Hello again! As promised in the last edition of Have
Your Say, the Green SCENE column is reporting back on the suggestions you sent
in for living a greener, cheaper, less wasteful lifestyle.
Mrs Stella Abbott suggested some of the following ideas for
saving money and resources. (Thanks Stella – a prize worth £20 is
on its way)
For general cleaning – vinegar is great for lots of jobs.
A mixture of vinegar and water works well for removing stains on suede and leather
clothing or footwear, and a dish of vinegar left on a high shelf will help to
get rid of tobacco smells! Try vinegar diluted with water (1/4 cup to 4 litres
of water) to clean baths and tiles, or equal parts white vinegar mixed with
warm water to clean glass and windows – dry with soft dry cloth and avoid
doing in bright sunshine.
For cleaning metals, moistening a cloth with neat vinegar
can clean stainless steel or chrome. Lime deposits on aluminium can be removed
by boiling in equal parts white vinegar and water. To clean old metals, try
using brown sauce – really!
While this may seem a little odd when we have so many fancy
purpose-made cleaning products, there are lots of good reasons to use more simple
and natural products. There are health risks involved with using man made chemical
cleaners, they are far more expensive, and their production and distribution
involves the use of lots of energy.
Which brings us round to the focus of this article –
energy. So, what’s the big fuss about energy? You might ask. Well, all
of the energy we use, be it electricity, petrol, diesel, gas or oil, has an
effect on the health of people and planet. For the sake of this article, we’ll
look at just electricity. 70% of the UK’s electricity is generated by power
stations burning fossil fuels like coal, oil or gas – 27% by nuclear power,
and only 3% comes from cleaner and renewable sources like wind farms or hydroelectric
schemes. (DTI figures 2002)
Burning fossil fuels leads to many problems: emissions of
sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, benzene and other cancer
linked chemicals, and dusts. These emissions have a serious effect on people’s
health, in particular those with asthma, lung disease or heart conditions. As
well as damaging forests, soils and crops, lakes and streams through acid rain,
and eroding buildings.
However, perhaps the biggest problem is that of global warming
or climate change. A huge group of scientists have now agreed that the traditional
ways we produce and use energy are changing the climate and weather of the world.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main gas that is causing this climate change, and
it is released into the atmosphere mainly by burning fossil fuels. So, every
time we put the kettle on, start the car, or even buy a product, we are responsible
for adding a bit more CO2 to the atmosphere.
No one person is to blame for this, but we must all start
to think more about how we consume energy and goods and services also. The goods
and services bit might seem a bit odd, but think about it. Go into a supermarket
and look at some of the products there – apples from New Zealand, out of
season strawberries, beef from Brazil, most of it inside plastic packaging.
All these items will have used a huge amount of energy before they even reach
your table – in their production, processing, transport and packaging.
We all have to travel, buy goods and services and consume
energy, so the question is, are we thinking about how we do this, and trying
to reduce unnecessary consumption and energy use?
To live a bit cleaner and greener, a bit of thought is necessary
to get into the habit of using less energy – which brings us back to vinegar!
Why drive to the shop to buy a expensive chemical cleaning product, made partly
from oil drilled from under the North Sea, and transported great distances,
when you can use a cheap natural product that you probably have in your home
already, costs little, poses no threat to your health and tastes great on your
chips too! Use less energy, spend less money, have a healthier, better quality
of life, and leave a better world for all our futures.
If you don’t fancy cleaning things with vinegar, and
have access to the Internet, you might consider these brilliant websites instead:
www.greenenergy.uk.com
www.organicfood.co.uk
www.co2.org
www.greenchoices.org
If any readers would like to send top tips or advice for cheaper,
cleaner, greener living, another £20 prize awaits the best suggestions.
Please also send any thoughts or questions you might have about community or
environmental matters, to Matt at the magazine address. Looking forward to hearing
from you!
