Green Archives - Eco Thrifty Living

Intelligent or remote heating controls – what’s the point?

Zoe — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000

Remote heating controls are all the rage at the minute, with Nest* now available in the UK, Tado* having been around for a little while and British Gas’s Hive* being pushed really hard on the radio and TV as well as a growing number of lesser known alternatives.

So what’s the point of an internet connected heating thermostat? How will they save me money and will I actually use it?

This is a guest post from Mr ETL and it contains affiliate links which are marked with a *. The content of this post was not affected by the links, it won’t cost you anything extra if you buy through them and if you do it will help to support the blog – thanks!

Every house it’s different and each family will want to heat their houses at different times and to different temperatures. The traditional thermostats allowed you to set schedules for your heating, normally by day or weekday and weekend and allowed you to set lots of different times and temperatures during each period. Those of us who did make good use of these were probably saving more than those who just set a morning and evening temperature and a lot more than those who just had the heating on the whole time. They normally allowed you to override the settings as well so giving you quite a lot of flexibility. So again, what’s the point?

Well the main point is every time you are not at home when the heating has been set to come on, you are wasting energy, which directly impacts your heating bills and the environment. Although you probably are able to predict when you will be at home and when you won’t during the working day, it isn’t always easy to predict which evenings you will be in or out and what you will be up to over the weekend. With a heating system that you can control on your mobile phone, you can delay it or turn it off for the evening if you decide not to come straight home from work and you can also tell it to start heating your home when your plans change and you come home earlier than expected. Although there is an initial outlay, over time these products should be able to save you moneyThe three main products on the market are all slightly different and here are some of those differences

Tado*

We have had Tado installed for over 2 years now, It is really simple and easy to use and controllable via your mobile phone. You set the temperature you want the house to be when you are at home, and the temperature when you are asleep along with what time you wake up and go to bed. Tado knows if you are at home or not by seeing how far your mobile phones are from the house and so as long as each member of the family has a mobile it knows if someone is home or not. The further away from home you are the cooler it will let the house get when you are out and it starts to warm it up as you get closer. They have recently also released some intelligent radiator valves which have the potential to save you even more money, we have had some for a year now (not Tado) and I’ll be giving you my thoughts on them soon. Tado has gone for a simple and neutral looking thermostat unit, which shows current temperature and you can manually adjust it (although ours is a first generation which has no manual controls).

Nest*

Nest has gone for the pretty thermostat prize and it looks good. This thermostat needs to be taught what to do. To start with you need to change the temperature on the unit manually for a week or so – when you get up, you turn it up to a comfortable setting, when you leave for work, turn it down and so on. Within a few days it starts working out what time you get up, go to bed and everything in between. If your schedule changes you need to manually adjust the settings and after you have done it for a few days, Nest learns. It also has a movement sensor on the thermostat in your house, which will turn the heating down if it hasn’t seen movement for a while (you need to walk past for it to know you are there, so it needs to located in a place you would frequently walk past) and they have recently started integrating with their other smart technology to improve this. If you have their smoke detectors for example (which should be spread around your home) they also have movement sensors which can feed information into the heating system. You don’t need to have a mobile phone for Nest to work (you can control it via your laptop or tablet) but they have recently introduced a function for Nest to know if are at home or not via your mobile if you want it to.

Hive*

Hive is going for a much simpler approach, a traditional schedule thermostat with the ability to remotely adjust the temperature. So if you go out for the day and forget to turn the heating off, you can use the phone app to turn it down, or if you’re coming home at an unusual time you can turn the heating up a bit earlier.

All of the products say they will save you money by giving you more control of your heating. How much you save and which is right for you will depend on your individual circumstances. So for instance, if you have a quite fixed schedule and just want to be able to control the temperature manually then maybe Hive is good enough for you. If you like your gadgets to be good looking and functional then Nest may work for you. If all the people in your house have mobile phones and you are at home at different times then maybe Tado is the thermostat of choice.

I might be biased towards Tado as I have one of their thermostats, but I did my research beforehand. Do yours and think about how often you are out and the heating is on or how often you are sitting on your sofa thinking it would be great to keep the heating on another hour.

Which intelligent thermostat would you choose and why? Let me know in the comments below.For more tips on how to save energy check out my post on 6 easy ways to reduce your heating bill!

Coming up next: Look out for my blog post next Monday which asks the question – does going zero waste mean you can’t have fun (especially with events like Christmas and New Years Eve coming up)?

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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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DIY batgirl costume

Zoe — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 17:32:00 +0000

It’s nearly Halloween. Time to carve spooky faces into pumpkins and make pumpkin soup. It’s also time to get dressed up! Costumes can be costly so making one yourself from stuff you already have is an easy and inexpensive option. When I got invited to a superhero themed birthday party I raided my wardrobe. I was able to quickly make a DIY Batgirl costume that didn’t cost me anything.

How to make your own Batgirl costume

I already had a black dress, a black evening scarf, which I wore instead of a cape, and black boots.

I had a rummage through my kids fancy dress box and found a yellow batman belt and a black eye mask. The only thing I needed to make for this outfit was the yellow bat on the front of my dress.

I found some yellow fabric in my fabric stash (TIP – build up a fabric stash by viewing old clothes as fabric) looked up the batman logo picture and drew out a similar looking bat on a piece of paper.

To make the bat symmetrical I folded it in half and cut it so that each side matched. Then I drew around the bat on the fabric, cut it out and hand stitched it onto my dress. When I had finished being batgirl, I unpicked the stitches and voila – I had my dress back!

This costume was simple to make, didn’t cost me anything, isn’t clogging up my wardrobe, didn’t harm the environment, wasn’t scarily flammable and was fun!

If you’re interested to learn more about zero waste celebrations I have more tips and tricks here.

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How not to upcycle a necklace!

Zoe — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 19:00:00 +0000

The necklace in the picture was left at my house during a clothes swap party (read more here). The beads are made out of old magazines and I really like it. I don’t think it really suits me though as it is too long for me and I have only worn it once or twice since I got it.

I decided that it would be a great idea to turn it into a necklace and a bracelet and thought it would be as simple as chopping it up in the right places and then tying the ends.

The chopping part went really smoothly although a few beads fell of the ends as you can see pictured below.

The tying it back together part went far less smoothly. The plastic twine the necklace was on did not want to be tied and the beads kept falling off and it was very frustrating to say the least.

I decided to give up and use thread instead, which would tie better. I put some thread on a needle and threaded it through the beads. After doing that I realised that was no good either. The problem was the size necklace I wanted was too small to get over my head. What I actually need is some stretchy string or a clasp and I have neither of those to hand so for the moment the beads are all sitting in a glass jar awaiting the right materials!

Sometimes I find I ruin things in an attempt to upcycle them and think I should have just given whatever it was to a charity shop in the first place! On the other hand it is a learning experience and I now know how not to upcycle a necklace!

Have you ever tried to upcycle something that didn’t quite go to plan?

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Introducing a new concept – upusing!

Zoe — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 19:52:00 +0000

Have you ever felt really frustrated because you couldn’t quite place a word you wanted and then felt so relieved when it eventually comes to you? I had a concept floating around in my head and I decided there wasn’t a word out there that was working for me. I had a burning need to put a word to it though, so I made one up and here it is: upuse – ta-da!

I might not be quite the Oxford dictionary, but here is my definition of upuse:

To use something for more functions than it was originally intended for without altering or damaging the original object in any way.

The reason this was bugging me so much was because it is something I have started doing semi-regularly. The closest descriptions to it I could think of were making do, but I didn’t feel that was specific enough and upcycling but I think that implies that the item is altered in some way.

Some examples of upusing I have done around the house include:

I used to have large mixing bowls and similar sized serving bowls. It honestly had never occurred to me that I could use my serving bowls for mixing (or vice-versa), but the mixing bowls disappeared during my Year of Eco Challenges (read more here) when I was buying nothing new for myself and it didn’t take long to realise that my serving bowls, which were rarely used previously, would work just fine as mixing bowls. Now I make bread dough in them regularly. Incidentally it turns out after getting Mr ETL to read this post before I published it, he has been been doing some upusing of his own and we do still have them!
I used to put the plastic bags I brought home from the supermarket in a plastic bag dispenser. Now I use the dispenser to store and dispense reusable cloth wipes for use around the kitchen (read more here)!
I have written about this quite a few times on the blog, but I now use a freezer bag to keep food cool and hot and as a kind of thermal cooker – perfect for making yogurt in or to keep bread dough warm .
My kids decorated some mugs at a club last summer, which I haven’t used because we didn’t really have room for them on our shelf of mugs. I didn’t want to get rid of them, so now they are being used as attractive and personalised pen and pencil holders!

The benefits of upusing things:

Looking at things with upusing goggles on might mean that you don’t need to buy something new (or replace something which is broken and can’t be repaired) if you find you could do the job with something you already have.
Upusing can also help guide decluttering – looking for the multiple uses in your stuff could help you identify duplicate equipment you might not have noticed before that you don’t really need.
Upusing doesn’t alter or damage the object in anyway, so it means you can still use it for what it was originally intended for as well.

I’m sure this kind of thing happens all the time and I’d love to hear your examples of upusing!

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Epson EcoTank ET-4500 Printer Review

Zoe — Sat, 13 Feb 2016 19:55:00 +0000

I was recently sent an Epson EcoTank ET-4500 printer to review. It is an all singing, all dancing faxing, photocopying, scanning and printing machine, which can connected to your home network with a cable or wirelessly! I was offered it for review as it has a tank for the ink instead of cartridges and the ink is meant to be sufficient to last 2 years.

As far as printers go it seems like a really good one so far. I have been doing a lot of decluttering recently and managed to free up a cupboard which has power in it and love the fact I can keep it in the cupboard and print to it through wifi! This printer is not zero waste as it came packaged in plastic and the ink to fill up the tank was provided in disposable plastic containers which were again wrapped in plastic. The benefit of these over other cartridges though are that less of them are needed and there is less ongoing waste with this printer. Also as the ink can be refilled, although it is an expensive initial outlay, it is likely to work out cheaper in the long run than using a printer which won’t allow cartridges to be refilled.

Putting the ink into the machine was quite simple. Working out how to get it to work with my computer was a little complicated but once we got it all set up it has been easy to use. I particularly like being able to scan things in like my kids artwork, so that I can then put the originals in the recycling or use it to wrap gifts without feeling too guilty :). As much I would like to reduce my printing there are times when I need to print and it came in really useful for printing out pictures for one of my kids homework recently.

You can adjust how quickly the printer goes onto standby with the eco setting and it is worth changing it so that it isn’t on fully for too long (or even better turn it off when you aren’t using it). It isn’t going to cost big bucks either way though. We plugged it into a plug-in energy monitor and worked out that if it was left on all year (without printing) it would cost us around £6 a year in electricity costs and if it was on standby (again without printing) it would cost us only about £2 for the year!

There is a range of these printers to suit different needs, which you can find out more about on the Epson site.

UPDATE: I have found that I have struggled to keep the printer connected to my laptop via WIFI, I don’t know if this is something to do with my home network, laptop or the printer though.

Disclaimer: a printer was received for review and affiliate links have been used in this article, but the opinions were my own!

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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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How to make a lavender wand the zero waste way!

Zoe — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 21:21:00 +0000

Want to know how to make a lavender wand the zero waste way? Look no further!

Lavender is in season and I have loads of lovely fragrant lavender growing in my garden right now. There are many uses for lavender, but my current favourite is to make lavender wands. I don’t use them for casting spells – I use them to keep my clothes smelling nice (but if you or your kids want to make one for casting spells, don’t let me stop you :)).

These wands make great gifts and one year, I made a load as going home gifts from my kids birthday party and they went down a storm!

I’ve shared my instructions for how to make a lavender wand below:

How it is zero waste?

I made use of lavender growing in my garden, so it was unpackaged, home grown and used up. I also made sure to leave plenty for the bees, as that was the main reason I decided to grow lavender in the first place!

The ribbon had been sitting in my cupboard for years and needed using up. I also save ribbons from clothing, gifts and more to reuse for this kind of project. I store my ribbons in an old toiletry bag!

It is really simple, doesn’t take long and they make great gifts!

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Keeping the heat in and the light out!

Zoe — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 08:30:00 +0000

I’ve been spending a lot of time smartening up my house recently and one thing I have found that has made a big impact is changing the curtains. Apart from a couple of rooms most of the curtains in our home had been bought for previous homes and gone with previous decor. They were functional, but not beautiful. I have been very lucky with finding ‘new’ curtains, having found some gorgeous animal print curtains for YS’s room, some lovely dinosaur curtains for OS’s room, and some beautiful beige patterned curtains for our bedroom (all in charity shops at a combined cost of £33).

I just had one room left that I wanted to change the curtains in – our kitchen/ family room. The Natural Curtain Company must have been reading my mind (or maybe just my blog ) because they got in touch and offered to send me some of their thermal black out lined curtains from their ready made curtain range. I chose a lovely set of blue stripy curtains as pictured above. I felt slightly guilty about getting new curtains, but I really like the company. On their about us page they say that the curtains are all made from natural fabrics (where possible) and everything is made in the UK. They are not cheap, but they are good quality and will hopefully last for years to come. They don’t just do ready made curtains they also have a made to measure range. A big bonus as well is that they sell curtains with thermal black out lining.

With all our curtains it is really important for us to have thermal black out curtains or lining behind them as they keep the heat in and the light out! The thermal images below illustrate how well thermal lined curtains keep the heat in and what a difference shutting them makes!

Top tip: Keep your curtains open when the sun is shining and as soon as it goes dark (don’t wait until you go to bed) shut the curtains.This will help to retain the heat of the day in the room and will mean your heating system has less work to do in the evening which means energy savings!

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Disclaimer – this is a sponsored post.

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Stop buying new clothes now!

Zoe — Sat, 07 Feb 2015 20:20:00 +0000

If you care about the environment, yourself and people in general, then you need to stop buying new clothes and you need to stop doing it now – at least until we run out of secondhand clothes and fabric, which I can’t see happening any time soon! Our clothes buying habits are seriously messed up and we are ruining peoples lives all over the world as well as potentially our own.

Here are some of the problems with buying new clothes:

Are you being poisoned by your new clothes?

When textiles are made they are filled with hazardous chemicals. These range from bleaches to dyes to substances which make the textiles non-iron (e.g. formaldehyde) or antibacterial (e.g. triclosan). These are not chemicals you want leaching into your skin or being pumped into rivers and potentially bioaccumulating in the food chain but that is exactly what is happening. Greenpeace is working hard to convince brands to change their ways, but they aren’t there yet. As things currently stand every time you buy new clothes you are putting yourself and the environment at risk as this infographic explains:

Discarded clothes are polluting our land and potentially our air

Most clothes are not made entirely from natural fibres, they come from a mix of fibres and once they have reached the end of their life, if they cannot be reused or recycled, they will end up on landfill or in an incinerator. According to WRAP ‘around £140 million worth (350,000 tonnes) of used clothing goes to landfill in the UK every year’, ‘More than 30% of our unwanted clothing currently goes to landfill’. Landfill is bad and incineration is worse as it produces dioxins which although in theory prevented from being released into the air by filters it may not always work in practise. Dioxins known as Agent Orange were used in the Vietnam war and years later the effects are still being felt with babies being born with birth defects. Watch Jeremy Irons ‘Trashed’ film to find out more about the problems with landfill and incineration.

Washing our clothes is contributing to the plastic problem in our oceans

Recently a blogging friend dropped what was for me a bit of a bombshell, @polytheenpam of Plastic is Rubbish informed me that ‘washing machines shed..thousands of microfibres into the sea’. I had no idea that from washing my clothes made out of synthetic fibres I was polluting the sea with plastic. That is not something I like the idea of at all!

The ugly truth about cotton

Even when natural fibres like cotton are used, which can be composted at the end of their useful life and don’t contribute to the problem of plastic in the ocean there are problems. To produce cotton takes a large volume of pesticides, it ‘soaks up 11-12% of the world’s pesticides’. Pesticides can be very damaging to the environment and to those that work with them. There are even more problems with cotton – water diverted to cotton plantations has been blamed for the drying up of the Aral Sea (read more here).

Factory workers lives are being put at risk to bring us fast fashion.

New fashion trends are being turned around so quickly that factory workers are being put under tremendous pressure. In 2013 the Rana Plaza disaster brought to light the shocking practise of locking factory workers in until their work was finished. Tragically more than 1100 workers died and over 2500 were injured when the factory collapsed. This factory produced clothes for well known brands ranging from Primark to Benetton. Have things changed in Bangladesh since then? I don’t know but I don’t think fashion hasn’t shown any sign of slowing down.

Private companies are profiting from our charitable donations

If you donate your old clothes to charity to make way for your new ones, you might imagine someone else in your local area will soon be wearing them, but actually that is pretty unlikely. Most of the clothes donated to charity in the UK are purchased very cheaply by private companies who then sell them at a large mark up to vendors in developing countries (this site says at a 1000% mark up). According to WRAP ‘around 50% of clothes are
re-used, and over two-thirds of these
go overseas’.

We are contributing to loss of skills and culture in Africa.

The clothes sent overseas are often sold at markets and although they may be cheaper than new clothes, the market stall owners still need to make a profit. The effect on developing countries and in particular Ghana is that they are paying good money for our secondhand clothes and losing their own local textile industry in the meantime. This results in skills lost, textile making equipment and facilities lost and culture lost as instead of wearing traditional clothes, they are now wearing western ones. (read more here)

What should we do instead?

What do you think? Look out for my next blog post with my thoughts on this.

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