Saving energy on Blog Action Day
October 16, 2007 | Filed Under Loving it!, Panda, Resources
To play my part in Blog Action Day, albeit a little late, I’d like to put across some energy saving tips. And as it turns out - money saving tips too. Win, win if ever I saw it.
- Mobile phone chargers - plug them out when you’re not using them. I was interested to learn that these pesky (but very important) gadgets can use up to 20% of the energy they would use when in use.
- Switch your lights off when you leave the room! Now I have been told by several people that it takes more energy to switch off a light than to leave it on… But I’d go for switching them off
- Getting energy efficient light bulbs is also a good idea.
- Now, I love a nice cup of tea (as much, if not more than the next person) but only boil as much as I need. Boiling a full kettle when you only need 1 cup is wasting energy (I’m not going to go into one of my water-wasting rants, as being from Ireland - where it rains what seems like all the time, I tend to get funny looks and the straight jackets come out… But I think that we should conserve water where possible!)
- And here’s my favourite energy saving tip - don’t drive on a short journey, get on your bike. Rain or shine, it’s great to cycle to work. (Once you have a decent rain jacket with a toggled hood and rain proof trousers, it doesn’t really matter if it rains.) There is also the added advantage of whizzing by frustrated drivers and getting where you need to go in no time. (Yes, I’m that smug cyclist who infuriates you so much that you drive as close to the kerb as possible to foil my lovely cycle. I may or may not be the angry cyclist who *accidentally* kicks your car when you pull out in front of me without checking what’s going on!)
And here are some handy links that I’ve accumulated during my research for Blog Action Day:
Power of one - energy efficiency for Ireland
Water is precious, let’s conserve it (it seems I’m not the only Irish person worried about water conservation!)
Race Against Waste (read what Cable Girl had to say on the topic on her Blog Action Day post)
Dublin Tranportation Office Walk & Cycle planner (this is a great resource, but they seem to forget some contraflow bicycle lanes sometimes, but overall it’s great)
And brilliantly, here are some great iniatiatives put forward by the Irish government to encourage us to be more environmentally friendly:
Plastic bag tax (yes, now we all bring our own!)
Electronic waste recycling charge, this is fantastic, I bought a new washing machine a couple of months ago and the company that I bought my new one from took away my old one and recycled it. Yay!