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Nice carbon calculator, if you can find it
The government is doing its best to come up with tools we can use to learn about our effect on the environment, and hopefully minimise it. Back in June, DEFRA launched a great carbon calculator for the home. In mid-July it followed up with an entertaining environmental game.
The low-carbon home that just isn’t green enough
It’s bad news for the owners of the Roundhouse, known as one of the UK’s ‘greenest’ homes. Despite its rather dainty carbon footprint, it’s set to be demolished - apparently because it’s not of “positive environmental benefit”.
Repairing and preventing floods
After our earlier post on the June and July flooding, we found this useful advice booklet on the Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters’ website.
No butts
They say make hay while the sun shines, but there hasn’t been much of it about this summer. Last winter’s wettest five months since 1914 had already guaranteed that there wouldn’t be a repeat of last summer’s hosepipe ban.
High speed hybrids
No-one could accuse Porsche’s cars of being sluggish, but they don’t fare so well when considered for their environmental impact. The company’s most efficient model, the Cayman, manages to produce 222g of carbon dioxide for every kilometre. Don’t even ask about the four-wheel drive Cayenne.
Heat turns on patio fires
Patio heaters have sprung up outside pubs and in back gardens like flame-toting toadstools in recent years. But in an increasingly energy-conscious society, they’re a conspicuously inefficient way to burn fossil fuels.
Mass exodus
If you’ve ever got oily fingers from a car made before 1985, you’ll remember how much free space there used to be inside the average bonnet. These days, though, power steering, anti-lock braking and all the other things we expect from a modern car make sure that there’s precious little room to wield a screwdriver
Offsets get the green light
Alongside the reformation of the Spice Girls, the idea that we can pay a little extra to make up for our pollution is one of this year’s most contentious issues. Now the government has weighed in, simultaneously supporting the concept of carbon offsetting while having strong things to say about the current provision.
Pooled resources
It’s not all bad news for alcohol when it comes to saving the planet. One Somerset town has got together with a local brewer to come up with a novel way of heating its open air swimming pool.
Does corn make for a flaky biofuel?
Of all the current biofuels, corn-derived ethanol seems to be the most popular in America, and the most hotly debated.
