Green guilt - 8 January 2008

Posted by Paul Collins No comments

I am a bad person. I have no wind turbine, no solar panels, my car runs on what was the evil of four-star petrol, and I buy fruit that is out of season in the UK and is flown thousands of miles to the supermarket just because I prefer to have blueberries with my breakfast. There are even occasions when I leave a room and don’t switch off the light. I use plastic carrier bags and never take them back to reuse at the supermarket.

I am a good person. I recycle as much as I can, going out of my way to do so, I turn down the thermostat in my house to avoid overheating, I buy as much food as I can afford to from a local farmer’s market (don’t get me started on how local food is more expensive than food grown in Argentina…). My car is old so I haven’t polluted the atmosphere with the production of a new model, and it does around fifty miles per gallon of fuel. I am also careful to use it only when there is a ‘need’ – I walk to the station every morning.

So where do I stand? The plain fact is that we could all do more to help to protect our environment, and the very least we must do is to be conscious of where we can make a difference. At the same time, there are occasions when I feel that I am somehow letting down the planet by not having the latest ground loop geothermal heating system to keep my concrete-free bio-house cosy and warm.

On top of the practicalities of doing this, there are simple economic reasons that make going green a difficult leap to make for the vast majority of us that are on some form of budget for home improvements. Some months ago, I was idly looking into the possibility of getting a wind turbine to have renewable electricity piped into my house. A rough calculation was that the apparatus itself would pay for itself in around seven years. Reading the bumpf that came with the wind generator, I was concerned to see that the gearbox would likely need to be replaced in around eight years.

There is no doubt that most people will be looking not only to add some for of energy-saving or recycling systems to their own property in the near future, and I’m sure most people buying new houses will be asking questions as to the carbon footprint of the development. In many ways this is a victory in itself, in that green issues are front-of-mind for almost all homeowners.

In the meantime, in anticipation of the days when I can afford to install all of the renewable energy sources that I want to, there are a number of things that can be done. Some of these, like saving and reusing plastic bags from supermarkets, or buying and using your own cotton alternative, are obvious and take only a little effort. Others are more of a lifestyle decision, like buying used furniture instead of brand new or rethinking the use of chemical cleaning and decorating products.

For a few ideas of things that you can do now to help the environment, click here.

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