Topic: GO GREEN AND SAVE THE EARTH

[arrivées55]

Global warming is happening and it's getting worse everyday. If we don't take this problem upon ourselves, and take drastic action to help save our environment, Earth's most precious gifts could be lost forever. Do you want to help? Here are some useful ways to help reduce your own carbon footprint on the Earth!

RECYCLE
Recycling is more than just tossing a few things in your bin here and there. You need to do more to make a positive impact. One way to reduce waste is to buy products with minimal packaging. Economy size things are great, since they are usually much bigger and you aren't buying so many smaller packages. Also you can try to buy reusable products. For example, when cleaning your kitchen you can use a wash cloth that can be laundered afterwards, rather than using half a roll of paper towels. Remember to recycle paper, plastic, newspaper, glass and aluminum cans. If you recycle half of your household waste each year, you will save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide annually.

LIGHT BULBS
Changing out your light bulbs with the energy efficient bulbs not only is great for the earth...it's great on your bills as well! They actually give off more light than the old ones, and also last much longer!

ADJUST YOUR THERMOSTAT
This is a trick that will save the planet and your wallet at the same time. Make your home more energy efficient by adding insulation and weather stripping. Also, set your thermostat two degrees higher in the summer and two degrees lower in the winter.Just throw on a sweater, or cuddle with your spouse! This will also allow you to pay less for heating and air conditioning while saving about 2,000 pounds of carbon emissions each year.

CARPOOL
Join a carpool or take the bus. You can help the environment and save money on gas. If your work isn't too far away, try walking or biking to work. Maybe you can add a few years to your life by getting some exercise too!

BUY GREEN PRODUCTS
Look for products that say Earth Friendly, Greenlist, Plant Based Ingredients, or All Natural...even Organic. Buying these products are healthy for you as well. All those extra chemicals are making us sick, and polluting our earth.

REUSE PLASTIC BAGS
If you can't buy the reusable cloth bags and avoid using the stores bags all together...you can at least reuse them at home. Please just don't throw them away. Those things are turning up everywhere! They are killing millions of marine animals in our oceans. These animals are confused by them, and when they are eaten, they die! So please, at least recycle them if your not going to use them for something else!

As a concerned citizen, you should do your part to lessen the effects of global warming. Please take global warming seriously....Let's save the planet, and go GREEN!

[gwynleg]

I think you might be preaching to the converted on many of these issues arrivees55! Welcome to the site.

[teresa]

that was very good gwynleg beautifuly put, lottie holders are very good at recycling and dont forget the plastic shop bags can be cut into strips and knitted to make good strong shopping bags etc. Welcome to A4A xxx

[PurpleHeather]

Is it actually worth the effort in our small time way?

Nuclear waste has been deposited in to the oceans. In containers which will not rot (allegedly) for a couple of hundred years or so.

Nuclear reactors in some parts of the world have been built on top of volcanoes.

Goodness know what has been built on areas where there are known faultlines so that earth quakes will rattle them apart.

I am sure others can give far better examples.

There are far too many human beings on the earth proportionately. Many of whom are unproductive (including me) some are artificially kept alive, without any quality of life. We are all consuming resources we could do without.

Recycling a few plastic bags, bits of newspaper, old tin cans and composting potato peeling and so on might delay the inevitable for a few years but at the end of the day. Humans have ruined the planet already beyond redemption. It would be a better world without any of us.

What we are doing is little more use than peeing in the sea to keep up the water levels in the ocean.

Certainly I do my bit by segregating my waste and I grow my own stuff.

The vehicles which are used to collect our excesses  consume more energy than our contribution offers in return.

None of us will make the true sacrifice needed to restore the balance.

This going green and recycling is all down to the feel good smug factor that we humans try to preach to make it look like we are doing something.

We make the poor people from so called third world developing countries check what they are doing with deforrestation and wild life. Forgetting that centuries ago. We did the same. 

We prevent them from attaining the standards we enjoy. Keep them poor but will we re-introduce the species of animals we wiped out and replant trees when we can put extra houses roads and airports there?

Turning 'green' properly means a whole lot more than putting a few bits into more plastic containers and leaving it out for collection

[gwynleg]

Theresa - any more detail on  how to make the knitted bags? How thick do you cut the strips and do you just knot them together? Any patterns out there?!
thanks

[zigzig]

Free knitting patterns for bags

can be down loaded here

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://whipup.net/wp-content/images/2008/10/plasticbag_eg_02.jpg&imgrefurl=http://whipup.net/tag/alt-craft/&usg=__zGQC_cxqyjOHnBBCklrLkNsvUN0=&h=304&w=392&sz=18&hl=en&start=6&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=kbmq4QDDs6uJMM:&tbnh=95&tbnw=123&prev=/images%3Fq%3DKnitted%2Bplastic%2Bbags%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26tbs%3Disch:1

[GodfreyRob]

LIGHT BULBS
Changing out your light bulbs with the energy efficient bulbs not only is great for the earth...it's great on your bills as well! They actually give off more light than the old ones, and also last much longer!

Actually, there is a lot of evidence that the first generation of 'energy saving bulbs' don't actually help. They contain mercury -and are expensive to dispose of (when people remember not to throw them in the bin) and most councils can't process them properly.
They don't last as long as claimed.
They still take longer to reach full brighness and are downright dangerous on stairs.
They don't fit lots of light fittings as they are too big or fat or long (not to mention ugly).

As they take so long to come on you have to leave them on longer when looking for something in a room.
In insulated houses in winter (when light bulbs are on the most) the heat given out by so-called older bulbs contributes to heating the house and is not 'wasted' at all.

Low energy light bulbs use a lot more energy in their production too. So the overall benefits (if there are any) are much lower than claimed.

I am not against new technology at all - but I think these so-called low energy bulbs are just making more money for manufacturers-not saving energy at all.

Incandescent light bulbs are simple to manufacture (using little energy), safe to dispose of and I will continue to use them until a real low energy light bulb comes along (like affordable LEDs).

[Robert_Brenchley]

They do cost a lot more to make, use more energy in production, and contain some mercury. I've been using them since they first appeared, and have no complaints at all about lifespan. Where I was once replacing bulbs every couple of weeks, I now do it rarely. They do take a moment to come on fully, but we're talking about half a second or so, so I think you're exaggerating. I see no danger in using them on stairs, for instance.

While the heat emitted by the old bulbs was useful in winter, you didn't want it all the year round, and a great deal of energy was wasted in warmer weather. In most cases, heat was emitted near the ceiling, where it was of limited use.

[Vinlander]

Last time I looked Wilko's were selling the GE ones - which in my experience come on instantly with at least 80% of their final brightness (in a normally-heated house - all this stuff is temperature dependent).

They were selling every size @97p each, so not a huge amount of money being made by those conspirators this year ??

Incidentally they also sell 23W ones @97p - which finally stopped my wife complaining that the 'new ones' were never quite as bright as an 'old 100W one'...

Cheers.

CFLs aren't perfect, but you don't have to worry about over-loading a fitting and setting the shade on fire like you used to - assuming you choose one of the shapes that will fit within your old shades of course.

[Mortality]

I don't believe in global warming, I think it's an elaborate con.

[RobinOfTheHood]

I don't believe in global warming, I think it's an elaborate con.

Hear, hear.

[GodfreyRob]

They do cost a lot more to make, use more energy in production, and contain some mercury. I've been using them since they first appeared, and have no complaints at all about lifespan. Where I was once replacing bulbs every couple of weeks, I now do it rarely. They do take a moment to come on fully, but we're talking about half a second or so, so I think you're exaggerating. I see no danger in using them on stairs, for instance.

While the heat emitted by the old bulbs was useful in winter, you didn't want it all the year round, and a great deal of energy was wasted in warmer weather. In most cases, heat was emitted near the ceiling, where it was of limited use.

Well, the ones I have used take more than half a second to come on I can assure you - I was often half way up the stairs before it was fully illuminated (before I got rid of them).

In warmer weather its summer, right? So I don't use lights that much then anyway.

The emitted heat might start at ceiling level but it warms the air that moves around (or warms the room above). This is a useful bonus in the winter and most nights.

It would be great if someone had done a rigorous audit of the energy used in a house before and after fitting 'energy saving' bulbs (over at least 3 months in the same season of the year) to see what the actual saving is? I would be prepared to shut up if that were the case.
If you then included the production & disposal energy I bet the whole thing is pretty marginal - the only big difference I bet would be in the profit the manufacturers make...

[beckydore]

I recycle loads, grow my own, try and reduce my consumption as far as possible, run a freegle site etc.

Unfortunately I am also working 100 miles from home at the moment so although I travel up on a Monday and back on a Friday, it really makes the rest of my efforts a drop in the ocean.

Becky

[Robert_Brenchley]

The mere fact that we, living in a region with a variable climate, have had a cold winter doesn't invalidate the work on global warming any more than the odd figure which has turned out to be wrong invalidates the whole mass of data. Other parts of the world, the Caribbean for instance, are having droughts.

[GodfreyRob]

Actually I don't think it matters wether there is man-made global warming or not.

What matters is that we stop wrecking the planet by recklessly consuming all its natural resources without thinking about all the side effects of pollution, loss of bio-diveristy, etc. The oil will run out one day - what will we do then?

[Mortality]

Actually I don't think it matters wether there is man-made global warming or not.

What matters is that we stop wrecking the planet by recklessly consuming all its natural resources without thinking about all the side effects of pollution, loss of bio-diveristy, etc. The oil will run out one day - what will we do then?

I don't believe global warming exists, it's fearmongering, but I do believe humanity is damaging the planet.

As for the oil running out, will be interesting to see what happens to the US, will they be content to lose world status and just be a top food producer or will they invade oil rich countries and take over..?..

Just a little prediction here, when the oil runs out, I bet countries will dig up their massive land fill rubbish sites and begin re cyclying the old plastics, or is there another way to make plastic?? off to google plastic now.  :P

[Pesky Wabbit]

They were selling every size @97p each, so not a huge amount of money being made by those conspirators this year ??

The lower energy bulbs are subsidised by the power companies. Its a trade off between them and the government.

The government want us to use less energy and (at least think we're going to) save the planet, but in the mean time they are turning a blind eye to the difference between gas/electricity production/generations costs and what the consumer pays. Whole sale prices are down and have been for over a year, meanwhile domestic prices are at all time highs.

Rather than the government subsidise energy saving projects - which would cost them money, via higher taxes, they make the power companies pay, and hence shift the funding source to the private sector. Then when people complain about the enormous bills dropping through the letter box recently, the government can just shrug their shoulders, point their fingers, and say their doing their bit by encouraging us to be more energy efficient.

[RobinOfTheHood]

GLOBAL warming is probably being caused by ghosts, climate scientists claimed last night.

As new research confirmed that the Gulf Stream has not been affected by man-made climate change, scientists admitted that Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow may not have been a documentary after all and have now turned to Tobe Hooper's 1982 hit Poltergeist for expert guidance.

Climatologist, Dr Wayne Hayes of the Institute for Studies, said: "We think that some native American clouds may have died in tragic circumstances about 10,000 years ago and that's why the weather's all knackered.

"I was examining a glacier recently and I noticed that its north face looked like a forlorn child in reindeer skins. Sh1t me right up and no mistake."

The theory was given weight after a conference on climate change was thrown into disarray when a Powerpoint presentation on coral reefs was interrupted by unearthly ectoplasm in the shape of George Monbiot.
 
The United Nations is assembling a task force of 10,000 creepy midget women to exorcise key locations and throw ropes into hurricanes in a bid to  pull some nice, mild climate through wormholes in the weather.

Meanwhile scientists studying Weekend At Bernie's have dismissed the Poltergeist theory and insisted that droughts and floods may be due to a corpse being dragged around by two insurance clerks.

But Hayes said the Gulf Stream data would give reassurance to millions on America's eastern seaboard, adding: "It does at least mean that nobody in New York is going to be attacked by wolves for no adequately justifiable dramatic reason."

[Bugloss2009]

where would we be without "The Daily Mash"  :D

[RobinOfTheHood]

Cheers me up.  ;D