so that's nice. But if they had just sent me a cheque to buy a new dryer, I would have avoided this model like the plague. I feel sure the new drum will also fail in another two years - or more likely in about 3 years, when the 5-year-warranty has expired.

How much energy have I saved by using an A-rated appliance compared to another appliance? I don't know. it depends on exactly how often I have used it, which varies from season to season. And it depends on how much I have used it on A-rated mode and how often I used it on regular mode, which also varies. I put slow-mode on when Ed is at work all day and I just tune-out the sound of the endless rumbling. But in the evenings and at weekends when Ed and the kids are at home I put it on fast-mode. There is enough noise in the house at those times without adding to it.

the embedded energy of the appliance

But how much energy is there in the extraction and processing of the materials that made the appliance? How much energy was used in its manufacture and transport? This is the embedded energy of the appliance. Think of it like the cost of owning a car - if a car is very cheap to run, then that's nice. But if it is very expensive to buy in the first place then that weighs against the cheapness of running. Maybe it still works out cheaper overall, as long as you keep the car on the road long enough. But if you buy an expensive car that breaks down after two years, then it's always going to be uneconomical compared to a car that lasts a long time. I don't think the White Knight dryer deserves to call itself A-rated if it only lasts two years, because I suspect the embedded energy outweighs the energy savings in use.

it is better to dry clothes on the line, and I do this when I can

P.S. yes, it is better to dry clothes on the line, and I do this when I can. But it has rained in England almost without let-up for the last two years. OK that's not strictly true, but it feels true. We have certainly had an unusually wet period for two years now. So line drying has been difficult, and I find a dryer is an essential emergency back-up when every surface in the house is covered in wet clothes and the kids need clean school uniforms by the morning.

Slow Cooker v Pressure Cooker - Differences

This is the third in a series of articles comparing pressure cookers and slow cookers. The first article compared the nutrient content of food cooked with these methods. The second article looked at similarities between them. This article is about the differences between them. But first, a quick quiz:

• Are you the kind of person who makes a weekly menu and sticks to it?
• Are you very well organised?
• Are you a morning person?
• Do you enjoy casseroles, pot roasts, soups, chilli and curries?

If you answered "yes" then you'll probably love a slow cooker. You can prepare a meal in the morning, leave it cooking all day, and come in from work to a delicious home-cooked meal with no more work to be done.

• Are you rather disorganised?
• Do you wish you could have more home-cooked food but you hate to spend hours in the kitchen after a long day at work?
• Do you enjoy casseroles, pot roasts, soups, chilli and curries?

If you answered "yes" then you'll probably love a pressure cooker. You can fling some ingredients in it and put it on the hob, then enjoy tender meat and thoroughly-cooked vegetables in a fraction of the time. But as you probably spotted, you can cook similar sorts of foods in both of them.

The main difference between them is how they work. A slow cooker uses a low heat for a long time. The food never reaches boiling point, but over several hours this low heat is enough to cook vegetables and meats right through. The slow cooker plugs in to an electrical outlet - you don't need a stove. I wish I'd had one when I was a student in halls of residence. A slow cooker draws very little power because it doesn't boil the food, so it's cheaper than conventional cooking methods. Many types of slow cooker have a removable crock that can be used as a serving dish. The lid on a slow cooker just sits lightly on top of the crock, it isn't sealed.

A pressure cooker lid, by contrast, has a tight seal. The lid contains a valve with a weight on top, so as you heat it on the hob the pressure builds up inside until the pressure is great enough to push the weight up and release a little bit of steam with a loud hiss that scares some people. This makes the pressure drop inside so the weight falls and the pressure starts to build up again. (There's really no reason to be scared of pressure cookers. They make a loud hissing noise, but there's nothing that can hurt you. They're a damn sight safer than a stepladder.) Because it is operating at more than atmospheric pressure, the temperature inside the pressure cooker reaches more than 100°C. A pan of stew or soup on your hob, with or without a lid, will never get hotter than 100°C. At this pressure and temperature, the food cooks much quicker, using less electricity.

Because of this, I use my pressure cooker a lot for cooking dried beans and pulses. Beans take hours to cook on the hob, so the pressure cooker saves a lot of time and money. Some beans (particularly red kidney beans and soya beans) contain toxins that are destroyed by heat. The high temperatures in a pressure cooker are more than enough to destroy these toxins so this is a safe way to cook dried beans. But you should never put soya or kidney beans in a slow cooker without cooking them first to destroy the toxins. The Vegetarian Society recommends pre-boiling all varieties of dried beans before slow cooking. Tinned beans of course are perfectly safe.

This was the third in a series of articles about slow cookers and pressure cookers. The final article in the series will have some recipes for these methods of cooking. Please keep emailing me your favourite recipes for slow cookers and pressure cookers.

Slow Cooker v Pressure Cooker - Similarities

I recently wrote a comparison of the an article comparing the nutrient content of food cooked in a pressure cooker and a slow cooker, prompted by Clare of Veg Box Recipes blog who was confused because:

Both claim that their method preserves the highest number of nutrients and gives maximum flavour.

Can they both be right?

I found that unfortunately there isn't really any hard data about the nutrients. But what about taste?

I find them to be quite similar in this respect. They're both good for casseroles and soups. Everything you put in the pot ends up tasting the same. Flavours merge; for example, if you put a quartered chicken, a few vegetables, and some stock, red wine and herbs in the pot, the chicken will end up tasting of vegetables, the vegetables will end up tasting of chicken, and everything will be infused with the flavour of red wine and herbs. This is true of both pressure cooking and slow cooking.

Another thing they both have in common is that (depending on the timing) everything becomes very tender. Even cheap, tough cuts of meat become drop-off-the-bone tender, and even woody vegetables like parsnips become about-to-collapse soft.

Finally, they are both cheaper than conventional cooking methods. The slow cooker is cheaper because it draws very little electricity, and even though it is left on for several hours it is comparable to leaving a conventional lightbulb on for several hours, a very different proposition from running an electric oven for several hours. The pressure cooker is cheaper because it only runs for a few minutes, or a few tens of minutes at most, and it runs on the hob. Again this is obviously a lot cheaper than cooking a casserole in your oven for a few hours.

There will be two more articles in this series comparing pressure cookers and slow cookers. The next article will look at differences between the two methods, and the final article will include some of my favourite recipes for them. If you would like to share your favourite recipes, please email them to me. I'd particularly like to hear vegetarian recipes, and recipes that aren't for soups or casseroles.

Tefal Quick Cup

I'm not normally a huge fan of eco gadgets. If anyone asked me "What should I buy to save the planet?" my answer would be "Less. Just buy less."

But my sister, Lindsey, turned up at my house this afternoon with her new green purchase - a Tefal Quick Cup. It's a sort of space age kettle that pumps the water out of a reservoir and heats it up as you need it - like a combi boiler for your hot drinks. If you just want a single cup of coffee you can have it in a few seconds rather than the few minutes it takes to boil an electric kettle.

Lindsey bought it because her husband, Andrew, has an incurable habit of boiling an entire kettle for a single cup of tea. Lindsey has tried everything to cure him of this, and the Quick Cup is her latest approach. This is it's main selling point - it's an eco kettle because you only heat the water you use. About 1/4 of your household electricity usage is for heating water, and filling up the kettle to make a single cup of tea is a terrible eco-crime.

Tefal claims that the Quick Cup uses up to 65% less energy than a standard kettle, and that this is about £30 per year for a typical household. The gadget costs around £60, so the payback time is around 2 years if Tefal's figures are correct. It can also operate as a water filter using Claris cartridges, but if you don't care about filtering your water, or if you object to the waste of disposable plastic cartridges, you can just do without these - they're optional.

There are some drawbacks to the Quick Cup. It make a really unpleasant buzzing noise (it's probably the pump) when in operation. Of course, it's only in operation for a few seconds so that's not the end of the world. It is quite quick for a single cup, but if you had to make drinks for five or six people I'd prefer to switch on a kettle and then busy myself with putting the tea bags and sugars in the cups and so on whilst it comes to the boil, rather than have to stand pressing a button all that time. And I think the noise would really be driving me mad after five or six cups.

Another problem is that the Quick Cup doesn't actually boil the water. That's one way it saves energy I suppose. But a lot of commenters on HippyShopper's review complained that their tea didn't taste right because the water wasn't hot enough, although most of them thought it made coffee well enough. The tea tastes OK to me, although I like my tea on the weak side so perhaps that's the reason. I took the temperature of a fresh cupful of water from the Quick Cup and it was about 75°, compared to about 85° for a cup freshly poured from a kettle. Why wasn't it 100° fresh from the kettle? I guess it cools down a lot when poured into a cold cup. Because water comes out cooler from the Quick Cup you can drink it faster. You might find that a bonus. On the other hand, it goes cold sooner too. So I can see that some people might love it and some might hate it, depending on their individual preferences and habits.

Finally, the Quick Cup draws energy when on standby. Most electric kettles don't draw any energy when they're not actually boiling, so I wonder if the energy savings of the Quick Cup are wiped out by the standby costs? Lindsey says she'll switch hers off at the mains when it's not in use. That's a good plan, but why not just build it so when it's off, it's off?

Lindsey likes her tea much weaker even than I drink it, so she' ll probably be happy with her new purchase if she can get used to the noise. And if it cures Andrew of his eco-crime then it's a good choice for them. But I won't be rushing out to buy one myself.

Focus on Heating Challenge Results

Throughout March I've been focusing on reducing my home heating costs, because I was staggered to learn that 84% of typical domestic energy use goes on space heating and water heating. So if you're serious about cutting your energy bills or reducing your carbon footprint you can have a much bigger impact by sorting out your insulation than you can by using low-energy lightbulbs or not leaving gadgets on standby.

So I posted a list of things you could do to cut your home heating bills, and invited readers to vote in the poll any time they did one thing on the list.

The results were:

• I've done one thing on the list! 35 (62%)
• I've already done all of the things on the list! 15 (26%)
• I don't want to do any of the things on the list! 3 (5%)
• I can't do any of the things on the list! 3 (5%)

There are still things on the list I haven't done, but I'm determined to do all I can to bring my home heating bill down. For example, I still need to top up my loft insulation. So I'll keep revisiting the list, and I'll tell you about my progress.

Well done to everyone who participated in the challenge. I hope you'll keep doing all you can to insulate your home and save energy, too.

A new challenge for April will be coming soon.

Earth Hour

Thanks to Throbgoblins for the image.

It's Earth Hour at 8pm this evening. Please turn your lights and other unnecessary gadgets off at 8pm local time for one hour to save energy and (mainly) to raise awareness about climate change.

Google is marking the day by putting a dark background on its home page. Dark colour schemes are said to reduce energy usage on older-style CRT monitors, although they make no difference on modern LCD flat screens.

The BBC are covering the event with a story on their web page and an audio story. Bean Sprouts reader Killi tells us that her electricity bill from ESB, the Irish electricity supplier, had the WWF logo on the front and a promotion for Earth Hour on the back. The city of San Francisco has moved its Lights Out event from October to March 29th, to align with Earth Hour.

Tell a friend. Spread the word. Start a debate. Join in.

Birthday Present For Me

It's my birthday on Saturday, March 29th. I'll be thirty-mumble, but that's not important right now. Do you know what I'd really like as a present? I'd like you to turn your lights off between 8pm and 9pm, local time. It's Earth Hour:

On March 31 2007, for one hour, Sydney made a powerful statement about the greatest contributor to global warming – coal-fired electricity – by turning off its lights. Over 2.2 million Sydney residents and over 2,100 businesses switched off, leading to a 10.2% energy reduction across the city. What began as one city taking a stand against global warming caught the attention of the world.

10.2%? That's incredible. It's what E-Day should have been if it hadn't been so badly stuffed up.

In 2008, 24 global cities will participate in Earth Hour at 8pm on March 29. Earth Hour is the highlight of a major campaign to encourage businesses, communities and individuals to take the simple steps needed to cut their emissions on an ongoing basis. It is about simple changes that will collectively make a difference – from businesses turning off their lights when their offices are empty, to households turning off appliances rather than leaving them on standby.

So please will you give me a birthday present? Will you participate in Earth Hour, even if you don't live in one of the participating cities? Will you blog about Earth Hour and spread the word? Will you email people who you think might be interested?

I think this is really important. I think this could wake up the people who say "It doesn't matter what I do, I'll cut my carbon footprint when industry/the government/China cuts theirs". It proves that what individuals do does matter. I think it could shake up the people who say "I'm not prepared to go live in a cave just in case man-made climate change is real". It proves that you don't have to go live in a cave, small changes can make a big difference if everyone does them.

Just one hour. It will be fun. Turn off your lights (and other unnecessary devices). Then you'll have to figure out how to entertain yourselves in the dark for one hour. Personally I think burning paraffin wax candles kind of defeats the point, but we can quibble over that in future years. Burn a candle if it makes you happy. Join in, have fun, and talk about it to your friends and neighbours. Sing "Happy birthday dear Melanie", and then leave a comment here to say you did it. For me. For my birthday.

UPDATE 16/11/2009: This post seemed to be attracting a great deal of spam comments so I have reluctantly deleted the spam and disabled new comments

A Guide to Cavity Wall Insulation

I wasn't sure whether to include this video as I think it's irritatingly patronising. What do you think?

Annoying videos aside, cavity wall insulation can make a huge impact on your home heating bill and on your carbon footprint. About half the houses in Britain have cavity walls, although if your house is under 25-30 years old it probably had the cavity walls insulated at the same time it was built.

If you live Britain you can contact the Energy Saving Trust who will put you in touch with a local contractor. They will check whether your house already has cavity wall insulation by drilling a small hole in your exterior wall to have a look. They will fill the hole up again when they're done so there is nothing to worry about, and they will carry out the check free of charge. If you don't have cavity wall insulation it's great news in a way, because you can save up to 15% of your home heating bill (abut £90 per year) by getting insulation installed. That's about the same as you can save by having your loft fully insulated - almost as much heat leaves your house through the walls as through the roof.

It costs about £500 to get cavity wall insulation installed. It's a quick and clean procedure. And you should recoup the cost in lower heating bills within about 5 years. There may be grants available, so ask the Energy Saving Trust about grants when you speak to them.

We've already got cavity wall insulation. It was here when we bought the house. But if we didn't I would definitely get it done. It's one of the most important things you can do to save energy, save carbon (about 3/4 of a tonne per year), and save yourself loads of money.

If you get a contractor to come and check whether you have cavity wall insulation, you can tick "I've done one thing on the list!" in the poll in the right-hand-sidebar. If you need to install insulation and you do it, you can tick it again.

Close Curtains at Dusk to Save Energy

This month I've challenged myself (and you) to try to cut my home heating bill with energy saving measures. This is perhaps the most important thing you can do to cut your carbon footprint, as 84% of typical domestic energy use (in Britain) goes for space heating and water heating.

I've already talked about loft insulation, but that's quite expensive (about £200-£500) and time-consuming. It's worth it, as it will only take couple of years before you've saved that much on your energy bills. But there are also simpler and cheaper things you can do to cut your home heating bills.

For example closing all your curtains at dusk will trap heat in your home. Remember to close the curtains in any room that has a radiator (such as bedrooms and spare rooms) at the same time. However you heat your house, closing the curtains after dark prevents heat from escaping through the windows.

For maximum benefit, make sure all your curtains are lined, preferably with thermal lining. Mine aren't, but as I get round to replacing them I'll make sure any new curtains I make or buy have thermal lining. Pelmets also help to stop heat escaping through the window (I really hate the look of pelmets though - ugh). And finally, make sure your curtains don't drape down over the radiators, as this would totally defeat the purpose - all the heat would be trapped behind the curtain and go straight out through the window. You might as well burn money. If any of your curtains fall over the radiators, go and chop them off with scissors straight away - it doesn't take long to sew up the hem with a sewing machine, or get some iron-on bonding to neaten up the cut edge.

If you promise to remember to close all your curtains after dark, you can click "I've done one thing on the list!" in the poll in the right-hand-sidebar. If you want to see the other items on the list, they're on the March Challenge blog post.

Loft Insulation

Do you ever wake up in the night to discover that your partner (or pet cat) has stolen most of the duvet and your uncovered feet feel like they've frozen solid? Imagine going to sleep without any blanket or sheet to cover you. Brrr. If you could get a thin blanket, that would be an improvement over nothing at all. But if you could get a really thick down-filled duvet instead, mmm, you'd be cosy and snug all night.

That's what loft insulation does to your house. Without any insulation at all 15% of your heating costs (about £110 per year)could go straight through the roof. If you have a little bit of loft insulation, say up to about 50mm (2 inches) that would be a lot better than nothing. But if you had a really thick layer of loft insulation, say up to 270mm (about 10 or 11 inches), then every bit of heat stays in your house where you want it, your bills come down, and so does your carbon footprint, by around 1 tonne of CO2 per year.

That's why I climbed up into my loft armed with a ruler, a torch and a camera (you probably don't need the camera) to see how much loft insulation I have. It turns out there's about 80mm up there (just over 3 inches). That's better than nothing, but not really enough.

Since space heating and water heating account for a whopping 84% of our typical household energy consumption, topping up my loft insulation is perhaps the single most significant thing I can do to bring down my energy bills and my carbon footprint. It puts low-energy lightbulbs in the shade. However it's a bit more costly and time consuming than simply buying a different type of bulb whenever one goes "ping". Topping up your loft insulation costs around £200 if you do-it-yourself (maybe £500 if you GALMI - Get A Little Man In). But you'll save the DIY cost in under 2 years of reduced heating bills (less than 5 years for the GALMI version). There may also be grants available. I'll be looking into that over the next few days - if anyone knows anything about loft insulation grants, please drop me an email.

It takes about half a day to insulate your loft, but perhaps more if your loft is full of junk which will have to be removed first. I don't know what the insulating value is of boxes full of old clothes, books and unused sporting goods. I wouldn't rely on it myself.

Do you know how much loft insulation you have? Go and have a look, and then you can click "I've done one thing on the list!" in the poll in the right-hand-sidebar. If you need to add more insulation and you do so, you can click it again.

Focus on Heating Challenge

Last week I reproduced this pie chart about British household energy consumption. I hadn't realised that 84% of our energy usage is for space heating and water heating. It makes low-energy lightbulbs look like a bit of a waste of time.

They're not, of course. They're an easy thing that everybody can do. And if everybody does it (switch to low-energy lightbulbs) then it makes a big difference.

Reducing your home heating bill isn't quite as straightforward. But it has the potential to make a much bigger impact than changing lightbulbs - both on your own fuel bills and on your carbon footprint.

I made a list of ways you can reduce your home heating bill, and none of them involve turning the heating off and shivering:

• Add to your loft insulation
• Make sure you have cavity wall insulation
• Install double or even triple glazing
• Exclude draughts
• Close curtains when it gets dark.
• Make sure the curtains have thermal lining
• Put foil behind radiators
• Turn off radiators in unused rooms
• Use timers to make sure the heating is only on when it needs to be
• Wear a jumper
• Turn down your heating thermostat

If you can think of any other things I could add to the list, do let me know. Notice that turning down your thermostat is last on the list. Once you've made your house more insulated and draught-proof you'll want to turn your thermostat down anyway because you'll be far too warm.

I tried to pick one of these things for March's challenge, then I thought - let's do them all. So that's this month's challenge. Every time you do one of the things on the list, vote in the poll. Even if it only makes a 5% difference in your home heating usage, that will swamp any saving you could make in lighting, appliances, leaving gadgets on standby, or any other single part of your domestic energy budget.

E-Day a Waste of Energy

Yesterday was National Energy Saving Day. Did you know? I didn't. If I had known I would have told you about it. It was supposed to be a day of energy saving, asking people to switch off electrical devices they did not need over a period of 24 hours, with the National Grid monitoring consumption. In the event, they found that our national energy consumption for the day was pretty much exactly what you'd expect for the time of year. So why was it such an abject failure?

I believe the clue is in the first three sentences of this blog post. I didn't know about it, and I bet most of you didn't either. If a paid-up environmental blogger could fail to notice that a national energy saving day was happening, then someone somewhere stuffed up the publicity very badly indeed.

According a BBC news story about it:

The E-Day concept started life as Planet Relief, an awareness-raising BBC TV programme with a significant comedy element.
But in September the BBC decided to pull the project, saying viewers preferred factual or documentary programmes about climate change.

Now that sounds like a good idea to me: a sort of Comic Relief for the planet. Instead we've had a damp squib. Apparently there is going to be another one next year. I hope it's better publicised than this one, or it will be a huge waste of energy.

Domestic Energy Breakdown

I was very interested in this pie chart which I saw in a BBC editorial about domestic energy use. It says that 84% of UK household energy use goes on space heating and hot water.

Lighting, by comparison, accounts for only 3% of UK household energy use. So whilst switching to low energy lightbulbs is an easy way you can reduce your energy use and your carbon foorprint, it's not going to make a big difference overall. Instead you should focus your energy on savings in space heating and water heating.

What can you do to cut space heating and water heating costs?

• Add to your loft insulation
• Make sure you have cavity wall insulation
• Install double or even triple glazing
• Exclude draughts
• Close curtains when it gets dark.
• Make sure the curtains have thermal lining
• Put foil behind radiators
• Turn off radiators in unused rooms
• Use timers to make sure the heating is only on when it needs to be
• Wear a jumper
• Turn down your heating thermostat
• Lag hot water pipes
• Have showers instead of baths
• Share baths
• Have shorter showers
• Install a low-flow shower head
• Don't use hot water when cold will do
• Turn down your water thermostat (if you always have to add cold water to your bath or washing-up water, then your water thermostat is too high)
• If possible, install a solar hot water system

I can see where I can make improvements in my own household. You can bet that one or more of these will be showing up in March's Bean Sprouts Challenge.

Efergy Energy Saving Meter

What a week that was - we rehearsed Mendelssohn's Elijah intensively then gave performances at Chester Cathedral on Thursday and Manchester Cathedral on Friday. It's a big work and it took considerable stamina and concentration to pull it off, but it was an incredible experience. The conductor (Paul McCreesh) was very inspiring, and the soloists were fab. I'm totally spent. I needed a good lie-in this morning, and would like to take it easy this weekend - but it's Tom's birthday tomorrow.

Today we celebrated Valentine's Day, two days late because I was singing on Thursday. My lovely Eddy got me an Efergy electricity use monitor. You clamp the sensor around the cable that feeds your electricity meter (no wiring or anything technical involved), and it sends data to a portable display unit. In no time at all I was wandering round the house turning stuff on and off and seeing how low I could get the unit to go, and what effect the kettle, electric cooker etc. had on our consumption. You can get it to display in terms of kWH, cost, or carbon emissions (you have to get the figures from your electricity bill and input them into the gadget). I love it, and I thought it was a really thoughtful Valentines' gift for me, although I can see how many women would fail to go weak at the knees on receiving something like this.

I'm not telling you what I got for Eddy. It's none of your business. But he liked it.

Rechargable Battery Challenge Results

At the beginning of January I challenged Bean Sprouts Readers to get a battery recharger and use it instead of buying disposable batteries which contain all kinds of nasty substances and should never be thrown into landfill.

A record-breaking 119 people voted in the challenge poll, which is really amazing. The votes were as follows:

• 
  I've gone green! I've got a battery recharger 32 votes (26%)
  I was already green! I always use rechargable batteries! 79 votes (66%)
  I don't want to! I love my copper-tops! 2 votes (2%)
  I'm greener than thou! I don't use devices that need batteries! 6 votes (5% )

If it's really true that 32 people went out and bought battery rechargers because of Bean Sprouts, then I am absolutely thrilled. Keep on using them, and you'll save money, save energy, and keep dangerous chemicals out of the landfill.

A new challenge for February will be posted soon.

I Believe...

I believe our leaders have become too short-sighted. Everywhere I look I see us creating problems for generations to come.

We are using up all the fossil fuel, so there will be none left for our children. And by burning the fossil fuel we are increasing atmospheric CO2 levels which will cause severe climate problems in our children's generation.

One proposed solution to this is to build nuclear power stations, which generate electricity with lower CO2 emissions. But there is still no good solution to the storage of nuclear waste containing isotopes with half-lives of hundreds of thousands of years. And there are serious questions about the security of transporting and storing both waste and fuel rods now that international terrorism has become a fact of life.

The fuel companies have been pushing biofuels as a "green" alternative to fossil fuels. But from the beginning the green movement has been saying biofuels can never replace fossil fuels. For a start, even if we used every productive acre of arable land on Earth we could not grow enough biofuel to replace the fossil fuel we use at present. And anyway, if we used every productive acre of arable land on Earth, where would we get our food from? Most biofuel produced presently comes from palm oil, which is a whole bad kettle of fish.

Short-sightedness isn't just evident in our energy policies. Conventional farming methods which rely on over-use of pesticides and herbicides are killing our native plants and animals. Other conventional farming techniques such as over-ploughing and monoculture (producing the same crop year after year for mile after mile) cause unsustainable soil erosion. Conventional farmers compensate for this by adding artificial fertilisers. But when the soil is eroded completely our children or grandchildren will not be able to produce food by adding fertiliser to bare rock or sand.

Everywhere I look I see evidence of short-term thinking. The list would become too long and too political if I let all the bees out of my bonnet. The way we run our industries. The way we house our population. The way we fund our health service. The way we treat our children. The way we manage foreign affairs. They are all based on putting off problems until the future. Our children will have reason to damn us for the legacy we are leaving them. It makes me ashamed.

The Iroquois chiefs were required to make every decision by considering the effects on the seventh generation to come. I believe we urgently need to adopt this way of thinking. Urgently.

Recycled Briquettes

I've been playing with the briquette maker Santa brought me for Christmas. We've made several briquettes, and some of them are now dry enough to burn on the fire. We tried one last night and it burned for well over an hour, just as the packaging claimed. I was surprised because I had been rather cynical about the claim. But the proof of the pudding and all that, so I can definitely say they do exactly what it says on the tin. Useful home heating fuel from waste paper and cardboard. Thanks, Santa.

Rechargeable Battery Challenge

It's the same every Christmas. The kids get a bunch of new toys that all need batteries. But batteries are evil. Worldwide, 15 billion batteries are thrown away every year. They take around 50 times more energy to manufacture than they give out, so it's far better to run appliances from the mains whenever possible. They contain all kinds of nasties such as lead, mercury and cadmium (depending on the type of battery). If they have this symbol on the packaging:
(even if the letters below are different) then it's illegal to put them in the household waste - they must be recycled by UK law. Not that anyone does - fewer than 2% of batteries are recycled. But at least it means your local authority should have a scheme for you to recycle used batteries.

It's not realistic for most of us to avoid battery-powered devices all the time. So a battery recharger is an excellent investment. According to the website Battery Logic UK:

If you were to buy, for example, the Uniross X-Press 300 Charger for £12.99 including four NiMH rechargeable batteries,which can be recharged a thousand times, recharge the batteries five times, then as if by magic - you've got your money back!. (5 x £3= £15 which is what you would have spent on throwaway batteries). The next 995 charges are essentially FREE batteries. You could also save 3996 batteries from the landfill site over the lifetime of your Uniross rechargeable batteries!

Feel free to forget the sums. It's simple. Rechargeable x 1000 = Battery Logic : kind to your pocket - kind to the environment.

So that's the challenge for January. Get a battery recharger and use it. Oh, and recycle your disposable batteries as they run out. Don't forget to vote in the poll in the right-hand sidebar when you've done it.