First Green Day

Oh, we are off to a spectacularly BAD start!!! Only one day has passed and my green colour is rather dull looking.


At breakfast time I really fancied some nice rolls - it was Saturday after all, so decided to quickly pop round to Sainsbury's. Despite the fact that the shop is less than a 10 minutes walk away I still jumped in the car! Even worse it wasn't until I stopped the engine in the car park that it dawned on me that this was a very bad transport choice for a short journey. Oh, the shame. Which then only grew bigger when I got to the check out and realised I had forgotten to bring my own shopping bag... To top it all off, on the way back the current government radio ad about a quarter of all car journeys being less than 2 miles and a burden to the environment played from the speakers, and frankly made my ears burn!



So I spent much of the day evaluating all my actions and realised that not only is there big room for small improvements, but to be truly green is going to demand quite an effort...



I see a few stumbling blocks along my way. Big ones like how do I use my car less, especially in this country of constant rain; and smaller ones like how do I get my 2 year old to understand that switching all bedside lamps on in the house is bad, even if he is very proud he has figured out how to do it.



I am also realising that the whole effort and money thing is even more complicated than I first thought. We are having a BBQ next Saturday (God knows what possessed me to think the weather would be dry at the end of August in Scotland!), and we were in the garden trying to make it look decent. While cutting the grass with the Flymo, I realised that using an electric lawn mover is probably not the best green solution, but changing it wouldn't be easy. First of all changing it for a muscle powered one would cost money - of which we have none. Secondly trying to convince my husband that the green project extends to chores like cutting the grass and we should therefore make lawn moving harder for ourselves, could be a very tricky job.

I proceeded to attempt a quick stock take of the situation, in the hope of finding some good news. So on the good side:
All our appliances are A rated, we did take this into consideration when buying them for the new house
We have managed to change 2/3 of the lighting to energy saving versions. (The last third is a bit more difficult, the previous owners of this house had a love for halogen spot lights, and combined with some funny fittings it will take both effort and money to get them changed).
I have a compost converter. This was one of my first investments for the new garden and thanks to the Waste Aware Scotland project I only paid £10 for it, the rest is subsidised by the Scottish Government - fantastic deal. (www.recyclenow.com)
The washing powder and the majority of the cleaning products in the cupboard have a green eco label on them, which is good, but I have a sneaky suspicion that I am soon going to realise that there is an even greener option...
We are quite efficient at sorting our refuse and making sure it gets reused or recycled, but we probably still need to work on minimising the amount of waste in the first place.
We try our best to switch lights off and not leave anything on stand by.
We have a laptop rather than a PC, not just for convenience but also because they are far more energy efficient.

In general nothing spectacular. On the other hand the list of things still to improve is exceptionally long, far to long to mention- my green credentials are quickly fading. A bit more effort is needed!