make a smaller ecological footprint

One of the areas in which we have been slowly but surely reducing our ecological footprint is in our use of paper. Some of the improvements that we have made include:- Using recycled toilet paper and paper for printing of the computer, Keeping as much material on email such as receipts etc rather than printing it out, receiving electronic company reports rather than hard copies, getting bank account kept on my internet bank account rather than sent to me and using the backs of old sheets for general notes in the office. This is an area I will futher look into to see what improvements can be made and report on any further improvements in the future.

In Australia a few days ago some initial findings were release by Professor Garnaut cooncerning his report to the Government on climate change and its implication. My understanding of the situation is that the Government was basing its policies on a sixty percent reduction in emissions by 2050 (I think based on year 2000 levles). Professor Garnaut has indicated that this needs to be increased to 70% to 90%. This has set the cat amongst the pidgeons with both industry and politicians making comments and trying to come up with answers. It seems in order to make these kind of cuts we will see electrity prices rise dramatically in the next few years. It will be an interesting test of Government and Businesses green credentials.

On a more personal level it is coming up to the time of the year when we carbon offset our travel on the website carbon neutral. We work out our travel for the year an make a donation and an this group plants an appropriate number of trees in an attempt to offset the emissions made by people in their travel or if they choose, other aspects of their life. Whilst, this is being done people will obviously have to reduce their own pesonal emissions.

The other day our electricity bill came back. Our emissions have dropped about 6% from last year. We also pay for green power. When the amount of green power gained from our payments is factored into the equation says that we are using 0 tonnes of electricity per bill. This is a pleasing result.

We went out to the dump this weekend to drop off our rubbish. We are in the country and do not have a garbage collection service. Since we have increased our recycling we have dramatically reduced our need to go to the tip. We went for the first time in 3 weeks compared to going to the tip every 8 weeks previously. We have now found that we can also recycle tins which should reduce this further.

We have replaced the two old freezers in our house with one large upright freezer. The freezer will use a fraction of the electricity of the old ones. It also has the advantage of allowing us to see everything in it. The old freezers were chest freezers. They produced a lot of ice and you struggled to see what was on top.

The other day we went to a very large hardware store and attempted to buy some materials for temporary window glazing. We were not able to buy any and believe that it may be difficult to find some.

Things to do in future

• Get more efficient refrigeration system
• Examine having batts in the roof.
• Do temporary double glazing of windows.

I have just looked at our latest electricity bill and we seem to have reduced our power consumption by about 16% due to turning electrical items off after use and through getting lower wattage lights. Since starting recycling we have also reuced the amount of material going to the tip by about two thirds.

We are attempting to slowly wind back our lifestyle to become moe environmentally friendly. The things we have been doing include:-

• Use reuseable calico bags instead of plastic bags.
• Put a bucket in the shower and reuse the water for the toilet.
• Switch off lights and other electrical items.
• Installed low energy fluro light globes.
• Recycle.
• Buy carbon offsets for travel.
• Share car travel where possible.
• Buy greenpower (ie energy from renewable resources).
• Live in a house with two other people.

• Cut down on our use of power through refrigeration.
• Buy a higher percentage of green power.
• Get a smaller car.