I have decided I need to be more green.  I spent years at university looking into global warming and general environmental issues, now I work for an Airline, drive a fairly fuel unefficent car and own a relatively big house which does its best to make me turn the heating on!

 

for example I drive a 1.8 Mazda MX5 Sport, I travel 130 miles a week.  That puts my yearly emissions for car travel at about 1.8 tonnes or £26.85!  To offset that I need to plant two trees each year!  (http://www.carbonneutral.com).

 

I have flown to Milan 3 times this year.  Each flight on average has meant that I have caused 0.21 tonnes of co2 emissions.  That apparently equates to £1.85 per round trip. (http://www.climatecare.org).

 

I hate to think what my yearly cost to the environment through electricity and GAS are besides the costs to the natural resources!  Well actually it is £36.82 (divided by two, going to blame Steph as well!).

 

Basically my imprint on this planet is growing and I want to change it.  My first great step has been to stop BT sending me useless phone bills that i don't read (as we hardly ever use the home phone).  In doing so they are going to plant a tree (well it is a start)!

 

The difficulty in all of this is how to offset your emissions!  If you read the papers you find that some of the neutral schemes where money has been invested has been wasted and the forests or swamps created have died or been destroyed or the money has just been filtered elsewhere. 

 

When you look at big business there is very little way to see how you can impact them for the good.  When you buy your electricity, you could buy it from a sustainable source which is great and I don't mind paying extra for that.  However, it always linked tot he average electricity price and not the green sector.  As the green sector grows and more electricity is produced you would expect to see the price go down and with that your bill.  This would encourage more people to switch, more green energy produced and less emissions!  However that does not happen as prices always seem to be based on average prices within the energy sector!  I could go on but I have to find a way to start things off...

 

I looked into getting a wind turbine for the house, unfortunately they don't make them house size yet!  This is my ideal of sustainability, all at a local level.  Mini-wind farms shared between homes!  Until that is a reality i'll continue.  Solar power is a possibility but not something I can afford (about £10k for a home conversion)!  So as with all good sustainability projects I am going to start small and make a list (My Name Is Earl style)...

 

1) Make as many of my bills as paperless as possible!

2) Water Butt in the garden (kind of cheating as we already have one)

3) Recycle more:

- Womery in the garden!

- Recycle more stuff, we do paper and glass but nothing else.  Need one of those multi bin things that allow you to split your rubbish.

4) Change electricity to be green, or balanced.

5) Drive less, this means dusting off the bike that I haven't used since my poor showing in the last Teso triathlon

6) Donate more to be carbon neutral (difficult one as i still am not sure i believe the whole buy a tree and you are now free to drive for a year!  Eventually there comes a point where either no more trees can be planted or that carbon stored is released, just putting off the inevitable)

7) Vote for green issues, where it doesn't mean because of my job I am a hypocrite!  By the way, easyJet can never be truely green but I think it is doing its best http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1721377,00.html (not the greatest story but then the Guardian has never been very neutral on this matter); easyJet is also a paperless office which in theory can only be good!

8) Use as much recycled goods as possible

9) Eat local produce, by the way Bruno, when you rant at the damage that easyJet causes to the environment you only have to look at Tesco and its negative impact on world communities either through pollution, social damage through wholesale cost reduction, the number of Tesco lorries on the road, store pollution, the list goes on.  You are probably working for the worst company around in many ways (second only to Walmart)!

10) Promote green issues - I haven't done this nearly enough, so its time to start trying to do this again!  To be honest I think we are all in the long run, f*cked, as nobody on this planet is willing to give up the rampant commercialism we all enjoy!

11) Turn off the power and not just stick everything on standby!  No figures on this one but it is a problem in everyones house!  I might write about this in a later post if i find out enough info.

12) Buy more organic - some of my clothes are organic (http://www.howies.co.uk) but not everything, so i am going to try harder and make sure stuff i use is sourced from environmentally sustainable places.

13) Getting harder now but would like to make my own electricity, at least I knwo where it comes from then!

14) Convert my car when I can to run on green fuels

15) Get a carpet for the lounge, currently have the electricity on full wack in there in the winter due to the exposed floor boards and the draft rising up through them.

 

I think this list will grow.... but for now it is enough to be getting on with.