What did YOU do to save the planet today?

Like many of you in blog land, we here at the (almost)car-less family, are trying to do out bit for the planet.
Now unlike some eco-warriors (or worriers for the less go getting people out there)I don't believe the answer is to give up all our possessions and go live in a mud hut in the woods.
For a start the woods would end up awful crowded and most people would get pretty fed up pretty quickly of washing their clothes in the babbling brook, especially if there are ten other families lined up behind them waiting THEIR turn.

No. I think Pandora's box has not only been opened, but tipped upside down and shook till its hinges rattled.
Lets face it. We like our fridges and tumble driers. our stereos and computers, our washing machines and dishwashers.
They may not be essentials in a live or die way, but they DO make life a hell of a lot easier, especially for the elderly and infirm, the busy mother or the avid volunteer, people who have a desire or indeed NEED for these time saving options.

Technology is making these appliances greener all the time and new gadgets, like the Solar monkey, mean that you can charge your small goods for free.

Inroads are being made into greener energy and I personally feel that so long as scientists are funded and encouraged to come up with these carbon neutral ideas, we will have a chance of living on earth for a little longer than we have in thought in the last few years.

But none of these statements means I feel its ok to sit on your laurels and wait for the magic button to appear.
At the moment we have a duty to do all we can within our household to cut back on carbon.

Re-cycling, turning appliances off instead of leaving them on standby, using lower settings on central heating, these have been drummed into us so much that they are now almost second nature.

So how can we think outside the box?

Our own plan would ideally see us coming off grid. Providing our own energy requirements in a sustainable way.
At the moment this isn't practical.
I have my doubts as to how much energy we would get out of solar panels living here in Scotland. As we approach the shortest day it is already dark by 4pm most nights and the sun doesn't come up until nearly 8am.
Wind power seems like a good idea, we do get plenty of wind, but living at the base of a mountain with hills surrounding us means that the flow of wind over the blades of a propeller would be too erratic to work well.

Without being able to throw money at projects that are likely to yield little we have to find ways of reducing our carbon with the tools we have.

One of our long term projects is the renovation of the flimsy 1960's extension on our house. (this picture is not our house *sigh*)

It has a leaky flat roof and amazingly thin walls. The plan is to try and replace the roof with a turf one, thereby insulating to a much higher degree and encouraging more bees and other insects by scattering wild flower seeds up there.
Our solution to the cold walls is to add an external glass corridor. By using reclaimed double glazing units we can encase the outside of the extension in glass like a wrap around conservatory. This means that not only will we get heat from the sun (the extension is roughly south facing) to warm the house but that we will also have extra green house space to grow early plants in!
We shall probably add vents in the walls to use it like a trombe wall, allowing warm air to enter and then push cold air out.

But this is a long term thing. We still have a few windows to re-claim form places like freecycle, not to mention finding roofing sheets and timber.
In the meantime I am doing my best to keep electricity to a minimum.

My two main contributions today have been...

Versatile heating.
By having the log burner lit this morning I have managed to a) Heat the house (via open doors, we have no other heating) b) heat the hot water and c) Cook all our meals. My aim is to cook as many meals on the log burner as possible when it is lit so that I can save using the electric cooker. Seriously though, the log burner cooks stuff much better, although, obviously, I can't bake on it. SO for the price of one appliance running (ie stuffing the fire with wood) I have the use of three.

Bath time washing.
We have 3 kids...no, we have 3 BOYS.
Boys=mud=lots of washing.
Recently I have started saving washing for after someone has had a bath (shared water of course ;)).
After the bath has been vacated, I tip the dirty clothes into the bath water and then hoick up my trouser legs and stamp on it all for a good five minutes like a grape crusher.

Then I leave the clothes in over night to soak.
In the morning I pick out enough clothes to go in the washing machine, if they are dark or only lightly soiled I put them on a cool rinse and spin cycle rather than a wash. If they are light or dirtier I put them on the 30 minutes quick wash at 30oC. This saves a heap in time, water heated (by electricity)and laundry liquid.
The main point is its the SOAKING that gets your clothes clean, a quick rinse and spin is all most need, not even a real wash cycle. The soaking shifts the dirt and the rinse and spin get rid of it!

So that's us at the moment.
Saving the planets one wash cycle at a time.

take a moment to leave a comment and let us know what YOU did to save the planet today!