Cristiano on Tech/Life

A couple of things recently got me thinking about how green I’m living and mainly how green others are living. I don’t feel like I’m polluting as much as some others do, but without any real comparison it’s fairly hard to determine, right? So I decided to start my own “tagging meme”.

The idea is to write about the ways (I currently picked 5, but you could pick less or more) you think you purposely handle things “the green way”, and then write about the things you know you should handle better. Then after than we can tag others to do the same and that way we can get a nice idea of how green we all are. In the process we might even learn some small tips and tricks on how to improve ourselves.

So here it goes. My good points:

1. I don’t have a car – I think this is probably my major green point. I used to have a student travel card in The Netherlands, so I never felt the need to get a drivers license. Now that I live in London, having a car is plain idiotic with the congestion charge and heavy traffic and all. I sometimes drive along as a passenger with others, but I don’t think that that’s a real issue as I think it might count as carpooling.
   
2. I carbon offset my flights - As I don’t have a car, the only way to get from London to The Netherlands is by plane or bus. Starting this year I’ve decided to carbon offset my flights, which I think will help the environment in it’s own special way.
3. I buy long-lasting milk – I believe London’s ex-mayor Ken Livingston had the idea to subsidize long-lasting milk because of it’s low impact on the environment. Long-lasting milk doesn’t have to be constantly cooled before it ends up in your fridge, and these days it doesn’t even taste much different than normal milk. Secretly though, I actually just buy it because the milk at the CostCutter downstairs goes bad way to quick.
4. All the lights in my home are energy saving lights – except for a few of the ones my housemates use. When we moved in here all lights were energy devouring 60Watt lights. I replaced almost all with 8 and 11Watt lights. Saved us about 6x the energy costs on lighting.
5. I bought an environmentally friendly toothbrush – This is probably the oddest thing, but a few weeks ago I was looking for a new toothbrush when I found the Recycline toothbrush. I’m not sure these days how good recycling exactly is (with recycling often also using energy) but it seems like a great initiative. The Recycline guys sell even more stuff besides toothbrushes so be sure to take a look at their site.

And now for my bad points:

1. I quite regularly leave equipment on while I’m away – And I’m not just talking about my Mac Mini which is always on (I should put it in sleep mode more often) but also the TV, TFT, and lights in general. It is such a bad habit and I hate it. I think I should get one of those car-alarm-devices that start beeping when you leave the lights on, but then for my house.
   
2. I leave chargers in the wall while they are trickle charging - Trickle charging can use shitloads of energy, but still we almost all leave our mobile phones charging at 100%. I actually don’t blame myself but think that we need to push the mobile phone companies to make better, auto-off-switching, chargers. I actually read an article a few days ago about initiatives to make the electrical wiring in a house more “intelligent” to solve these issues.
3. I sometimes watch TV while working on my workstation at the same time - As a 21st century media junkie I tend to do too much things at the same time. Mainly watching something I’ve already seen on TV while working on my Macbook. Damn you Five and your Scrubs reruns!
4. I don’t use solar panels – Although probably none of you do, I think most of us should use them. I think that for example especially my mobile phone, and my camera batteries could be well charged by solar energy. Does anyone know what the current state is in energy efficiency of mobile solar panels? It would be a waste to buy a solar panel that used more energy to produce than it will ever generate.
5. I throw batteries in the normal trash – Another bad habit. I don’t know why I do it, but every time I have a dead AAA, I realize I still don’t have a bin for chemical waste, so “this time” I allow myself to throw it with the normal trash. Obviously I still don’t have a decent chemical waste bin.

So those are my good and bad points. Now I want to see yours. I am tagging Melinda, Simon, Alper, Ian, and Martijn to do their version. Good luck.