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]

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

I would have to say both yes and no.

Yes they mentioned at every possible point that something needed to be done and they kept pointing out that humans had done the damage and the only way to stop it would be for us to change our ways, the only problem was they didn't really suggest any ways for people to change.

I don't know what the Live Earth coverage was like in other countries but frankly I think the BBC could have done a much better job of it. Most of the interviews I saw were lackluster and at best consisted of celebrities preaching that something should be done while you could see a guilty look in their eyes indicating that they weren't doing it themselves.

For such a big event there was little to no promotion what so ever. I don't think I saw a single advert on the BBC indicating the show was coming up and I feel that there may be a lot of people who watched it on the off chance who may have come away from it still feeling they didn't really know what it was all about.

The actual physical amount of time that was dedicated to the event however was great. Anyone flicking channels on that day wouldn't have been able to miss at least a small amount of the concert, so hopefully its usefulness as a tool for getting peoples attention was significant. However there wasn't a clear message being projected throughout the event and there certainly wasn't any sign of educating people on how they could do their bit.

Most other major events that are either fundraising or raising awareness of an issue usually have a very strong message running throughout the proceedings. Take Children in need for example, even though they fill an evening with lots of entrainment the core message is always being thrown at you with moving films showing you the actual changes you could make, educating you about the issues that the event is taking on. I feel Live Earth lacked this central message and didn't push forward any educational material to really get across to people what they could do to help and how they could do it.

Even if you take a look at the official Live Earth website now, there is more information on there about their commercial partners and the fact they had a concert then there is educational material to help people be more environmentally friendly.

Everyone knows there is a climate issue it's on the news everyday. We don't need anymore big events to "raise awareness", what we really need is better education to allow people to make a difference.

I wonder how much the Live Earth event actually cost to put together, and how many free composters, power saving light bulbs, home solar and wind installations and bicycles could have been bought with the money and given to people who actually want to make a difference.

If these people have the power to shout about the problem as loud as they do then surely they also have the power to do something practical about it. Next time someone has an idea like this I hope they stop and think how much of a difference they could really make if the time, money and resources were used in a different way.

Makes me think that maybe its time to start writing some environmentally educational articles. I already have one which is rather basic on energy saving light bulbs, so I might do another revision of this with more information especially now the prices of bulbs have dropped considerably.

Just over a month ago I posted about Tesco setting up Tetra Pak recycling points at some of their stores around the UK.

Information about where the stores are is a little thin on the ground so I emailed Tesco and today their nice people in customer services sent me back a list of all the stores that currently have the recycling points.

The information includes the store number, name of the store and something to do with "With Clubcard", I'm not entirely sure what this is, but I assume it means that you will be given Tescos green club card points if you recycle at these places. If anyone knows for sure it would be much appreciated if you'd post in the comments.

2030 Andover - With Clubcard at present
2055 Baldock Extra - With Clubcard at present
2126 Borehamwood Extra
2131 Brent Cross Hendon Way
2329 Cheshunt Brookfield - With Clubcard at present
2296 Colney Hatch
2654 Hatfield Extra
2651 Havant - With Clubcard at present
2642 Hayes Bulls Bridge
2586 Hoover Building
2394 Lakeside Extra
2128 Osterley
3060 Pitsea Extra
3055 Portsmouth North Harbour
3086 Rainham Extra
3120 Romford Gallows
3108 Royston
3190 Southampton - With Clubcard at present
3324 Twickenham Extra
3372 Watford Extra
3406 Winchester

So if your local store is on the list then get down there and start recycling that Tetra Pak.

Tetra Pak recycling update (6/11/07)

Carbon dioxide seems to be getting a lot of bad press lately as being the whole reason for global warming. While lots of scientists say it contributes to the on going heating up of the planet, is it the really as big a problem as everyone thinks?

Don't get me wrong I know that there is lots of evidence that CO2 levels are higher and that it is a green house gas, but can all of our problems really be put down to this single gas?

This got me thinking about how the general population of the planet contribute to its warming. Over the time that scientists say that global warming has really started to take off, it just so happens that the global population has also massively risen bringing with it the need for more housing.

This housing and its inefficient design could be a major contributor to global warming. If you take a reasonably typical house here in England it will have the minimal amount of insulation required in the walls and the roof, meaning that heat is constantly escaping into the outside world. Now if you take all that heat and concentrate it in areas like large towns and cities then I would bet that the general temperature in those areas is significantly higher that the surrounding countryside. This can be easily seen in built up parts of London where the temperature can be several degrees higher than the near by less built up areas.

My theory goes that even if CO2 levels drop significantly, there will be less of a cooling affect on the planet than originally predicted. We need to stop pumping heat out into the environment as a by product of the inefficient housing in which we live.

Hopefully stricter building regulations will be put into place to make sure that houses are built with higher efficiency in mind. However we still have a whole lot of houses out there that were not build with efficiency in mind that could do with being upgraded. Not only could it help save the environment, it could also save a lot of money, by only heating your house and not the environment around it as well.

As many of you may already know, the government has recently announced that they will be considering introducing a tax on how much rubbish we throw away. We have already seen a war between local councils and their residents about introducing fortnightly bin collections. Now it seems there is going to be another fight regarding taxing based on what we throw away.

The question is, is another tax the right way to go about things and will it really increase recycling?

I think one of the major problems with this announcement is that enough facts about what is actually going to happen aren't being made available. When the idea of the tax was originally announced some time ago, the government pointed out that you would be given an allowance connected to how much you threw away. If you stay within this you won't be charged any extra however if you are significantly below it then you would get a refund on part of your council tax as a kind of way of saying thank you for recycling as much as possible. Whether this will be how it works in reality we will have to wait and see.

I think if this is brought in without some proper thought then it could cause more problems than it solves. For a start you'll probably see an increase in fly tipping of general household waste, there may also be issues as regards to people putting their rubbish in other peoples bins to avoid being charged. None of these problems as of yet seem to have been addressed in anyway.

Time and money would be better spent finding out why people are creating so much waste in the first place and coming up with a solution to this problem rather than charging people for something they might not have that much control over. If it turns out that the only reason is because people are lazy and can not be bothered to recycle then fair enough charge them. Once they start feeling it hurt them in their pocket they will soon start to recycle more. However if there are genuine reasons why a family produces a lot of waste then maybe that reason should be addressed instead of a tax being pushed upon them.

It would be quite interesting to do a survey of life style against the amount of rubbish being thrown away to see if other things like health could be directly linked to it. For example a family that survives entirely on microwave meals is likely to throw away more packaging than a family that makes their meals from fresh ingredients. Fair enough most of the boxes for the meals could be recycled however a lot of the microwavable trays can not, or if they can I am yet to find somewhere they can be taken to be recycled. As everyone is being constantly told all these ready meals are full of too much this and that, that generally degrade our health, so does a family or individual that produces a lot of rubbish also have a life style that is likely be make them more unhealthy?

This could be classed as a controversial question but I hope you read it for what it is and not as an attack on people who eat microwave meals.

Basically what I'm saying is that if you go to your local supermarket and buy fresh fuit and veg along with the odd tin of this and that you're probably going to be able to recycle most of the packaging and waste produced by that meal. However if you buy ready cooked meals that are packaged in wax coated carboard boxes with plastic trays you're less likely to be able to recycle the packaging.

And so we come to the real cause of the problem, the super markets. These huge companies govern pretty much everything we buy as far as food is concerned, so surely it should be their responsibility to make sure that we never have to take home excessive amounts of packaging that we later have to dispose of. Maybe the government should be putting more pressure on these waste producers rather than the people who are essentially disposing of it for them.

If you're thinking of reducing your waste then why not take a look at some of my other articles on the subject.

When I started recycling
Composting
Organic Fruit and Veg Delivery

A month or so ago we changed our kitchen bin to one with two compartments. It has a small section that can be used to collect stuff for the composter and a larger section for all the other stuff we usually throw away. One thing about this bin is that it's not particularly large, this has got me thinking even more about what I do and don't recycle.

One of the major bulky things I regularly use is Tetra Pak based drinks containers for things like fresh apple juice etc. A while ago I looked on Tetra Paks website and they offered an address where you could send all of your Tetra Pak packaging to be recycled. I thought it might be worth while doing so I started collecting all the containers ready to send them off.

Recently I decided to check the Tetra Pak recycling web site again for more details about where to send the containers. Well it turns out that Tesco is joining forces with Tetra Pak to roll out recycling facilities to their stores around the UK. They will be adding two new recycling points every week until September, which means you'll soon be able to take your Tetra Pak based containers to your local Tesco to get them recycled.

As Tesco say "Every little helps".

Source [Tetra Pak Recycling]

Tetra Pak Recycling Update

Currently I rent the house I live in. If you've read the article I posted some time back on renting you'll realise that I'm not particularly happy with it either.

Well this weekend I found another reason to be annoyed at renting. This reason is the incredibly inefficient heating system we have and the fact that it doesn't even work properly. I found out exactly how bad it was when I got up on Saturday morning. First thing I thought I'd do would be jump in the shower and get dressed before sorting out the long list of things I had to do that day. I managed to get about 2 minutes of hot water before everything went a very annoying luke warm, which quickly turned to freezing cold.

This was the first sign that something was up. The second sign was when I went to put a load of clothes on radiators around the house that had just come out the washing machine. They were all stone cold, not even a bit of heat coming off them. I knew the heating was on because I had put it on about 15 minutes before for the sole purpose of drying the clothes.

At this point I decided to investigate properly. First thing I did was turn the heating system off and bleed all the radiators, downstairs was fine however upstairs had a stupid amount of air in all the radiators. At this point I thought that must have been the problem, so I put the heating back on and waited a while for the heat.

Guess what, it never came. So at this point I have a boiler that is going at full pelt because it's trying to catch up with the thermostat however it's not actually getting any hot water into the radiators.

When we first moved in the house over a year and a half ago we had a problem with the heating that was very similar. When it happened then, we had several contractors come out who said that the best course of action would be to install a new boiler and heating system. However there was one bloke who said he could get it working again by replacing a £20 part. I bet you can guess who got the job can't you. Anyway it turns out that the same thing had gone wrong again, it's basically some electrics that move some valves near the hot water tank to route the water coming from the boiler to either the hot water system or the radiators. Well it had broken again. Luckily you can actually override this control with a manual push switch, the only problem with this is we now have to manually govern our heating system to make sure that the radiators work and that we get hot water.

Obviously I'm going to report this to the letting agent once again and you never know it might actually get fixed properly this time, but the thing that really annoys me is we have been burning all this fuel to essentially heat up a pipe that is about a foot long between the boiler and this valve.

I think while the government is making all these plans for improving building regulations to make things greener they should also look into forcing landlords to make their properties as energy efficient as possible. After all if it was my own house I'd never stand for having such a bad heating system. I probably would have got it changed when the original problem happened. Just because I rent a house why should I have to put up with inefficient heating that I have no control over.

It's not like these people don't have any money, after all many people can't afford one house let alone be able to buy one to rent out to people too. So surely they can afford to kit it out with a decent heating system.

For as long as I can remember it has always been traditional for festival goers to use cigarette lighters to bring a much needed glow to a night time performance.

Well no longer do we have to burn fuels to create that wonderful glow, not now that Nigel's Eco Store has kindly provided us with the Blow Light. This little device is being touted as the worlds smallest wind turbine and to give us the required festival glow it contains a couple of coloured LEDs.

So if you're planning on attending Live Earth, why not get yourself a Blow Light and bring some much needed environmentally friendly colour to those night time performances.


Live Earth after the concert update (10/07/07)

Last week it was reported that councils that had implemented fortnightly rubbish collections have increased their recycling rate by 7%, not a bad figure really. Even though this change is improving recycling rates there still seems to be a lot of people complaining about the reduced collections, stating that it is unhygienic and that bins are staying full for weeks at a time.

Everyone knows that with the government increasing landfill taxes local councils are trying to find ways of saving money. To them it seems the obvious way of doing this is to only collect peoples rubbish once a fortnight. No one seems to have realised that all that's going to happen is people will just have fuller bins. Reducing the number of times the rubbish is collected isn't going to reduce the rubbish.

Maybe the councils should start concentrating more on educating people about recycling, that way they could keep the weekly bin collections while people learn how to reuse and recycle, thus reducing their waste and the need for weekly collections. Just suddenly changing the way people have done things for years isn't a way of solving a problem, in fact it'll probably make more problems like illegal fly tipping of house hold waste because councils refuse to collect it.

Councils and the government want more people to recycle however they don't seem to be doing anything to actively educate people on how to do it. I've been recycling for some time now and it's still somewhat confusing as to exactly what type of plastic my local council collects. If things like this were laid out better I'm sure I could recycle even more of my waste, but it's not, and until it is people out there are going to carry on just throwing things away rather than recycling it because the average person on the street doesn't want to spend ages working out what kind of plastic something is made from before they decide how they should dispose of it. After all when you're throwing something away you're not really interested in it anymore, are you.

I'm all for getting as many people out there are possible to recycle, but there is a right way and a wrong way to go about things and what the councils are proposing is the wrong way. It wouldn't be so bad if we actually saw some of the money that the councils would be saving but council tax still seems to rise year on year. If people saw that they were getting something back for thinking about what they throw away then maybe they would be more inclined to recycle in the first place. At the end of the day it's not the general public fault that every product you buy now a days is massively over packaged, more often than not with no indication on the packaging as to whether it is recyclable or not. Maybe some of the blame should be being moved to the companies that provide us with the huge amount of waste to get rid of in the first place.

I don't see why fortnightly bin collections couldn't work however the councils are going to have to put more work in to educate people about recycling and reducing their waste.

Source [Guardian Online]

I just posted today about Tesco introducing zero emissions delivery vans at their new Shrewsbury store. This will be reducing CO2 emissions due to the deliveries themselves but it'll also be reducing the number of car journeys people make to get their weekly shopping.

Why not save yourself some time and money while helping the environment by having a go at getting your shopping online?

We've been doing our shopping online now since the end of last year and we've found it much more convenient. No longer do we have to wait in endless queues every week just to pay for our food, no longer do we have to make a special journey and spend forever trying to find a parking space.

It also has the added advantage that we now buy in bulk and do one online order a month. This usually means we can take advantage of more of the offers which in turn means we save more money. Online shopping is also great if you're on a budget because you have a nice running total that adds up each time you put something in the virtual trolley, so you always know how much you're spending.

Buying in bulk and ordering less often means you're also helping to save the environment by reducing the number of journeys made by the delivery vans.

The only real disadvantage of ordering online is that you don't get to see the fruit, veg and meat before you choose it, however we get all of our fruit and veg from an organic supplier delivered separately and we don't really eat that much meat so it doesn't really matter.

Pretty much all the major supermarkets offer online ordering now so why not see if you could help save yourself some time and money as well as help save the environment by ordering your food online.

Well it looks like Tesco are at it again with another environmental move. A few days ago Tesco announced that all customers that use their .com service that are within the range of their new environmental store in Shrewsbury will have their groceries delivered by a new fleet of zero emissions delivery vans.

The new vans are made by a company called Modec who specialise in electric commercial vehicles. The vans have the same capacity as the current .com vans along with a 100 mile range which should mean all deliveries in the area can be completed without any trouble.

Tesco predict that the vans will save approximately 21 tonnes of CO2 a year per van, plus they will also save the CO2 of around 6000 car journeys a year that the .com business takes off the road due to people not having to visit the store.

Hopefully these new vans will really take off and soon we'll all be able to get our groceries delivered by zero emissions vans.

Source [Tesco Corporate]

Back in February you may remember me posting about some environmental petitions posted on the UK governments new online petitions web site. Well one of the petitions has come to an end and the government has responded.

If you signed the petition yourself then you will have already had an email with the governments response, however if you didn't then here's a link to it.

To summaries the response, they basically say that due to certain legislation they currently are not allowed to ban inefficient light bulbs, however new legislation going though the European union will mean that they will be able to begin to phase out the use of energy inefficient products by 2009.

Also they are aiming to become the first European country to stopping using inefficient lights bulbs by 2011. Part of this move involves talks to lower the VAT rate on power saving light bulbs to make them more affordable.

As with everything now a days there is always something blocking progress, however they are stating quite respectable dates for achieving some of their goals, so as long as it all goes to plan it's looking pretty good for the up take of energy efficient light bulbs across the UK.

As summer arrives it's time we all got out of our winter habits and started to save some more energy. Thanks to the longer hotter days it's possible to save energy in all kinds of places.

For a start you won't be needing to leave the lights on around the house as much and by now any lights you do have on should be power saving anyway. A second big difference you could make would be by adjusting your heating controls. Now it's warmer for longer and the temperature outside is generally higher you should think about changing the timer on your central heating system to come on a bit later in the day and go off a bit earlier. If your house has reasonable insulation then it really shouldn't take much heating. Also think about turning the thermostat down a couple of degrees too, just for good measure.

After all the government speak lately about going green and hitting carbon targets it turns out that Tony Blair himself is having problems going green.

It turns out he was planning on installing solar panels on his house in London, but they have been turned down after complaints from neighbours were made when he applied for planning permission.

How does the government expect people to move over to renewable energy sources when the prime minister can't even get planning permission to put solar cells on his own house? Just in case you thought it might have been a Conservative supporter that made the complaint it turns out the David Cameron also recently had planning problems when trying to add a wind turbine to his house.

It looks like for every person out there wanting to be green there a few who would rather they didn't.

Source [Guardian online]

It looks like things are starting to move along for the Live Earth concerts in July. Many of the venues have been confirmed along with the bands that will be playing at them. It's now also possible to start signing up for tickets for the UK and US leg of the tour. Information on tickets can be found on the official Live Earth web site as well as the MSN Live Earth ticket info site.

The department for transport have just released a web site for their "Act on CO2" campaign that promotes smarter driving.

The web site includes tips on how to save fuel when driving as well as what to look for when buying a new car. There is also a calculator that shows you how much money you could save by using the smarter driving tips.

Just for a bit of fun as well, they have included a flash game that emphasises all of the smarter driving tips they give on the main site.

With the EU renewable energy targets having recently been set it looks like green issues could become the next battle ground in politics.

In an article over at the BBC the two main parties are arguing over the best way to implement the up coming climate change bill, which is due to be released on Tuesday. The aim of the bill will be to reduce carbon emissions by 60% by 2050. Until the bill has been released there is no real clue as to how they are going to achieve this, however a lot of talk about raising taxes is being thrown around.

Beings Gordon Brown doesn't want to set any hard yearly targets, is this just an excuse to raise taxes and get some more money off us all? If we don't have something to aim for every year we could just end up getting to 2050 and saying oh well we didn't quite meet our targets what a shame.

If this is really going to work and not end up being an exercise in taxing people more, then we need yearly targets that the government would be forced to stick to.

Europe seems to be a big issue as well, there is a lot of talk about "Euroscepticism" making things harder to do, but why? If Europe doesn't want to join in now, then why don't we just go ahead and get things moving then worry about them later? A lot of Europe already have sustainable energy programs in place and are currently working more than likely much harder than we are to reduce their carbon emissions.

We're just going to have to wait and see what the climate change bill brings tomorrow. Hopefully it'll outline ways of allowing people to live a more sustainable live style rather than taxing them because their not.

In the week all the EU countries got together to agree on some solid targets for the reduction of carbon emissions. This has led to the decision to attempt to reduce carbon emissions by 20% by 2020.

So what will they be doing to achieve this? Well so far the only information I've really been able to find is from the BBC news web site. The following seem to be the major changes that will take place.

• 10% minimum for the usage of bio-fuels in transport
• Increase in the use of renewable energy sources I.E Solar, wind and hydro power.
• A possible ban on incandescent light bulbs by the end of the decade.

It all sounds pretty good really. It would be nice to see them issue more grants allowing people to more easily afford producing their own energy using things like solar or wind power.

Even though the light bulb ban seems very small I believe it would make an amazing impact on the amount of energy we use. The BBC website states

The bulbs last longer but more are more expensive to buy

But now Tesco are offering power saving light bulbs at half price on their direct web site and offering their value power saving light bulbs for 89 pence in store, the price difference is insignificant. You might think that the value bulbs aren't that great, however I can say the opposite as at least 3 of my light fittings currently have Tesco value power saving light bulbs in them and they are perfectly fine. With the prices coming down so much you could save even more money.

The EU leaders also put in an additional plan that would mean a 30% reduction in carbon emissions if they could also get the likes of America and China on board. China already has an active sustainable building plan as they are realising that they will not be able to expand as a country if they are tied down to having to buy fuels etc. However with America being reluctant to sign the Kyoto agreement, it might be a struggle to get them on board with any other plans.

All in all it's a move in the right direction, lets just hope that the pace quickens a little and changes start to be made.

I've just finished watching the BBCs parnorma program Go green or else, and to be honest I wasn't all that impressed. Throughout the program it felt like the presenter and his wife were treating the whole problem of global warming as a bit of a joke. Fair enough they did do several things to improve their carbon footprint including getting rid of their car, but they just didn't seem to take the whole thing seriously.

The program was reasonable informative for people who might not have looked into going green before, it had several tips on the small everyday things you could do to save energy like fitting power saving light bulbs and insulating loft spaces etc.

They had a very interesting section where they used a thermal imaging camera to see how much heat their house was giving out. This got me thinking about the whole global warming thing in a different way, which I'll post an article about later.

I think the part that would have interested most people though was at the end when they realised how much money they had saved by going green. They estimated they had saved around £2000 in a year, which for some people would probably be a good enough reason in itself to start going green.

As a side note, while at Tesco tonight I noticed they are now selling their value power saving light bulbs for 89 pence. At this price you can't go wrong really. It's roughly the price of 4 normal bulbs, but the savings you could make are much larger. For more information read my article Power saving light bulbs: how much can you actually save.

A couple of days ago a group in Al Gores home town managed to get hold of his utility bills and published them to the public (article).

These bills show that Al Gores home consumes 20 times the average American homes energy. For someone that is supposed to be promoting green living this is pretty high. The question is, does this make Al Gore a bad environmentalist?

You could say both yes and no. Yes obviously because he is using up so much energy, but at the same time no because he is out their promoting green issues. He's made films about it, he's even organising world wide concerts about it, which is creating it's own standard for a greener concert.

All in all the guy is doing a lot of good for promoting green issues. I'm sure that now this information has been leaked he will do something about his energy usage, a bit of practicing what he's preaching.

I just think he should be given an opportunity to right his wrongs before he gets shot down by politicians and other green campaigners who now think he's a hypocrite. At the end of the day no one is perfect and at least he's trying to do something.

I think before I make a final opinion about him, I'll wait to see how he handles this situation.