climate change Archives - Eco Thrifty Living

How Bad Are Bananas Book Review and Giveaway

Zoe — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 12:57:09 +0000

How Bad Are Bananas – The Carbon Footprint of Everything, is a book written by Mike Berners-Lee. It was first published 10 years ago and has been recently updated to take into account the latest facts and figures.

Note: This blog post contains affiliate links. All opinions are my own and it won’t cost you anything extra to shop through them. I received a copy of the book to review.

The book summarises the carbon costs of various activities and sorts them into sections by the weight of carbon emissions. At the low end of the scale are things like texting and emailing. At the higher end are volcanic eruptions and wars (which makes volcanic eruptions pale into insignificance).

Who Should Read How Bad Are Bananas?

This book is for everyone. If you are a beginner, then it will be highly educational and eye opening. There are also lots of helpful recommendations for positive actions that you can take.

For the more advanced, you can smugly turn the pages and say I do that, oh and I do that. But don’t get too smug as you might also learn something new!

Why Read How Bad Are Bananas?

If you want to get an understanding of how much it costs in carbon terms to send an email, eat a banana, watch an hours worth of TV or go to space (and much more), this is the book for you. I really enjoyed reading the book and feel that it is incredibly helpful to have Mike’s figures in mind when making every day decisions.

If you are making lifestyle changes or have done long ago, having facts and figures to back up these choices can be really helpful. Especially if people around you are curious about the justification for making these changes.

It’s not all about carbon footprints

Mike helpfully points out that the carbon footprint is not the whole story. Something might have a low carbon footprint, but still not be good for the environment for other reasons. I liked that in general he gives a rounded view of the issues.

There was only one recommendation he made where I felt he didn’t do that. That was when he encouraged people to swap to synthetic clothing. He didn’t mention that synthetic materials leach small plastic fibres into the water they are washed in. Unfortunately that does leave us stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to choosing the materials we clothe ourselves in.

No exact figures

Mike is a professional in the world of carbon footprints and is a university lecturer. But he admits throughout the book, that a lot of the figures are guesstimates. It is often difficult to put an exact figure on our activities as many variables come into play. However the point is to get a rough idea of how things compare and learn how we can make better choices!

I did also notice that it looked like there was a mistake in the headline figures in the TV watching section, but if you ignore them and read the blurb it makes more sense.

Get the book!

You can get your copy here: How Bad Are Bananas. If you don’t want to buy a copy, maybe you could borrow it (or request it) from your local library. Plus enter the competition below for a chance to win a copy. I have 3 to give away! When you enter the competition you also get a chance to win a copy of Ice: Tales from a Disappearing World and my book Eco Thrifty Living (This is the same competition I published last week in my review of Ice).

a Rafflecopter giveaway

For more environmentally themed book suggestions, check out my Ultimate List of Sustainable Living Books

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Say no to fracking by switching to renewables

Zoe — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 17:10:00 +0000

On 6th October the government gave fracking the go ahead in Lancashire. This decision was in spite of fracking not being wanted or approved locally and is extremely concerning for the future of fracking related decisions in this county.

Fracking is an environmental nightmare in lots of ways and it puts drinking water in the areas it is carried out at risk as this video explains

Aside from shouting frack off from the roof tops, joining in protests and raising awareness of the problems with fracking, the faster we can switch to renewables the better because when fracking no longer makes economic sense, the government will be a whole lot less interested in it. They might try to export the gas to other countries, but that is just an argument for people in those other countries to switch to renewables too.

Good Energy is a UK based renewable energy provider. They provide electricity that has come from 100% renewable sources and they also provide green gas, 6% of which comes from ‘biomethane: gas produced from organic matter – like manure and sewage – here in the UK’. Switching a renewable energy supplier like them is one way to say frack off to fracking companies and the government! There are other renewable energy suppliers out there and I would encourage you to shop around on sites like uSwitch before making any decisions about switching suppliers

This blog post contain affiliate links and going through these links, won’t cost you any extra, but will help to support the blog as I will get a commission. Thanks!

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Using Solar Electricity to Heat Our House – Immersun Initial Review

Zoe — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 17:17:00 +0000

We have solar panels and like many people want to make the most of the electricity they produce. There are products that can redirect any excess electricity generated to your hot water tank but they are of no use to us as we have a combi boiler and don’t have a tank. We use as much electricity as we can when the sun is shining – we put the washing and dishwasher on during the day, but still on sunny days we export most of it back to the grid.

Immersun is a diverter product and when they got in touch to ask if we wanted to trial their product my initial thoughts were it was of no use to us, but a couple of people on the Microgen forum where I share my solar usage data were using the diverter products for heating via another means, so I thought it was worth investigating.

So how does it work, well the Immersun measures the amount of electricity we are importing or exporting from the grid and if we are exporting diverts the same amount of electricity to a heating element. It checks this every few seconds so if we turn the kettle on or the sun goes behind a cloud it recognises it very quickly. Now the clever bit is that if you are directing the electricity to a heater it takes whatever electricity is available and gives it back as heat.

We had the Immersun installed by a very nice electrician. He turned up and asked where our hot water tank was, I explained that I wanted it to be used for plugging in a heater and that I wanted to be able to take it into different rooms as needed. After the initial surprise he said he could mount it onto a piece of wood with a couple of standard plugs on it and we can plug any resistive load onto them, eg. heaters or lights.

We got the wireless adapter for the Immersun which meant that the main unit could be wired to a plug and therefore could be plugged in anywhere in the house and provide 2 (or even 3) plugs for use.

We bought a 2kw convection heater and its now sitting in our hallway heating the core of the house. To be honest at the minute it’s over heating the house a bit as the outside temperature hasn’t been low enough and the sun has been shining quite a lot. I’ve even plugged my kettle into the plug and had a cup of solar powered tea from it. It took a few minutes to boil but hey.

This system will not be of any use in the middle of summer and may not have a huge amount of use in the middle of winter. In Autumn and Spring though this has the potential to save us money on our gas bill and keep Mrs EcoThrifty warm on a cold day, as she spends most of her time in the house.

If you are buying this setup it will cost you £400 – £500 (see here) plus installation depending on if you get the remote monitoring which isn’t essential but nice to have. The heater cost us £20 so it would take a while to pay for itself. The Immersun allows you to put in your electricity costs and it will tell you how much in Kwh and £/$ have been saved but the real saving for me will be how much less gas we use and how warm the house feels on a cold spring or autumn day. So watch this space for the next blog post to see how we get on with it as the trial progresses. For more information about the Immersun, take a look at their website here.

This was a guest post from Mr ETL.

If you liked this post please click like on Facebook and follow on Twitter – thanks so much!

Disclaimer – there are affilate links in this blog post.

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20 ways to help halt climate change!

Zoe — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 11:57:00 +0000

I recently read Naomi Klein’s, This Changes Everything as part of the Sustainable Book Club (read more about that here). It is a scary book and it is trying to shake us and tell us to wake up – climate change is on our doorstep. It would easy to read the book, pretend I hadn’t and move on because what difference can one person make to this vast issue? Well I think doing even just one thing is a whole lot better than not doing anything. To quote Lao Tzu – ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’.

There are 20 ideas below for things each of us could do to help halt climate change! They may not all be for you (they aren’t all for me) – but let’s do what we can

How can we help climate change?

1.Switch to a renewable energy provider

2. Compost garden, food and other biodegradable waste

3. Avoid using paper wherever possible. Take a look here into how to stop unsolicited mail.

4. Conserve energy around the home

5. Walk, cycle and take public transport where possible

6. Don’t buy anything new for a year (read about Jen’s experience of that here)

7. Grow your own fruit, herbs, vegetables

8. Boycott palm oil and anything containing it (read more here and here).

9. Boycott fossil fuels and fossil fuel products (you could switch to a renewable energy supplier).

10. Avoid meat and dairy products or at least reduce your intake of them. Ease yourself into it by having meat free Mondays.

11. Move your money away from banks which fund the fossil fuel industries read more here

More ways you can help climate change

12. Write to your MP – e.g. to ask for a fracking ban.

13. Start up a government petition (or several) here

14. Susie suggests joining your local councils community panel – read more here

15. Take good care of the stuff you do have and make it last

16. Join in with protests and marches over environmental issues

17. Spread the word about climate change and what we can do about it even if it is just sharing stuff on social media sites.

18. Host events in your home – a sustainable book club, clothes swap, a food swap…

19. Give unwanted food to friends, family and neighbours before it goes off. If you don’t know anyone locally to do that with, set up a food sharing group (read more here).

20. Give talks about climate change and what we can do about it – if you have kids do a talk at their school, if not volunteer to do one at a local community centre or library. Talking about climate change in person and what can be done about it brings the subject to life and connects with people who may not want to read about it.

Disclaimer – this blog post contains an affiliate link. All words and views are my own.

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