Reduce
Whether we are trying to reduce our carbon usage or economise financially, reducing our buying had to be the starting point. Some of this we can show some we can't. In this section I have given some of our own figures for what we have done reducing our fossil fuel use. Things like reducing the costs of shopping are more difficult to quanitfy but I have given some of the tricks we used to reduce our carbon/financial spending.
With two "Drs" in the house we used to get a mountain of junk mail. We received something every day and knew there was a Public Holiday if no post arrived. George then joined the Mail preference society - www.mpsonline.org.uk -, this stopped virtually all the junk mail to both of us.
Zero Carbon Britain
Weaning ourselves from excessive use of carbon fuels, resources or money is like going on a diet, we are more successful if we do it with others. If we know somebody will be looking at our figures it galvanises us when our will is weak.
Our original reasons for cutting our carbon and money usage was need, it was too expensive to heat the house. However, we felt we had done all we could by 2007/8 and had plateaued out a bit until we became involved in the Zero Carbon Britain study run by the Centre for Alternative Technology - www.cat.org.uk . This study was based on their original paper on a practical way of making Britain carbon neutral. It is based on the idea that we wean ourselves over twenty years to not using any non-renewable carbon source. The study is looking at household fuel usage, such as gas, electricity, oil and car fuels.
As soon as we start looking at and charting the things we do we change our behaviour, and so it probably was with our first year (2008), though we tried not to change our behaviour too much. The study requires us to read our gas and electricity meters weekly and note down all the car fuel we buy. If we used coal or oil we would need to note this as well. In the first year we were allocated an amount of CO2 based on the UK population's average use.
At the end of the first year we found that we were using far more carbon based fuels than our allocation, despite all our work on the heating etc. This was probably the final decision maker in us getting the wood burning stove - wood doesn't count as it is renewable.
Looking at our figures against our aim has made us look at many things we do from the electrical equipment we use to transport. Gradually our figures are coming down. More recently it has helped us in planning for the installation of renewable technologies as we know our fuel use week by week.
May be one day we will get to zero!
Our original reasons for cutting our carbon and money usage was need, it was too expensive to heat the house. However, we felt we had done all we could by 2007/8 and had plateaued out a bit until we became involved in the Zero Carbon Britain study run by the Centre for Alternative Technology - www.cat.org.uk . This study was based on their original paper on a practical way of making Britain carbon neutral. It is based on the idea that we wean ourselves over twenty years to not using any non-renewable carbon source. The study is looking at household fuel usage, such as gas, electricity, oil and car fuels.
As soon as we start looking at and charting the things we do we change our behaviour, and so it probably was with our first year (2008), though we tried not to change our behaviour too much. The study requires us to read our gas and electricity meters weekly and note down all the car fuel we buy. If we used coal or oil we would need to note this as well. In the first year we were allocated an amount of CO2 based on the UK population's average use.
At the end of the first year we found that we were using far more carbon based fuels than our allocation, despite all our work on the heating etc. This was probably the final decision maker in us getting the wood burning stove - wood doesn't count as it is renewable.
Looking at our figures against our aim has made us look at many things we do from the electrical equipment we use to transport. Gradually our figures are coming down. More recently it has helped us in planning for the installation of renewable technologies as we know our fuel use week by week.
May be one day we will get to zero!
