Lets face it the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference was a total COP out. It's time to ignore the politicians, get serious about climate change and do whatever we can with or without them. The 10:10 campaign is something that is tangible and totally do-able plus it will help reduce household bills too. Beat climate change and the recession all in one go - something every thrifty housewife should want to do!!The 10:10 campaign is all about reducing your carbon emissions by 10% in the year 2010. The website gives all kinds of advice about how people can achieve that so go there now - no after you've read the rest of this because the 10:10 site doesn't say how as an individual you can baseline your carbon. There are a few carbon calculator sites the Transition House site reviewed last year.
If you really want to reduce your household carbon emissions you need to take notice of your electricity and gas consumption. www.readyourmeter.org is a site created by David Mackay (top geezer) and colleagues from Cambridge University. The site draws lots of nice graphs for you once you've added in your meter readings and it very kindly works out for you your CO2 emissions - very clever stuff.
By being interested in the charts it's almost impossible not to try and get those lines to go lower and lower (and horrible when it's winter and you have to turn the central heating and watch those lines rise (yes I am wearing several layers of jumpers)). Look out for electricity monitor free give aways too, the devices tell you which appliances are using the most electricity - some libraries have them to loan out to you like books ask your local library about them (and if they don't lend them out, suggest that they do!! :) ).
You can even compare your emissions against other houses, search for the "Transition House" stats. To check out how we are doing.
So join me and thousands of others and go for your 10% in 2010. Good luck and let me know if you sign up for the readyourmeter site so that we can compare charts.
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We borrowed an electricity monitor from the library, but I'm not sure I learnt anything useful from it. It showed me that things which use a lot of electricity do use a lot of electricity, but some of them, like our kettle, only do so for a very short time, and even the tumble drier doesn't cost as much as I thought, so I can feel less guilty about using it in Winter, but will still try to avoid it in the summer if we have any sun or dry weather.
ReplyDeleteIronically, it seems to me that the more extreme the weather is, the more electricity people will use if they are able and so they will make the weather more extreme!
I'm not sure I shall be able to cut my carbon emissions by 10% this year, but I shall try to cut what I can and hope to access the readyourmeter site later as it is down at the moment. I shall also keep an eye on your blog for inspiration.
I don't have the luxury of a tumble drier so, in the winter when it's too cold/wet for drying outside, I do my clothes washing on days when it's definitely cold enough to warrant having the radiators on and hang the damp items over them. It suits me. I guess visitors must be used to seeing various items of clothing draped about the place on cold washing days!
ReplyDeleteHopefully soon, I'll be able to get the charts showing on this web page - I'm having a few technical problems that the readyourmeter guys are helping me out with. But their site is up at the moment if you want to check it out.