Recent Comments

1. Stop Taking Plastic Bags From Shops - 30 Sep 2005

   I was shocked into working much harder on this when I once tried to buy two lemons (and nothing else) and the checkout assistant needed to be told three times that no, I didn’t need a bag.

   Using cloth bags also has the distinct advantage of their being much easier to carry for those of us who don’t use a car when shopping.

2. See An Inconvenient Truth. - 11 Sep 2006

   I was pleasantly surprised by the film. Given that it’s effectively just Al Gore lecturing for 90 minutes it’s surprisingly engaging.

   Of course it also adds to the cries of “where was this Al Gore during the 2000 election?”

3. Not Going Green Fast Enough - 13 May 2008

   Since moving to London last summer I’d kept putting off cycling to work for a whole host of reasons. A couple of weeks ago I finally got round to trying it and am totally hooked.

   For the first few days I was sorry to lose the time to read that the bus journey allowed, but I’ve quickly realised that by saving 30-60 minutes on my journey each day and generally having more energy it’s easy enough to fit that reading in at other points in the day.

   Plus I see so much more of the local life as I zip past on the bike rather than squashed into a tiny seat on the top deck of the bus with the other commuters. It’s quite a treat.

4. Compost Your Leftovers - 13 May 2008

   In the US we never got round to doing our own composting, but were lucky to have some friends around the corner who were more organised about it. Each week we’d wander round with a bag of decomposing materials to throw onto their pile. It often turned into a chance to stop and chat.

   Now, back in the UK, we’re lucky enough to have a local council who handle the composting for us. In an area where few of us have gardens, that’s a bit of a godsend.

5. 'Waste Not, Want Not' - 13 May 2008

   We tend to find that if we plan our meals we can often predict what there will be leftovers of, or make more than the recipe calls for in order to use up the entirety of something and then have that meal over two days.

   Some of that planning comes from necessity - when we don’t plan we rarely make good use of our organic box delivery - but it also tends to reduce stress as we know what needs to be done, and when.

6. Yellow and Grey - The New Green - 13 May 2008

   It’s amazing what a difference can come just from making things visible. I just overheard a conversation where someone was telling of how he asked at a conference how many people in various companies knew which department paid the electricity bills. Very few did, we’ve all just externalised that, along with lots of other costs financial or physical.

   How much difference would it make if individual departments had to pick up the tab more directly and sometimes choose between their preferred priorities and till-then-invisible infrastructure?

7. Relieve The Postie - Get Your Bills Online Instead - 22 May 2008

   I have a similar filing urge. When we were in the US our bank and credit card company offered our statements as PDFs and emailed us each month when they were ready. Having a distinct file to put in a folder on my computer worked for me.

   Here our bank just have a rather poorly designed web page to replace a statement and that’s not nearly so helpful, pushing me back towards paper statements. I guess I could make my own PDFs quite easily, but I haven’t yet made the effort. Maybe soon!

8. Can You Be A Generous Reader ? - 30 Jun 2008

   We’ve used the site http://bookmooch.com quite a bit. It lets you build lists of books you’d like to read (you can import a wishlist from amazon, or add the books individually), and those you would be willing to give away.

   Members’ lists are then matched up and you receive points for those books you give which can then be exchanged for other peoples’ books.

   It worked particularly well for us when we were moving and so had a lot of books to give away, but seems to also work on a more casual scale.

9. Calculate your carbon footprint - 07 Jul 2008

   Mine’s improved a lot since the last time I checked. We now live in the UK rather than the US, don’t own a car, and have moved from a detached house to a flat. But it’s still far too high!

   One problem I had filling this out was that all our utility bills are handled by the landlords, we don’t have outdoor space to dry things (but we rack dry them where we can) and I don’t know much about the structure of the building. We’re hoping to move to our own place soon so it’s a helpful reminder of the things to look out for, and hopefully we’ll be able to bring that footprint down a lot further…

10. Calculate your carbon footprint - 07 Jul 2008

    As an addendum: there are of course quite a few measures missing from this, many of which Generous has looked at, like where food comes from, shopping, recycling, etc.

11. Will Home-Brewed Hydrogen Save the World? - 10 Jul 2008

    According to the documentary Who Killed The Electric Car, there’s more to it than the lack of refuelling stations. Hydrogen is pretty explosive and so making it stable can get pretty tricky. Hydrogen, like ethanol, sounds good in a political speech but that means (again according to the documentary makers, I haven’t had time to do the research for myself) that the funding tends to go to those projects to the exclusion of other approaches that could yield results more quickly.

    The documentary is well worth a look—if any knows of a thorough fact checking of it I’d love to see it!

12. Calculate your carbon footprint - 10 Jul 2008

    clairegillies – according to the document klstewart linked to from Operation Noah, the national average is about 9.5 tonnes. I’ve not seen a breakdown of that, so I’m not sure how they’ve calculated it. Hopefully they’ll publish more of the reasoning soon…

13. How To be A Good Capitalist - 10 Jul 2008

    Really glad to hear about the green data centre. I’ve only recently come to realise just how much power is consumed in data centres and so how much can be saved through relatively small percentage reductions.

    For those who are interested in such things, I’d recommend taking a look at the Greenmonk blog which is partly run by a guy who works in the next office over from me. They’re doing a lot of work with big IT companies to help them improve their environmental impact and it makes for interesting reading.

14. Tesco To The Rescue - 24 Sep 2008

    Does anyone know if Tesco are employing their own staff to do this, or partnering with existing local firms?

    We just moved into a new house and the Energy Saving Trust advised us to talk to Southern Electric (our current energy provider, not got round to switching to Ebico/Good Energy yet).

    They offered us a better deal than Tesco, and partner with local firms to do the installation which feels like a better way to tie in with another Generous action

15. Keep The Warmth In Your House - 19 Nov 2008

    We moved into our house in September, with very mixed feelings about the very poor “energy report” it has received. On the one hand it means heating it is going to be very expensive for a while, but on the other it’s a chance to make sure it gets sorted.

    Our loft insulation was installed today. It took a while to get it organised because of the way our energy company’s subsidies work, but it was relatively cheap and very easy. Next we’re going to seal up any drafts we can find, and hopefully by next autumn there’ll be subsidies for double-glazing…

16. Use 'real' nappies - 08 Dec 2008

    Our little one’s too small so far (5lb 3oz) for any of the reusable nappies we have ready (a very timely loan from friends—another great aspect of ‘real’ nappies), so we’re on disposables for the time being but as soon as she gains a little weight we’re looking forward to making the switch very soon.

17. Fowl Play - 23 Jan 2009

    Shortly after seeing this I stumbled across this nice “how-to” article on keeping chickens. I’m not sure our garden’s quite appropriate, but for anyone who’s considering it…

    http://neilojwilliams.net/missioncreep/2009/how-to-keep-hens-and-influence-people/