More on Tetra Pak recycling

A few months back I made a couple of posts about recycling Tetra Pak containers. Since these posts I've noticed an increased interest in recycling Tetra Pak and the good news is that the people at Tetra Pak have doubled their efforts to allow people to recycle the containers.

First off they have re-launched their Tetra Pak recycling web site with a nice new design (interesting video on the front page), but most importantly they have added a section where you can check to see if your local council have a collection scheme, which is very useful.

They have also got together with ACE (Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment) to offer

cost neutral bring bank solution to all local authorities that are not yet collecting cartons

Which should mean that local councils now have no excuses when they are asked to provide people with Tetra Pak recycling facilities.

All in all this is a great push forward from Tetra Pak and ACE in taking responsibility for making sure their products don't end up in land fill sites. I think the next move they could make would be more public advertising of the fact the facilities are available. At current the only way a lot of people will find out this information is if they actually go looking for it.

So check out the Tetra Pak recycling web site today to find out where you can recycle in your area.

Source [Tetra Pak Recycling , ACE UK]

Get your free power saving light bulbs this Saturday

One of the guys I work with came across an article on the BBC news web site today stating that Sainsburys will be giving away a million energy saving light bulbs this Saturday in its stores across the UK.

They are using the fact that the clocks go back soon to promote energy saving in the darker months to come.

To get your free bulb you will have to take an energy saving pledge, which for most people out there shouldn't be a problem at all. Oh and just in case you thought you'd be getting some second rate cheapo energy saving light bulb, you'd be wrong. They are planning on giving out top quality Philips 11w bulbs that are direct replacements for 60w standard bulbs and at a normal retail price of £2 you'll be making yourself a massive saving.

So save yourself some money and energy and get down to your local Sainsburys this Saturday to get your free power saving light bulb.

If your still not convinced about the amount of money power saving light bulbs can save you then check out one of my previous articles "Power saving light bulbs how much can you actually save?"

Source [BBC News]

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)

While this article probably would have been more relevant had I got round to posting it when WEEE came in, I still think it's important to point out what's currently happening regarding the new directive and how it effects people.

WEEE, which stands for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment, is a directive brought in by the government to regulate the disposal of household and industrial electrical equipment. Basically it moves the responsibility of recycling and disposing of products from the consumer to the manufactures and resellers. There are various things that both manufactures and resellers have to do to be compliant with the new regulations, one of which that will be interesting to most of you is the "in store take back" schemes.

The WEEE directive requires resellers of electronic equipment to provide a free service to its customers allowing them to recycle their old equipment when they purchase a new equivalent. So now if you go and buy a new washing machine or TV or anything else electronic the people you buy it from are supposed to provide you with the ability to recycle the unit you are replacing free of charge.

As I said at the start of the article this post is a little late, the WEEE directive actually came into force on the 1st of July 2007 and from what I can see very little has been said about it. I imagine this probably has something to do with the fact that it's going to cost companies a fortune to recycle all of the equipment to the required level. If you go to any of the major high street electronic retailers websites they do have information about the scheme, however on pretty much every site I went to, it was very well hidden indeed. The WEEE directive states that the retailers have to provide full information to their customers in store about how to recycle their waste goods, I haven't been to any major electrical retailers lately but I have an idea that the relevant information probably isn't as easy to come by as it should be. Maybe that could be a little experiment for a future post.

If you've had any experience taking advantage of the WEEE directive then let me know. It would be nice to know if it actually works as smoothly as it sounds like it should.

For more information on the scheme and how it works follow this link to the governments NetRegs website.

How cycling saves me over £1800 a year and nearly 2 tonnes of CO2

A few weeks ago I posted a little information about the first 7 months of cycling to work. A few days later mOnkeymafia posted a very interesting comment querying how much money and CO2 I'd actually saved since making the move to cycling to work. Well ladies and gentlemen here are the details.

I used to mostly use my car for work, on the odd occasion I'd use it for going to see someone or something like that, but the majority of the miles I racked up are now replaced by cycling. I'd say at a rough estimate it was around 6000 miles a year give or take.

Now lets deal with the green side of things first. The car I had output roughly 180g/km of CO2 you can check on the vca car fuel database to see what your car outputs if you don't already know. So lets do the calculations.

6000 miles = 9700 km if I round up.

9700 km * 180 g/km = 1746000 g/km

Do a bit of conversion of units and that comes to roughly 1.75 tonnes of CO2

So by replacing my car journey to work with cycling I'm reducing the amount of CO2 put into the atmosphere by 1.75 tonnes. It might not sound a lot, but if everyone could do the same it would soon make a difference.

Now onto the money side of things.

To do my 6000 miles a year to and from work it was costing me about £60 a month in petrol, so if we start with that I'm already saving myself £720 a year by not having to buy fuel.

Next onto insurance, I was paying roughly £59 a month for my insurance (11 monthly payments), now this might be a lot higher than some people and a lot lower than others but in my case it means I'm now saving £650 a year on that.

Just to keep a running total we're currently at £1370.

Next we have to keep that car running in tip top condition, that means servicing. While I had my car it was serviced twice at registered dealers which cost around £250 each time. As well as servicing there is MOT and tyres. I won't count tyres here as 6000 miles isn't really that far and a good set of tyres should be able to last that easily. MOTs however are about £45.

Now our running total is £1665

Then on top of all of that we have tax, which in my case was £165 a year.

So our grand total is £1830 a year or about £152 a month.

I realise that not everyone lives within cycling distance of where they work, but if you do why not think about giving up your car and cycling to work.

Just an extra note for those who were wondering, yes my girlfriend does have a car, however I only ever use it when we are going places together, so in general I've managed quite well with everyday life without having my own car.

7 Months of cycling to work

Well it has been about 7 months now since I started cycling to work and all in all it has been going quite well. I managed to find myself a nice reliable route to take everyday, and even though it is quite hilly it's not to bad.

I thought I'd put up a post about my experience so far and offer a few tips to people who are thinking of biking to work.

Get a good water proof backpack.

When cycling to work a bag of some kind is essential, it'll allow you to carry a change of clothes as well as other bits and bobs you need for work on a day to day basis. Make sure it is as water proof as possible, there is nothing worse then getting to work soaking wet only to find your dry clothes in your bag aren't that dry anymore. If you don't have a water proof bag then you could simply put a bin bag or something like that inside it as a liner.

Don't wear too much when cycling

When you're looking out the window in the morning thinking to yourself that it looks a bit nippy don't instantly go for the full winter fleece because you think you'll be cold. You should obviously dress for the weather but don't go over the top. Once you get cycling your body will soon warm up and if you are wearing too many layers you'll soon start to overheat and in the summer sweat like there's no tomorrow.

Be prepared for weather changes

While I recommend not going over the top with what you wear while you're cycling, at the same time you should always make sure you've got the extra stuff with you in case you need it. The best place to keep said stuff is in, yes you guessed it, your water proof backpack. The weather has a nasty habit of going from bad to worse in this country, so just because you left the house in the morning in glorious sunshine doesn't mean you won't be cycling home in a torrential down poor, so make sure even if you're not wearing it you've got the relevant kit with you.

Those are just a few quick tips to get you going, I'll probably post a few more a bit further down the line. If you've got any of your own then please post them in the comments.

Dispatches: Great Green Smokescreen

Channel four had an interesting and somewhat concerning episode of Dispatches tonight. The Great Green Smokescreen was all about carbon offsetting and the different ways companies calculate the carbon foot print of you and I. It also illustrated the projects that large multi-national companies are using to offset their carbon emissions.

Like all things on TV nowadays you have to take them with a pinch of salt, but if what they presented is true then it seems that there are a lot of people out there that are being duped into handing over money to companies who claim they are going to offset their carbon emissions.

Personally I've never seen carbon offsetting as a solution to any of the problems we are facing, I think it's great that the projects that are behind carbon offsetting are being done but I don't think there is any need to sell those projects as a way of clearing some ones conscious.

The most interesting part of the program was when they pointed out the fact that the vast majority of the carbon offsetting projects would have gone ahead and can survive easily without the money being given to them by the carbon offsetting companies. The question then becomes what exactly have you paid all that money for if it's not actually going to contribute to running the carbon offsetting projects?

There also seems to be some major holes in some of the projects that are used to offset the carbon. For example one of the major offsetting projects is planting trees, trees have been proven to be possibly the most efficient way of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere which obviously makes them a good starting point for offsetting. The only problem is because trees are living things and a natural resource there is no guarantee that they will remove the amount of carbon expected in their lifetime. An entire young forest could die from disease, which would mean they never had a chance to offset the required carbon. Things like forest fires are becoming more and more common around the world, meaning that trees are being burnt and more carbon is being put into the atmosphere instead of being offset. All kinds of things could happen.

Another worrying thing was the fact that some companies were buying the right to sell carbon offsets to people from existing woodland, this would mean you were effectively paying for something that could have been there for hundreds of years naturally growing. In this case you wouldn't have actually added anything new, you would effectively be buying the carbon offsetting power of some ones tree.

None of this seems quite right to me and in some cases I would have thought it could be bordering on fraud. It wouldn't surprise me, if as green issues become more and more popular we'll see a lot of "Carbon offsetting" companies appearing trying to make a quick couple of quid selling people effectively nothing.

The worst part of it all was that none of the companies could agree on how much carbon was emitted on such things as flights. One of the examples was a flight from England to Australia, which was quoted by one company as being about 3 tonnes of CO2 where as another company decided it was going to be 7 tonnes. If these companies are going to take peoples money for this service they provide then surely the least they could do would be to get the calculations right.

All of the companies featured were admittedly funding some very worthwhile projects, most of which were concentrating on re-planting forests and creating more sustainable sources of power, but like the program pointed out most of these projects would still have gone ahead without the money from the carbon offsetting.

I'm still going to work on the principal of prevention is better than cure and recommend that instead of paying someone to offset your carbon footprint why not have a go at reducing it yourself. If you take a look around this site there are plenty of tips to try so why not give it a go.