Archive for the ‘Carbon Footprint’ Category

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Keep fit.. Burning Calories not Carbon

Monday, April 19th, 2010

Outdoor Gyms

I spotted on BBC News last week that a Danish hotel has begun to offer free meal vouchers to their guests in return for producing a minimum of 10 watt hours of electricity on the gym bikes.

Always on the lookout for incentives to get my lazy self exercising more, on first inspection, I thought Wow – this is cool, why aren’t all gyms getting members to generate their own electricity. Then I looked again at that figure, 10 watt hours of electricity – so that would be enough energy to power a 10W lightbulb for an hour.

Hmmm.. maybe Pedal Power is not quiet there in terms of making our gyms entirely green zones. On inspection I find that over the course of an hour, the average human can expect to generate about 40 or 50W on a bicycle.  During the same period, someone running on a treadmill in the gym will use somewhere between 1.5 and 3 kW depending on the model of treadmill.  That’s a lot of people sweating it out on bikes to make the treadmill carbon neutral.

The ‘Human Power Experiment’ illustrated just how inefficient people are at generating electricity last year when they showed it took 18 cyclists to power a hairdryer, 9 to power a toaster and 30 cyclists power pedaling to boil the kettle!

So, my earlier vision of carbon neutral, entirely self-powered gyms is still a few years away at least.

Fear not though – getting fit without the carbon consumption of treadmills and electronic gym equipment is still entirely possible and within reach of everyone!

Now that Spring is here, the evenings are brighter for longer and the temperatures are perfect for a spot of outdoor exercising. Just one hour of power walking, jogging or cycling would burn approximately 300, 590 or 530 calories (speed dependent) and require 0 watts of electricity.

If you still prefer using training machines to get fit, Outdoor gyms are now cropping up all over the place, we’ve got one in the park at the end of our road. These offer self-powered gym equipment like cross trainers and chest presses free of charge in the great outdoors.

The Big Boot Company in London offers outdoor fitness sessions across the capital or you could sign up to one of the many Green Gyms across the country.  Members get involved in some rigorous work-outs via conservation or gardening work – a great alternative to the conventional gym.

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Posted in Carbon Footprint, Cycling, Green Living, Sport | No Comments »

10 reasons why we like grow your own food..

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Grow Your Own Food

If you are up for trying your hand at a little Grow Your Own this year, we have just added a whole new category to the website which includes Raised Bed Kits, Patio Raised Beds, Tomato Planters, Strawberry Planters, Potato Planters and Grow Bag Covers – a whole plethora of goodies to ensure that even those of us with the smallest of outdoor spaces can reap a crop of home-grown veggies and herbs this year.

Here’s our Top 10 reasons why we like growing our own food!

  1. Saves money – a packet of £1 seeds goes a long way compared to shop bought herbs and veg.
  2. Helps bring our carbon footprint down. Food grown at home doesn’t travel anywhere.  Compare this to food flown in from all around the planet and driven round the country in lorries.  Home-grown wins hands down.
  3. We don’t add any nasty chemical or pesticides so we know exactly what has gone into the food we grow at home.
  4. Lots of shop-bought veg and herbs come wrapped in plastic packaging. You can avoid more of this landfill fodder by growing your own.
  5. Growing stuff chills us out!  There’s nothing nicer or more relaxing than spending a couple of hours tending to plants.  Garden work brings those stress levels right down.
  6. Its good exercise – digging, lifting, moving, sweeping – even in small outdoor vegetable spaces or working with planters you can burn off lots of calories.
  7. You can be adventurous.  Take the humble tomato.  There are around 7500 different varities grown so you can experiment and try out something you would never be able to buy at the supermarket.  It’s exciting to see what the results will be.
  8. It’s a brilliant lesson for kids.  Getting them involved shows them the food on the plate doesn’t just come from a shop shelf and that actually it’s from the ground and we need to look after the land.  We’ve also managed to turn a couple of fussy eaters on to more vegetables by getting them to pick their own.
  9. It’s super healthy. Freshly picked vegetables are packed full of nutrients.  Transfer veg straight from the garden to kitchen to plate and you benefit from all those freshly picked healthy vitamins.
  10. Sharing is caring.  Growing your own means you can share your home-grown crop with friends, family and work colleagues.

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Posted in Allotments, Carbon Footprint, ECOutlet Products, Green Living, Grow Your Own, Organic Food, Sustainable Food | No Comments »

Water Saving Shower Head Competition

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

Water Saving Shower Heads Competition

If you believe the forecasters, 2010 looks set to be a sizzler (possibly maybe) with temperatures matching that of the 1976 summer heatwave.

Sounds nice! After our extended Winter the thoughts of a long, hot summer and lazy evenings with a beer outdoors definitely push lots of buttons for me.  But as we gear up for Summer, whatever the weather outcome, you can be sure the warmer months will be putting pressure on the UK’s precious water resources.

According to Waterwise, the South of England has less water available than the Sudan and Syria and many parts of the UK are currently dealing with the lowest groundwater and reservoir levels for decades.

One of the problems is our thirst for water which has been increasing by 1% a year since 1930, a figure which is not sustainable in the long term.  To address the problem, we can all make a difference by reducing our consumption and using water more efficiently at home.

Showers account for around 12% of our water use and one way to decrease this water usage is through the installation of a water saving shower head such as the Nordic Eco Shower Head.  This innovative shower head reduces average flow rate and thereby water consumption by 50-70% without any reduction in shower comfort thanks to a clever technology which works on a soft pulse basis.

This week marked World Water Day and to do our bit to raise awareness for the rest of March and throughout the month of April, we have placed the Nordic Eco Shower Head on sale with a special offer price of £38.50 which is 15% of the usual RRP of £44.99.

We also have 3 Nordic Eco Shower Heads up for grabs in our latest competition.  If you fancy your chances of winning one and saving up to 70% on water usage in the shower simply send an email to comps@ecoutlet.co.uk with the subject title Nordic Eco Shower and your email address will be entered into the draw.

Competition is only open to UK and Ireland residents.  Three winners will be selected randomly on April 30th and will be notified via email.

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Posted in Carbon Footprint, ECOutlet Products, Eco Competitions, Green Living, Water Saving | No Comments »

Energy Efficient Washing Machine? We just Sust-it

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Energy Efficient Washing MachineAfter a good old innings our hand-me-down washing machine finally threw in the towel last week and retired from service.

Being fans of all things second hand and vintage we did ponder initially on searching Freecycle or Ebay for a cheaper, older model but soon came to the conclusion that a new energy efficient machine was the wisest long-term move in terms of saving energy and money.

Having gone on about Sust-it on here before and to friends over the years, this was the first time I personally had the opportunity to use the site for advice on making a purchase.  The conclusion?? Fantastic, Sust-it is in my opinion, a highly useful resource for anyone looking at electrical purchases.

465 washing machines are in the database and all are ranked in terms of their energy efficiency.  Best available prices are listed on everything also so you can match your budget to the most energy efficient model.

To be honest, having not made a major new electrical purchase in several years we were a little worried our cash-strapped January budget wouldn’t stretch to a very efficient model but after browsing the site for a while we opted for the BEKO WM7335 which is ranked 5th out of 465 in terms of annual running costs.

Sust-it gave us a full comparison of the environmental and financial running costs – litres of water used, power used, annual CO2 emissions and running costs per year.  The BEKO WM7355 has annual CO2 emissions of 103.01 kg based on 250 cycles.  The old machine (which was very old indeed) was taken away for recycling and was a Hoover model not listed on Sust-it.   The best performing Hoover washing machine on there emits 120.18 kg CO2 a year so at a rough estimate we’re at least 15% more efficient at washing clothes than we were last year.

Gone but not forgotten – before waving him off to recycling heaven, we also managed to do a spot of recycling ourselves and transformed the old glass door into a handy bowl for all that fruit we’ve resolved to eat in 2010.

Washing Machine Fruit Bowl

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Posted in Carbon Footprint, Eco Tips, Eco Websites, Energy Saving, Green Living, Recycling, Water Saving | No Comments »

Meat Free Mondays…..

Saturday, January 16th, 2010

Eat less meat film
A while back, here at ECOutlet we made a little film called Eat Less Meat. Regular blog visitors might have spotted it before but if you’re new to our site, I’ve posted up the film once more at the end of this post so you can check it out.
It’s a funny, gentle reminder that Eating Less Meat is not only good for your health but also helps to combat your overall carbon emissions (and it won a Green Award too!).

One of my predictions for the coming year is that going meat-free at least one day a week will become a hop topic for many people. The Governments advisory committee on sustainability, the Sustainable Development Commission recently released a report which highlights a diet with less meat as one of the main ways the general public can combat climate change. And as we commence the run up to the next general election, we’ll also be hearing lots more from all the major political parties on the issue as they promote their own sustainable food policies.

If you’re looking for new ways to reduce your carbon footprint in 2010, cutting down on meat could be one of the answers. For inspiration check out your local charity shops for veggie cookbooks and websites like Meat Free Mondays offer up handy recipes and restaurant recommendations for anyone keen to dip their toes into a veggie lifestyle.

Posted in Carbon Footprint, ECOutlet, ECOutlet Films, Green Awards, Green Living, Green Media, Sustainable Food | No Comments »

Our carbon neutral fight against the Winter Chills….

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Our New Wood Burning Stove

Cosy Wood Fire in the ECOutlet Office

In the ongoing drive to reduce our carbon footprint here at chez ECOutlet, we recently acquired a wonderful wood burning stove. Our mission was to heat the office through the cold winter months as sustainably as possible and burning wood is a great way of achieving this goal.   Wood is a carbon neutral fuel source in that it only releases as much carbon dioxide as it absorbs when the tree is growing.  So long as we replace the fallen tree with a new sapling it’s sustainable too.

We’ve been getting our wood deliveries from Certainly Wood who source it from  sustainable, well managed British woodland and they also kiln dry their wood (to make it more efficient) using wood to power the kilns.

Choice of stove is also crucial, as the more efficient it is, the more heat you get for the smallest amount of fuel. Most of urban Britain is also a ‘smoke control area’. That means its legal only to burn wood (or smokeless fuel) in a stove that meets the requirements of the clean air act.

After a consultation and visit from the experts we opted for a Scan Anderson Multi Stove which was installed by a really nice team from Embers Fireplaces and Stoves. We’ve been saving up for this one for a while, they don’t come cheap but after a couple of months of use we’ve already seen a considerable drop in our fuel bill and the place is much warmer than the last few years even in this cold snap.

If you want to know more about Wood Burners there is a good article on the Channel Four site, the only thing it fails to mention is how lovely (and occasionally distracting) it is to have a warm, flickering fire at work.

PS That’s one of our Recycled Planters in the pic which we’ve found is the perfect vessel for storing wood and it looks really cool next to the wood burner too!

Posted in Carbon Footprint, Climate Change, ECOutlet, ECOutlet Products, Green Living | No Comments »

National Carbon Footprint Day….

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

Carbon

Tomorrow October 2nd marks the first ever National Carbon Footprint Day launched by award winning environmentalist Donnachadh McCarthy.  Donnachadh writes a weekly eco-column in the Independent, runs his own eco-auditing company 3 Acorns and in 2007 his Victorian terrace in South London became not only carbon neutral but carbon negative exporting more green energy back to national grid than it imports in fossil fuels.

The aim of National Carbon Footprint Day is to make it easier for us all to remember to calculate our annual carbon and environmental footprints and to reduce these footprints as much as possible in the coming year.  Taking the pledge commits you to taking five simple measurements to calculate your carbon footprint as it stands at the moment and then every October 2nd following this you’ll receive an email update requesting you do the same so you can then calculate your footprint for the previous year.

Check out the website for further details on how to pledge as well as a set of top ten tips on how to reduce your footprint over the coming year.

Posted in Carbon Footprint, Climate Change, Eco Tips, Eco Websites | No Comments »

Rising Food Prices – Grow Your Own can help….

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

Homegrown Chilli Plants

Last week the BBC reported on the increase in food prices which have now gone up by an average 8.3% since January.  Meat and fish saw the biggest jumps, up 22.9% whilst fruit and vegetables were up 14.7%.

Meanwhile my little experiment at ‘growing your own’ has almost come to an end for another year.  It’s been a relative success, five chilli plants were grown from seed and are still producing fruit for mealtimes.  We’ve not bought any herbs (basil, mint, oregano or thyme) from the shops since May now and the tomatoes are just about ready for picking.  The only disappointment or failure this year has been the salad which didn’t seem to favour the wetter conditions the summer brought with it.

It’s fair to say the savings made in our weekly shopping bill wouldn’t be described as massive but nor were they insubstantial.  If food prices continue to increase in the same vein next year then more and more of us may well consider the Grow Your Own option as a means of tackling the rising costs of a weekly shop.

For those lucky to have an outdoor patch or anyone thinking about giving Grow Your Own a try due to the increase in food prices, the Gardeners Calendar and the Royal Horticultural Society’s website are two very good starting points with advice available on starting a vegetable plot and monthly tips on what to sow.

Posted in Carbon Footprint, Eco Tips, Eco Websites, Grow Your Own, Sustainable Food | No Comments »

More reasons to cycle….

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

Cycle Lane

If one of your new years resolutions was to cycle more in 2008 then the following info might just be of interest. First up for anyone in the market for a new bike, the governments Cycle to Work Scheme is where employers can offer staff the option of buying a bike out of their pre-tax income thereby discounting the retail cost by up to 50%!

Under the scheme the employer technically buys the bike and reclaims the VAT. The VAT-free price is then deducted from the gross salary in 12 or more installments. Higher rate tax payers save 41% in tax and NI contributions whilst basic rate tax payers save 33%. These schemes are normally run via local bike shops where you can also add helmets and locks under the same terms. Most employers seem unaware of this tax break, so spread the message at work and make sure your boss knows all about it.

Another bike tax perk I recently cam across in a copy of the Financial Times is a little known 20p per mile allowance for work related travel on your bike. You can’t claim for commuting but if say you use your bike to travel to meetings then your employer can pay you up to 20p per mile tax-free.  If your employer pays you nothing or less than 20p per mile you can claim a deduction from taxable income to reduce your tax bill..Hooray!  So say you cycle 20 miles a week to meetings you could claim £160 of mileage allowance thus saving up to £64 in tax.  The two schemes above however do not work concurrently so you can only claim the 20p allowance if you fully own the bike yourself.

The strangest perk of all though is that as a cyclist you can also claim for ‘cyclists breakfasts’ as a no-cost tax free benefit! The only small catch though…you’re only allowed 6 breakfasts a year!

Posted in Carbon Footprint, Cycling, Eco Tips, Eco Websites, Green Travel | No Comments »

Save a polar bear/change a lightbulb concert…

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

Polar Bear

The line-up for last week’s Live Earth gig was’nt really my bag so no tears were shed when I missed most of it but I was disappointed not to catch the short films commissioned to coincide with the concert and which were played throughout the intermissions across the world.

40 short films were produced in total some of which you might have seen during the BBC coverage of the event. I’ve hunted high and low on the internet to find them all but so far have just come up with the Top 15 which are available on the Live Earth Film Project page. Some are good and some not so good, personal favourites include Sad Fish and Don’t let it all unravel.

For the brave at heart, there is also one called Cow. Be warned it does’nt make for pleasent viewing! We tackled the same topic (emissions from livestock) in our last video which you can still view over on the side or on our youtube page and which biased though I might be is much better!

Live Earth also came under a lot of criticism for the mixed messages delivered by pop stars and their big carbon footprints and although I dont want to dredge all that up again it was disappointing to see on the Film Project page that Chevy were sponsoring the online coverage.  An event like Live Earth goes hand in hand with corporate sponsorship and though they may have the biggest range of vehicles fitted to run on biofuels, is a car manufacturer who’s range includes a lot of SUVs and those monster truck type vehicles popular in the US really the best company to convince us of the changes we need to make to tackle climate change?

Posted in Carbon Footprint, Climate Change, Eco Websites, Green Events, Green Media | No Comments »

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