A-Z no waste - starts here

Nicola & Pete plus daughters Lola, now 9 and Nell, now 7, spent last year exploring Britain in a carbon-light manner. Our spring 2008 challenge is to give up waste from 24 March to 24 April. Most posts are by Nicola (as it was her silly idea). This is how it’s going:

The two promises I made for 2008 - to do something about climate change every day and to drink English wine - are transforming family life.

Firstly I've got better at locating English wine, but in the process have realised it's a lot easier to find (and a lot cheaper to drink) English lagers and beer. Blame the bloke in the picture as he delivered six bottles of Eco Warrior at the same time as a case of Sedlescombe wine (from Sussex). Luckily I'm begining to really like this Kent-flavoured beer...

As for the other biggie, tackling climate change. Well, I realise you can try and buy your way out of the problem (as I am doing by installing solar panels to heat our water). But another way is to rethink how you live. I thought our family was pretty good at keeping our carbon footprint low but we always have stuff in the rubbish bin (mostly plastic wrappers from magazines and food); we haven't yet cracked recharging batteries and we fill two recycling bins with paper and bottles most weeks. In other words we are waste junkies.

So the family challenge - starting 24 March - is to give up waste. For Lola and Nell that means no sweets with wrappers (buying from a jar is OK though). For Pete it means reading newspapers in the library or on line. For me it means cold turkey on the butter front - unless I can locate butter sold without its wrapper.


With a fortnight to go before our A-Z No Waste project starts gets closer I reckon I'm going to be so anxious about the threat to my daily treat rations that I'll be sourcing wine in vats, beer in barrels and sweeties by the kilo...

Spring cleaning with Freecycle

Nicola & Pete plus daughters Lola, now 9 and Nell, now 7, spent last year exploring Britain in a carbon-light manner. Our spring 2008 challenge is to give up waste from 24 March to 24 April. Most posts are by Nicola (as it was her silly idea). This is how it’s going:

Recently we've had to find ways to squeeze more boxes and books (see heap in the pic edited by me) into our house which has forced me to do a bit of spring cleaning. I feel just as Mole in Wind in the Willows found - spring cleaning is fun until you can find something better to do. And that's where Freecycle comes in, a whole on line community that are willing to take all sorts of stuff from unwanted fish tanks to a bag of scrap material. We've used it to find pots, paint, plants etc but like it best for the ability to find a new home for objects we love but are on the transfer list.

In a few weeks time our family is going to try and give up waste for a month, but even without this as an incentive, Freecycle is the best way I know of making sure unwanted things don't end up as landfill where they remain for 100s of years (or more). Better still people come to your door to collect rather than you having to make one of those day-shrinking journeys to the municipal recycling centre/dump.

Solar, so good

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 7, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 travelling around Britain. Now we’re home, but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

That rash promise I made to myself to do something to tackle climate change every day is making me work far too hard. Sometimes all I have to do is organise - the pic is of Howard Johns from http://www.southernsolar.co.uk/ visiting to see if our roof has enough room (and at the right angle) for solar panels. Today I did the work - possibly because I’ve only had to do an hour’s teaching, which gave me time to organize the important life stuff. As a result I’ve managed to get a promise of a grant from the Energy Saving Trust, see http://www.lowcarbonbuildings.org.uk/ for £400 towards the installation of solar hot water panels on our roof. In fact anyone can claim up to £2,500 towards the installation of a maximum of three different low carbon technologies until the end of March 2009.

The total cost for swanky solar thermal panels is more than £4,000 but Islington is offering a £2,100 grant as well which makes the bean counting that much easier. Cross fingers these clever tubes will be gracing our roof by the end of April just as the days get long enough to really heat our water up.

Thinking solar is the first techy thing that we’ve done.

Until now we’ve just focused on energy saving by adding insulation to our loft, double glazing windows, draft proofing everywhere and adding temperature controls to each radiator. These improvements have cost about £8,000. Upgrading windows is expensive so it’s taken us four years to be able to afford a nearly complete set of sash windows for our house (an no, it's not that big!). I try to console myself that people often pay this sort of money for a new kitchen (and some like MPs upgrading the kitchens in their second homes can budget £10,ooo).

We spent our money on saving energy but the result is that we’ve got a much more comfy, draft free home to live in. And then I head off to work to pay for it…

Hippo at the printers

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 traveling around Britain. Now we’re home, but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

This is the face of a man (left) who's finally sent his corrected book proofs of There's a Hippo in my Cistern: one man's misadventures on the eco-frontline off to the printer. Now there's the long wait until 2 June 2008 when it comes out. I reckon he's done a Feverpitch for the eco generation. If Pete's funny book gets a lot of readers then Pete May could do more for climate change than most of us ever can.

Here's a summary of the book (lifted from the back cover):

WHY IS THERE A HIPPO IN PETE MAY'S CISTERN, YOU MIGHT ASK.

Back in the nineties, Pete May was busy watching football and drinking beer. He was quite happy surrounding himself with countless pizza boxes, beer cans and other environmentally unfriendly consumer stuff. Then along came Nicola - an environmental activist intent on saving rainforests. Pete, surprised to find himself drawn to someone so far removed from his planet-killing laddish lifestyle, began to wonder whether two people so different could really fall for each other?

Would Pete ever change his ways and sign up to the green lifestyle of composting loos, chicken rearing, energy saving and general self-sufficiency? Would he ever get to grips with devices called Hippos that he found himself dunking in his cistern to save water when flushing?

This is the charming and funny true-life tale of one man's struggle to grapple with the good life. GO GREEN and get the girl.

Using a storm kettle

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 traveling around Britain. Now we’re home, but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

Inspired by our oven and hob breaking (a boring detail which was easily mended once the loose plug wires were coaxed back into place) we had a weekend breakfast in the garden. Porridge was cooked on the emergency gas ring which is a very sobering way to see how greedy for energy the hob can be. But our new storm kettle (see flaming pic on the left), a really useful xmas present for Pete, proved to be star. It was easy to light and boiled fast even though we only fed it with bits of unwanted weekend supplements and some green twigs.

The oven's all fixed now, but I think we might try boiling up a brew again - not least because it gives us some crisis cooking practice while our hens enjoy some supervised exercise in the garden.

Horses in the high street

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 traveling around Britain. Now we’re home, but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

I've found a simple way to entertain myself - and the kids. Walk around London talking to the statues. This Elisabeth Frink bronze horse in Piccadilly gave us all the sort of energy boost that a packet of sweets can provide. Not all Frink's sculptures offer such free enjoyment though. Next trip we plan to hunt down all the statues in Charlie Fletcher's clever kids' story, Stoneheart, many of which can be seen using the Number 4 bus through the City.

Cutting our carbon footprint

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 traveling around Britain. Now we’re home, but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is the first of 2008 and it is from Nicola.

My new year promise is putting me under some pressure.

Easy as it will be "to do something positive about tackling climate change every day and explain/share these actions with others in a non-hectoring way”, when I am back at work three days a week for Friends of the Earth later on in January, what do I do on the other days? More specifically how can Pete and I go out on a date and still be doing some climate good?

Visiting London’s first eco restaurant, Acorn House – currently Observer Restaurant of the Year (newcomer) – seemed to be the answer. It’s a newish eatery near King’s Cross which The Times food critic reckons is “the most important restaurant to open in London in the past 200 years.” That’s because it keeps a light carbon footprint, sources all food from the nearest farmers/growers (not quite inside the M25 but nearly) and trains 10 new eco restaurateurs a year who look set to go on and set up their own environmentally aware kitchens serving sustainably sourced produce and recycling as much kitchen waste as possible.

The two of us spent a heinous amount of money on lunch (#82!) but we ate three courses each and definitely were a bit greedy drinking the Bacchus Chapel Down white from Kent. For foodies the dishes were celeriac, chestnut and horseradish soup followed by a pumpkin tartine and a cheddar cheese board (for me). Pete had the same but went for the ginger sponge as pudding.

I tried to get the staff to show they loved veg by quizzing them about where the celeriac came from etc. Their answers lacked the specificness of farmers’ markets, “England?”, but at least it was localish.

Best of all Pete and I were able to enjoy a hot lunch date at the most eco venue in the big smoke. Thank goodness I’ve managed to live up to my new year pledge today, all I've got to do now is dream up something for the weekend…