52 Steps Closer

Final Post for Now

52stepscloser — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:58:32 +0000

I feel bad that I have not been keeping this blog updated for a while now. I have not discontinued the challenge, I am still changing the way I do things and the products I buy. It’s just that I haven’t felt motivated to write about it as this blog only gets very few visits every now and again. I had hoped that a few of the people reading it would join me on the challenge and tell me about some of the stuff that they were doing to reduce their impact on the environment. Alas, that has not happened and life gets busy….

So I will continue to try to improve my habits and hope I make a difference, I just won’t be writing about it. If you have been following this blog and you want ideas to help you change your habits then I recommend you visit the Planet Ark website and sign up to their Green Resolutions Challenge. Each week they email you ideas of ways to save the planet.

Cheers for now.

Nickie

Challenge Week 11 – Reduce Impact of hot Water System

52stepscloser — Mon, 18 May 2009 02:46:55 +0000

For the last couple of weeks I have not posted anything. Basically, I lost momentum. Then last night I saw an article on 60 Minutes about the Maldives and how they were going to disappear under water due to climate change. My husband and I went to the Maldives about 10 years ago. It is a beautiful place. Anyway, the population of the Maldives are doing everything they can to slow global warming and it made me feel guilty that I haven’t done anything for my challenge lately, so I’m back.

I was going to do the second part of my plastic bag challenge, but that has hit the too hard basket for the time being. To make it work I need to get alternative containers to put my meat and fruit and vege and deli stuff in. Then I have to get the supermarket staff to use them…..I want to do this but I am not set up for it yet so I will have to come back to it.

So this week I am looking at my hot water system. The weather is getting cooler, and those hot showers are delicious!! Did you know that heating your hot water with an electric system can account for up to 30% (or more according to some websites) of your electricity bill. Now, I would love to install a solar hot water system and whilst the Australian government is offering great rebates to do so, my preference would be to convert all my electricity usage to solar power. So while we work out if we can afford solar power or just a solar hot water system I want to reduce the amount of electricity my hot water system uses.

After a quick look on the internet, it seems the smart thing for me to do would be to lower the temperature setting on the thermostat of the hot water system. At the moment it comes out extremely hot. Australian plumbing standard AS3500 requires stored water to be kept at a minimum 60 degrees Celsius. My thermostat was set to 70 degrees. So I have turned it down to 60.

My water heater was a simple electric system which was easy to adjust. If you wish to adjust your own water heater, you should refer to the user manual. Failing that, do some research on the internet as it varies depending on whether your hot water system is electric, gas, instant heating, furnace burning etc. If in doubt seek the help of an electrician.

A good article to read is http://www.dpi.wa.gov.au/mediaFiles/ls_StorageWaterHeater.pdf.

Challenge Week 10 – Not Accepting Plastic Shopping Bags

52stepscloser — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 02:51:28 +0000

Earlier in my blog, week 1 to be precise, I set up a recycling system for my plastic bags. Well, 2 months later I am surprised at just how many plastic bags I get given/go through, some of which I throw away (like the ones used to hold meat that are just too dirty to even try to clean). I will continue to recycle what I can but I would like to reduce the number that come into my house in the first instance. This is a two part challenge, part 1, which I will tackle this week, is to reduce shopping bags. Part 2 (next week’s challenge) are food plastic bags from products like bread, fruit & veg and meat.

I get really frustrated when I go shopping and the shopping assistant automatically puts my goods into a plastic bag without asking if I want one. Now I am not talking about supermarket shopping as I usually put my green bags up on the conveyor belt first before I unpack my trolley. I’m talking about newsagents and fruit and veg shops and department stores and shoe stores and….you get my drift. Quite often I have a green bag in visible sight but they are running on auto-pilot and just put my purchase straight into a plastic bag.

So this week’s challenge is to say no and give the bag back! Or even better, state up front I have a bag already for my purchase. Now I know this sounds simple but I have been trying to do it from the start of this week and shop assistants are quick and before you know it they are trying to hand me my purchase and move on to the next customer. When I have said “No thanks I don’t need a bag” they take it back and throw it over to the side. Will it get reused? Or end up in their rubbish bin?

What if I don’t have a bag on me? I here you say. After all, we all like to do a bit of impulse shopping now and again! Well if you really need a bag , I have a friend who has this cute little material bag that folds up into nothing and fits into a little pouch. She keeps this inside her handbag for those emergency shops. I have looked around locally and not been able to find one (I think she got hers in Japan) but I have folded up a thicker plastic shopping bag (like the ones you get from department stores) and popped that in my handbag. It doesn’t take up much room especially once all the air has escaped. I will keep my eyes open for a material one to replace the plastic one when it eventually dies.

My goal is to never have to accept a shopping bag from a sales assistant again. “Never” maybe a little optimistic but I’ll try my best

Update on Progress of Worm Farm

52stepscloser — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:47:57 +0000

Just thought I would let you know how the worms adjusted to being feed dog poo instead of kitchen scraps!

At first they were a little hesitant, who could blame them right?! And I think the worm numbers dropped a bit. But now they are happily munching away. They are still building up the volume that they consume, so I still need to dispose of some poo in the rubbish bin but this is steadily decreasing. Apparently, the worm farm should be able to handle the output from two medium sized dogs. As I only have one small to medium sized dog I should be able to process all my dog’s waste.

Another interesting fact I learnt was not to feed them the dog poo just after they had been given any worm treatment as it will kill the worms in the farm. So, as I worm my dog once a month, I usually don’t put any poo into the worm farm for at least 2 to 3 days afterwards. The worms are still alive and kicking so I figure that time frame is fine. It does depend on the strength of the medication you are giving your dog and I was advised to check with my vet as to how long I should wait after medicating the dog.

All in all I am happy with the result.

Challenge Week 9 – Reducing my Computer’s Power Consumption

52stepscloser — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:16:25 +0000

Lately I have been using my computer at home a lot. However, I do not use it in one continuous go. Usually I turn it on, do a few things, then walk away and do something else away from the computer before returning to continue working. The computer can be on for several hours.

When I am not using the computer my screen saver kicks in. I always thought this was a good thing. But using a screen saver consumes more energy than just letting the monitor dim when it is not in use. I found out this useful tip along with how to use the power management features on my computer from the Climate Savers Smart Computing website. According to them: “The average desktop PC wastes half the energy it consumes and even though most of today’s desktop PCs are capable of automatically transitioning to a sleep or hibernate state when inactive, about 90% of systems have this functionality disabled”. I was one of them!!

So following the instructions at the Climate Savers website for my windows operating system I have changed my settings to the following:

Monitor/display sleep: Turn off after 15 minutes or less
Turn off hard drives/hard disk sleep: 15 minutes or less
System standby/sleep: After 30 minutes or less

When I want to use the computer again, I just press any key on the keyboard or move the mouse and the computer wakes up. Everything is how I left it, ready to start using again.

This change took me less than 5 minutes to do. I feel greener already

Challenge Week 8 – Reduce My Meat Intake By 1 Meal a Week

52stepscloser — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:38:54 +0000

This week’s challenge is inspired by an email I received from Planet Ark encouraging people to cut back on the amount of meat they eat . In their email they said:

“Meat production has a significant impact on the environment – water use, land clearing, transportation, processing, refrigeration, distribution and overall greenhouse gas emissions really take their toll on our environment. It takes up to 50,000 litres of water to produce just 1kg of beef. For a family of four, eating one less meal of red meat a week could reduce your greenhouse gas emissions by as much as buying a hybrid car!”

My family eats meat every night. It is either red meat (steak, stir fry, mince, lamb, veal) or chicken. We rarely eat a meal without any meat at all. So this will be a bit of a challenge both for me as a cook to find some nice vegetarian dishes and for my family. If you personally know my family, you will know that the children can be very fussy eaters (especially the boy)! Never the less I am keen to give this a try because I think we could do with eating more veggies, plus when the meal can include vegetables from my garden it will make the meal that much more enjoyable

The plan is to pick one day a week to be the no meat day so that I don’t forget about it and so that it becomes a habit. I am thinking it will probably be Friday as last Friday was good Friday, a day we traditionally do not eat meat, so I feel like we have started this challenge already!

If you have any delicious vegetarian recipes, please feel to share them.

Challenge Week 7 – Changing Laundry Detergents

52stepscloser — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:59:40 +0000

With Easter nearly upon us, this week nearly got through without a challenge being completed. So I have chosen something quick and easy: changing my laundry detergent. This was prompted by the fact that I am nearly out of my regular brand.

I don’t think I am brave enough to try a home made laundry detergent, so I am looking to change to an environmently friendly commercial one. I know I want it to be biodegradable and not to contain phosphates. I would prefer it to be plant based rather than petroleum. There are several brands on sale at the local supermarket as well as a vast array available on the internet. As always, word of mouth is greatly appreciated. If you use a great laundry detergent that is environmently friendly I’d love to hear about it.

I have chosen to try Orange Power Enzyme Liquid. They say all the right things on their label and they are a Queensland company. I figure if I am going to change brands I may as well give the local guys a try first. At the end of the day the product still has to clean my clothes as well as my old detergent otherwise I will try another brand.

I will report in a couple of weeks on whether I am happy with the outcome.

Researching Halogen Downlights

52stepscloser — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 03:48:14 +0000

Before I began looking into changing my 50W Halogen light bulbs, I didn’t realise that only 20% of the energy consumed by the bulb goes into making light. The rest is used to create heat. That’s huge! There are some more energy efficient Halogen globes on the market now which you can replace existing globes with and save 30-40% on energy consumption. These are the easiest alternatives.

However, there are other alternatives such as LEDs. These use only 5-10% of the energy a 50W Halogen and last forever (well maybe not forever but a really long time). However they are on the expensive side of things.

Another option is to replace the whole Halogen downlight altogether with a Compact Flourescent (CFL) downlight. These use around 80% less energy and don’t require a transformer in the ceiling, which is a good thing. I would like to see some of these in real life to be sure that I liked them and the light they produced before changing all my fittings. But assuming they are fine, this would be my preferred final solution.

In the meantime I will change my current energy hungry Halogens to energy efficient ones. Afterall, saving 30% energy is better than nothing

Did you know by replacing your 4 most used light bulbs with CFLs you can save around $50 per year off your electricity bill. (statistic courtesy of NZ govt)

There are some great websites out there on lighting. A couple worth checking out are:

http://www.todae.com.au/LEDLighting/Down_Lights_Guide

http://www.energywise.govt.nz/library/efficient-light-bulbs-the-facts-jul-08.pdf

Challenge Week 6 – Change My Light bulbs

52stepscloser — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:22:53 +0000

As a result of the visit from the ClimateSmart man last week, I ended up with 15 new CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lamp) light bulbs. So this week’s challenge is to actually install as many as possible. Plus while I’m feeling enthusiastic about light bulbs, I want to look into what I can do to improve the lights that CFLs were not appropriate for.

Today I have replaced six standard incandescents with CFLs and there are another four possible ones which I can’t reach to check/change at the moment. Of the other lights that I checked there were already six CFLs installed.

I can use CFLs in my bedside lamps but I need to get mini ones. Also I need one dimmable one.

On our new energy monitor we compared the difference between using a standard light bulb and a CFL. The incandescent ran at 1.1 cents/kwh. The CFL ran at 0.3 cents/kwh. That is quite a saving when you multiply it out across all your light bulbs in the house and over a period of a year!

Unfortunately, most of the main lights that we use for long periods every night are down lights. I know there are better globes on the market than what we have now but I really don’t know much else at the moment. This is what I would like to look into this week.

Measuring Results

52stepscloser — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:17:25 +0000

As with any challenge I would like to be able to measure my results. At the moment I am lacking ways of measuring the benefit of my actions. I started to think how I could measure what I was doing. I came up with a few ideas…..

Number of rubbish bags I put out per week
Cost of my grocery shopping (should go down if I am growing some of my own food, buying less cleaning products)
Amount of electricity used per quarter (compared with same time in previous years)

I am interested if anyone has other ideas of how to measure progress. I would love to be able to say I saved x amount of trees and reduced my carbon foot print by so much…..etc.

FIRST MEASURE – ELECTRICITY USAGE

Today the ClimateSmart Man came to do an energy audit on our house. For those of you not familiar with the scheme, the Queensland government will send out an electrician to change your incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescents, replace your shower head for a water efficient one and install an energy monitor. All this for $50. Now if you live in Brisbane, the Brisbane City Council will rebate that $50 back to you. It may take few months but basically it means the service is free. I like that!

We were given 15 new CFL light bulbs. They are just the standard ones. No dimmables and none suitable for downlights. Even still, I didn’t realise we hadn’t changed quite a lot of our basic light bulbs over yet. We basically have only been replacing light bulbs as they die.

Our shower head was already a water efficient one, thanks to another government scheme a couple of years ago when Brisbane was suffering badly in the drought.

And we now have an energy monitor! These monitors tell you how much energy you are using at any one time. You can set an alarm if it goes above an acceptable level (you choose the level) so that you can run around the house turning stuff off that isn’t being used. I am addicted. I plan to run the house normally for a few days to get a base daily usage amount, so that I can then know if I am improving on it. Then I’ll put in the new light bulbs.