How to live off-grid

Got sent a review copy of "How to live off-grid" by Nick Rosen.


Apparently he is an award winning journalist and documentary maker, for PBS Frontlineand Channel 4 Dispatches amongst others.

This is a new concept to me, living "off-grid" but I guess it may be something we all could do well to find out more about. With the credit crunch, building a yurt in a forest maybe the only option for some of us!

"Off-Grid" means living without mains water and power, sewage and a landline. If you are cut off from the mains you have no choice but to conserve power and water as much as you can, and perhaps, as Nick Rosen would say, makes you more in harmony with nature.

The book charts his journey around Britain in a camper van meeting people who live outside the system and off the grid, i.e. not on mains water and not on the national grid for electricity.

For more information about living off-grid, you can go to Nick Rosen's site.


Read this book whilst waiting for my daughter to be born last month, and it was interesting, challenging and informative. Made the hours of waiting and worrying a lot more bearable.


The style annoyed me a bit at first as it was part travel log, part off-grid guidebook but I soon warmed to it. In some ways, it was like a conversation, rather like a blog, and because of this, it did bring some of the characters and experiences Nick Rosen had a bit more to life.


The UK certainly has some eccentric and some inspirational people around, as well as some con-merchants cashing in on the green thing.


Worth a mention is Nigel Lowthrop, who on leaving the RAF, bought Hill Holt Wood , moved his family there and created a social enterprise with a sustainable income from the wood that involves the whole community and helps disadvataged children. Politicians are taking an interest in learning from and replicating such pioneers and schemes, which must be a good thing.


I am not sure I will rush to buy an old bus off eBay, off-grid it with solar panels etc and fill the tank with old chip fat and drive my family into the wilds of the UK.

Can't afford it for a start and all the energy saving measures I would like to install at home are just beyond us financially because the technology is so expensive still in the UK.

Not only that, trying build a house in the middle of no where off-grid seems like too much hassle to navigate the labyrinthine planning regulations and application process.

If you are rich, you can probably find a way through quite easily. That said, the book has some innovative, brave and driven people, like Mr Lowthrop and family, who make a success of it.

Good luck to them and I would heartily recommend this book as an enjoyable window on the world of living off-grid.

Energy Wasting Day on 1st April

In the true spirit of impartiality and balance, you might want to support today's Energy Wasting Day?



Dan Power is promoting the unnecessary use of energy and suggests that you:

• Leave the lights on when you leave the room
• Fill your kettle to the brim
• Turn up your thermostat to the max
• Wash at 90 degrees for the ultimate clean

It's easy to waste energy and find out some top tips from Dan Power on YouTube.

Make your town climate-friendly with the Greenpeace EfficienCity

Greenpeace has just launched a natty 3D interactive virtual city called "EfficienCity".

Its aim is to show how we in the UK can fight climate change, although it is being blogged about all over the world like at the excellent EcoGeek site.

It is a fantastic resource with a huge amount of information on the different options available to us, from saving energy to generation from renewable sources.

The way it is presented and the large amount of photographs, videos, and technical presentations make it a brilliant educational resource for individual citizens, schools, and the workplace.

You can even download the whole thing to run it offline with a PC version (51.5MB) and a Mac version (53.6MB).

You can take it further than just learning and you are invited to join Greenpeace's campaign to put pressure on you local council to find out what they are doing about climate change and securing a sustainable energy for the future. You can encourage your council to work with experts in Greenpeace to increase access to decentralised energy generation.

Whatever your views on Greenpeace, this is an excellent educational resource about the options we have to respond to climate change. Tell as many people as you can about it.

More on a UK Ban for Patio Heaters

There is a good review of the debate on patio heaters on the Mygreenweek site.

Although this opens the debate more on the potential energy inefficiency and harm caused by patio heaters, suggesting it is not so clear cut, I would urge people to consider the fact that it is not just CO2 and water vapour that is emitted, they also give out other harmful, unfiltered by byproducts and gases, as pointed out by Leo Hickman of The Guardian newspaper.

We know that B&Q will stop selling patio heaters when its current stock is sold. Wyevale were the first when they announced they would stop selling these back in April 2007.

In the UK, there is increasing support for a total ban on these heaters with various campaigns, perhaps led most prominently by Friends of the Earth. I came across this plain speaking one called Patio Heaters are Evil. Definitely worth looking at if you are considering buying one of these things.

You can read the full details of the EU's Energy Efficiency Motion in its full proposal, which includes the proposed withdrawal from sale of patio heaters.

It is obvious that this is going to be most strongly opposed by the pub and catering trade who have had to deal with the smoking ban introuduced last summer in the UK. I have seen figures that suggest it could cost the pub and the catering industry £250 million per year in lost trade.

Maybe if we ban smoking completely as well then we can have the double benefit of improving human health and reducing the gases that cause climate change? ;-)

EU debates patio heater ban

The EU will debate a ban on patio heaters tomorrow. It seems a bit mad for us all to be encouraged to save energy and produce less greenhouse gases, only for these things to be allowed to heat up the night sky outside pubs. bars and restaurants. Fingers crossed that the EU can take the lead on this and vote to ban these devices of doom.

Cheap Dimmable Energy Saving Light Bulbs at B&Q

Went to a B&Q on the inner ring road in Norwich as I'm doing some decorating.

Spotted that this B&Q was selling off the switch dimmable version of the DigiLux Dimmable Energy Saving Bulb.

At £6.98, you won't get a better deal and I'm guessing that this deal will be nationwide.

The 20W bulb is equivalent to 100W.

If you don't fancy replacing light switches with low voltage dimmer switches to try out the dimmable version of these bulbs, then the switch dimmable version may be the answer for you.

You switch the light on and off in various sequences to dim the light and apparently it has a memory for the last setting and can easily be reset.

Plastic bag tax - sign the petition

Plastic bags are useful and are a menace to the environment.

If we use them then we should pay for this.

Apparently in Britain, we use an average of 300 plastic bags every year. Each bag lasts up to 400 years, spending the vast majority of that time in a landfill site or strewn across the British countryside.

Other countries have been more active and successful at sorting out this problem.

In Ireland, a tax of 15cents per bag resulted in a 90% drop in plastic bag usage, and raised 3.5 million Euros which was spent on environmental projects. Bangladesh has banned polythene bags altogether while Taiwan and Singapore are taking steps to discourage their use.

Paying for what has been free and has caused us to be wasteful and thoughtless might start a change for the better.

Paying 10p or so for any plastic bag might encourgae us to start reusing them, use longer lasting bags, boxes or non-plastic bags.

If you think that it is time to pay the price for our wasteful, thoughtless use of plastic bags then sign this petition at Green England.

If you can go out and spend some time gathering signatures, a document version of the petition is available here.

They have hit the 10,000 signature target and it is still rising!

In the "Light Garden" with Greenpeace

Came across this video that gives some insight into what is now possible with energy saving lighting, and shows a fun, artistic way in which the myths about CFL bulbs can now be dispelled.

This lighting installation, the "Light Garden" was commissioned by Greenpeace and designed by the Jason Bruges Studio and made the shortlist for the "most innovative lighting"category at the 100% Design Show in London in September.

Varilight bulbs were used in the work.



For more info on this project, go to this link on the Greenpeace site.

Dimmable Energy Saving Light Bulbs Are Here!

I've been waiting for some bright spark in the UK to start producing with energy saving light bulbs that work with standard dimmers and at last, someone has!

It is the DigiFlux Dimmable and comes in 2 varieties and are equivalent to 100W bulbs. Screw and bayonet fittings are available.

The company that manufactures these is Varilight.

One works with a standard dimmer switch so long as it can cope with a minimum load of 20W (as pictured), and the other works with a normal light switch, which you flick on and off to control the clever electronics in the bulbs.

I bought one from Nigel's Eco Store and it cost me £10.95. The bulb that works with a standard switch is slightly more expensive (I think a couple of quid more) and I guess that is because of the extra electronics in the bulb.

The bulb works brilliantly and the light is really good. It warms up quickly as well.

The slight niggle is that the bulb hums a bit and it is noticeable.

Small price to pay though for reducing my electricity bill and producing less CO2!

In addition, my dimmer switch may need replacing to cope with the low loading on it and Varilight supply compatible ones so I'll investigate.

These bulbs are excellent and highly recommended.

Great to see that the company has won a Queen's Award for Enterprise: Innovation. Well deserved.

Killing time, not the planet, and save a few quid!

If you haven't read it, do try to buy or borrow a copy of "The Rough Guide To Ethical Living" by Duncan Clark from the library.

Some good discussions, facts and thought provoking ideas about how to change your life for the better.


Here's a simple idea and change we have made at home.

We have a wall mounted clock in our kitchen/diner and yet we have one on the microwave as well.

After reading this book, what a pointless waste of time, electricity, natural resources and money.

This clock used to be on permanently and that amounts to about £7 per year, as in this standby state, you still use about 98% of the power required when it is used for cooking.

Apparently, this amounts to an approximate saving of 29kg CO2 from switching off.

We forget sometimes but for the past year, we usually switch off the microwave after use.

In our house, this £7 extra will get spent and probably on the mortgage repayments! ;-)

Vote 'No' to VAT on energy efficient products!

The consumer electronics retailer Maplin Electronics have launched a National Solar Week (June 18th-24th) and set up an online petition to remove VAT on energy efficient products.

Help to make energy efficient products more affordable in the UK and sign the petition now via this link!

Pedlars of pointless power usage and Star Trek doors…

Has anyone else noticed that you can be walking past a shop, nowhere near the entrance and the doors slide or are flung open in true Star Trek style?

I was on my way back to work today after a lunch break and was at least a couple of metres away from a DVD/Video hire shop and the doors whizzed open.

It was cold, wet and I had no intention of going into the shop.

It must be annoying, if not at times, a health and safety issue, for those poor souls working in these shops that get a blast from the elements outside by people just passing by. Not only that, how much wasted heat goes out of the door and is wasted pointlessly opening the doors?

Access to some shops must be a nightmare for those of us with disabilities. In a trivial sense, whenever I take my lad out and am using the buggy, we are basically barred from going into some shops as the stock is so crammed in as to make it impossible to move around.

Automatic doors are brilliant. What isn’t so good is the way they get set up.

People complain about the neighbour’s security light sensor being positioned badly and switching on too frequently. Maybe we should do the same about automatic doors on shops?

My workplace has a great solution. There is a large button that is positioned at the correct height for people using wheelchairs that can be pressed to activate the automatic doors. Otherwise, we can open the doors by pushing them.

Maybe we have become too lazy by using lifts and not stairs, and forgetting that we can actually open doors by pushing or pulling the handles?

If shops had optional rather than compulsory automatic doors, or positioned the sensors closer to the door entrance, then maybe there would be less energy wasted and they would save on their electricity bills?

The Times did speak some time ago about just how bizarre this situation can become with shop doors being kept open throughout the working day, and air conditioning or heating being on in the shop. Surely this is mad and no one can afford to do this anymore in terms of energy costs and carbon emissions?

Photography and environmental footprints - how big are yours?

If you are interested in photography, have any Pentax kit, and are interested in green issues, you might have come across this excellent Pentax blog called OK1000.

I am keen on digital photography and have an old 3Meg Canon Powershot A70 and some Pentax SLR gear, including my prized ME Super that my father-in-law kindly gave me some years back.

It is easy to assume that going digital would mean that a consumer's impacts on the environment would reduce and would therefore be a good thing. No more chemicals in the dark room etc.

The scale of the pollution and harm linked to the manufacture of film has been highlighted on Leo Hickman's blog, with Kodak being the focus. Thankfully, their switch to digital has demonstrated a massive reduction in the amount of pollution they generate.

Digital has not done away with coated paper usage though. The cameras themselves with their LCD screens and funky features eat battery power. With all those digital images taken, there is an increased demand for more storage online or on huge hard disks. The manipulation of images demand higher spec power-hungry PCs or MACs. Then there are the costs and impacts associated with home, online or high street printing services. The solid-state memory cards are a product from the semi-conductor industry, itself making use of highly toxic chemicals.

Digital photo frames sold in their thousands last Christmas - they use electricity and all these digital gadgets can cause harm in their production and improper disposal.

One things is clear. The marketeers try to convince that we must have the latest, digital whizzy megapixel-beast or our photographs will be pants.

Why?

I'm still using my 3 megapixel Canon A70 and Pentax SLR gear and to be honest, a new camera would distract me from getting used to the equipment I have and practicising to improve my photography skills. Sure, I would like a digital SLR (so long as I can still use my existing Pentax lenses with it) but I would not chuck out the kit I have now. There is always eBay, Freecycle, or charity shops where you can recycle your unwanted stuff.

I'm not sure that digital has a smaller environment footprint than than traditional photography but it is clear that consumer behaviour can make things better.

It isn't all doom and gloom and I would urge all digital photographers to read this excellent post OK1000 Pentax Blog: Considering Green Digital Photography.