my thoughts on the planet this week

You can buy a wonderful gadget from your local maplin or hardware store called a PLUG IN ELECTRICITY COST AND USAGE CALCULATOR which measures the amount of electricity used for every electrical item and appliance in your home. From this little machine, you can work out how much electricity is being used per hour, as well as work out the costs, using your latest bill from your electricity provider, you can calculate the kilo watts per hour and how much this equated to in terms of money. Of course, you will need to take the time out to check each item, but as we have discovered, this is well worthwhile, with the quarterley electric bill well in the hundreds, concern was growing as to what was possibly munching up all the electric?, was it the freeview, the tv set, the oven or my mobile phone charger etc.

Well shockingly, we dicovered that an old lamp consumes as much electricity as my laptop. One lamp! one bulb! so you all know you should definately get an energy efficient light bulb for sure now, as it will save energy as well as the money in your pocket. I write these little reports as such, as really emphasising on the comparables in order to highlight exactly how being greener can also save you money, not just the planet.

 It’s such a shame that some people are so lazy not to do any recycling and so on, and unfortunately the ones with this attitude are a very hard breed to alter thier opinion (much to my annoyance). So maybe the fact that money can be saved, would in fact interest all, not just those already doing their bit for the environment and the planets future, our future and so on.

Once we have monitored all the items, I will post a list of the most consuming electrical items, for those of you trying to save some money on your electricity bill, I highly recommend doing this little exercise, as it will in fact highlight all the things that you maybe should be doing to help the planet as well as your pocket.

Yes, this is about Milk, Sainsbury’s recently started stocking a wonderful thing called a JUG-IT. Replacing conventional plastic bottles with a recyclable plastic bag. They have been launched in selected stores, and for those of you who have seen them but have not purchased one, do. The jug itself comes with a handle attachment, and two pouring spouts. You have to assemble the jug with these parts which is quite simple and instructions are included. If you really get stuck, you can always go to the jug-it website and watch the instructions clip. (Link to JUG IT in the blogroll to your right, with more information, and oh yes, that instructions video)

With 75% less packaging than that of a standard 2 pint milk bottle, less resources are used, and it also reduces the amountof waste in your household rubbish.

The bags that the milk comes in are also recyclable, made from a low density plastic, and requires less space for transportation to the recyling plant, all round a briliant idea and with great impact on resources used from start to finish.

 Helping reduce the amount that goes to land fill, these milk bags and re-usable jugs are a great contribution to going greener.