Eco Friendly House And Garden

Why Not Make Even More Out Of Your Eco Friendly House And Garden This Year?

Rather than just living in your house as normal - why not consider a few of these ways to no only improve the eco friendly qualities of your home - but to make it work for you too.

I mean, why should a house just sit there doing nothing? Make it more useful than it already is by making some small changes or concessions….

Here are a few ideas for you to consider with regards to ’sharing’ your home with others for the benefit of others - as well as your bank balance in some cases!

Empty Rooms Are A Waste:
Even if you turn of all heating and seal up all windows - an empty room is a waste of resources!

It’s already in a home filled with energy and bodies - so why leave rooms empty when you could make them work for a living and keep the worlds ‘footprints’ smaller - after all, the more people living in the same house can save on so many levels!

If you aren’t into a full time tenant and live in a busy town or city, why not consider a Monday-to-Friday tenant instead. No huge commitment, less belongings and they are usually a reliable adult too!

Or the other end of the extreme - if your house is too big for you but you don’t want to downsize for whatever reason, then why not eco renovate and create a self contained unit in the basement or whatever and rent this out as as a permanent let or holiday home depending on your location.

Hotel Rooms Even More So:
Why not treat your home as a swap for a hotel room - either as a holiday for yourself or while you are away.

Firstly, you could take a holiday swap this year instead of booking a hotel. let a family move into your home while you go live in theirs! Not everyone is looking for an equal swap either - you might get a cute cottage for your family home, or a spacious farmhouse for your city flat!

Secondly, if you live near a local attraction or event (like Wimbledon or a show ground) then why not time your holidays to coincide with a huge demand for lettings! Signing up with an agency could bring you up to £2000 a week depending on your home and the event you are close to!

Parking Spot Or Tennis Court?
Same goes for the outside of your home - why not rent out unused space to others at virtually no cost to you or really any effort either!

If you have land that people could park on and you live in a busy location - why not let someone park there? You aren’t using it - and they probably waste time and petrol every morning looking for a spot!

And the same goes for your tennis court, trampoline, pool, piano, climbing frame or anything else you have sitting around that you aren’t using 24 hours a day. You might not want to charge your closest friends - but a few quid for a game of tennis for some young kids or keep-fit oldies won’t go amiss - basically paying for it’s own maintenance.

Your Skills Too:
It’s not just physical things that can help out others and bring in a few extra pounds - what about your own skills?

Music lessons, language lessons, discussion groups, Body Shop parties and product research groups. All could use your skills and your lounge, conservatory or kitchen - and of course - you!

Or if you are on a country walk or in a cute village, why not sell cakes and tea or garden veg and flowers in your front garden for passers-by!

House In The Country

Get Your Home On TV!
If you live in a city, your home has a great garden, great views or great architecture, or you have some great internal features - you could ‘model’ your home!

Let a photo or TV agency know about it and you could rent your house and garden out for magazines, TV or even movies!

You don’t even have to do anything, they set it all up and then take it all away again - pain free and you won’t be in any of the shots - unless you want to be!

Should you use normal plastic loads of times - or biodegradable plastic just the once?

There have been many recent developments in the plastic industry and the most controversial is the biodegradable versions that we had all waited so long for!

However, there are some unforeseen problems with these new versions - and it is a difficult eco friendly choice between them and ‘normal’ plastics.

See the 2 examples below of the 2 ways in which these plastic can be more eco friendly:

1) Buy a product in a normal plastic bottle and either re-use it forever or recycle it again and again, or;

2) Buy a product in a biodegradable plastic bottle (either HBP or OBP) that contains ingredients that will speed up its bio-degradation or turn it into compost when you dispose of it.

The 2 don’t mix!  It has to be 1 or the other!

What Does Biodegradable Mean?
If you first consider the word ‘biodegradable’ in its general meaning - it is any product (solid or liquid) that will break down naturally into environmentally safe and virtually natural products that can be used by living organisms in around 6 months.

However, there is no legal definition in terms of products in the stores - so anything claiming to be ‘biodegradable’ could be just that - or could be nothing of the sort; even if it has green pattern all over it and a picture of some wildlife on it!

So, what these biodegradable plastics are trying to do is to be better than existing plastics.  They claim that they will break down into less harmful and polluting particles relatively quickly compared to standard plastics, and so will have less of a detrimental effect on wildlife in the long term.

Don’t forget that existing plastics will also break down naturally (in the sense that if you leave a carrier bag part buried in your garden - it will eventually fall apart) but the plastic doesn’t actually disappear, it will just be in ever smaller parts.

Why Biodegradable Plastic Then?
Well, there has been an awful lot of bad press for plastic lately - what with sea turtles swallowing carrier bags and albatross feeding bits of plastic to their young - not to mention the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch that people were looking for a way to make plastic bottles, containers and other products get a lot smaller a lot quicker.

By making a plastic that breaks down as soon as possible means that whole bottles and bags won’t be found floating in the sea killing birds and turtles any more!

Washed Up Plastic Waste

You still need to be aware of the way the products break down though to be most effective - for example the 2 types of biodegradable plastic currently available as HBP (hydro-biodegradable plastic) and OBP (oxy-biodegradable plastic).

And as their name suggests; one needs water to break down quickly and the other needs air - so bury these in bin bags in land fill sites won’t really make either of them disappear any quicker than normal plastics - but imagine they were litter in the countryside or rubbish floating in the Atlantic.

It’s a whole different story then!  They would soon disappear making our wild areas cleaner and safer for living things!

What’s The Problem Then?
We have discussed that biodegradable plastics must be the best for the environment then - as they don’t stay in the environment for ever and ever as whole plastic products - they break down fast into less harmful particles!  Right?

Well, it’s not so clear cut as you can’t recycle them. 

Adding either HBP’s or OBP’s to recycled plastic can actually be more harmful than good - as these new plastics are designed to break down - so they can actually render a recycled plastic product virtually useless in just a few months!  And many councils are actually trying to get them banned as a result!

We all know that there is only a reason to make a product if it is financially viable - so reducing the need for plastic recycling could cause an end to recycled products!

And if the biodegradable products are meant to break down - then we are actually creating a market for more and more plastic to be created.  Rather than re-use your old toiletries bottles and food containers again and again - you would have to keep buying new ones instead!

So, is the new plastic actually any more eco friendly than the old?

Not only will a working smoke alarm save your your life - it will save natural materials!

Imagine the total and utter devastation of a burned-out home.  Imagine all your possessions - gone!

Now think about the tiny little battery that could help prevent that - and all you need to do is press the little ‘TEST’ button every week or so to prevent this waste.

Now let’s not even think about the really personal possessions that will be lost - let’s just think about the rest as well: the sofa, the curtains, kitchen units, beds, wardrobes, carpets, tables, electrical goods, pictures, toys, and everything else you adorn your home - and your life - with.

All gone.

photo credit: Timitrius

Now, think about all those materials that have been needlessly wasted - and which now need to be replaced,  Possibly even your entire house itself is destroyed completely - and maybe even parts of a neighbouring home too.

Yes, if you are insured, the financial costs of replacing it all will be low - but that isn’t what eco friendly living is all about, is it? 

Why Bother Then?
And, I’m not trying to say here that these material things are more important than human lives - but it is yet another reason to check (or buy) a decent smoke alarm for your home!

And yes, I am well aware that a smoke alarm might not be able to save everything in your home - but it gives you the chance to save most of it.

It is really time that we started to value our possessions as more longer term investments., rather than just acting like they are ‘fashion accesories’ that can be replaced whenever we want.

Value Isn’t Always In Money!
We need to start valuing our homes and their contents as though they are as valuable as the natural resources we are plundering to make them.  Your curtains could be made from materials that were grown in a hillside farm in Asia, your table from a forest in South America and your electrical goods from a mine in Africa.

You wouldn’t be so quick to replace them if you could see where they came from, the things that were done to retrieve them and all the natural materials used to get them to you in the first place.

Furniture and the like should be valued at their entire cost - from source to your home - not just their financial cost from the store.

I bet a table made by your grandfather and given to you for nothing would be far more valuable to you than a table you paid £1000 for from a store!  Even though someone elses family has made it for you instead!

We need to start thinking about everything as more valuable these days - and you can start by checking your smoke alarm!

photo credit: comedy_nose

If you live in what is called a ‘hard water’ area, you may consider changing to ’soft’.

Now it’s not like you can change the bedrock of your house, so it would mean fitting a water softener to your existing water pipes to make the change.

But why would you go to that trouble and expense if you didn’t really have to - I mean the water still runs like normal, is clean to drink and washes dishes etc?

But there is a massive difference between the 2 types of water - and the soft water option can help you to live a more eco-friendly life.

How Can It Really?
Well, hard water contains magnesium and calcium that it picks up from the rocks on it’s path from falling as rain until it reaches your tap.  And these minerals can cause some serious damage to your plumbing and smaller white goods in the kitchen - not to mention your boiler and washing machine!

This build up of minerals in the water is then transferred into your pipes as it sits there waiting to be used - and can reduce the amount of water getting into an appliance, and cause permanent damage to the pipes as well.  Replacing either is a squeeze on natural resources and a costly exercise to boot!

And, with the capacity for water flow reduced, this can sometimes cause the appliance or boiler to have to work harder to keep the same level of function - or use more energy but give a poorer performance!

Soft water doesn’t contain any of these minerals, so leaves your pipes clean and working at their best!

How Can I Tell The Difference?
It isn’t immediately obvious which water you have got based on watching your boiler or feeling your clean clothes - but just using the water from your tap will show which water you have.

These minerals show themselves in water residue in the form of ‘lime scale’, so if you have a white patchy deposit on your shower head, grey residue left on your glass shower curtain, blobs of white ‘chalky’ stuff in your kettle, the list goes on…..

Sound familiar?

Now think of all the chemicals, cloths, scourers and time you have to spend keeping your bathroom and kitchen clean - then think of all that chemical waste!

And, think about washing your hair, hands and body.  Washing in soft water creates a lather more readily using less toiletries - and gives a more thorough clean.  People say that washing in soft water makes their skin feel better and hair look shinier!

How Big Is A Water Softener?
They will easily fit under your kitchen sink in smaller flats, or anywhere in a larger home - even a garage will do.

Basically it works on the main water pipes going in to your home or offices and changes the composition of your water before it enters your home.

Most water softeners are easily fitted and will pay for themselves within around 5 years due to the better efficiency of your heating and hot water systems, as well as in the reduced reliance of cleaning chemicals and toiletries!

And your appliances will last longer and stay efficient throughout that lifespan - and don’t worry about your appliances if you have been using hard water - as the softened water running through will eventually clear all the existing limescale!

So, taking the minerals out of your water could save you a lot of time and money.

If you had a smaller oven tray - would you waste less food?

Today’s society seems to be very much about bigger products for bigger value - and for many products - bigger also equals more eco friendly, for example a larger bottle of shampoo means less packaging than 2 smaller bottles and is usually cheaper as well.

However, there are certain things that we do that a bigger just for the sake of being bigger - and this normally involves food.

Super-Size Me!
There has recently been a growing trend in ordering the largest amount of food possible in restaurants just because you can.  You tell yourself that it is ‘just a little bit more’ so it is worth it.

Well, it’s not.

Have you ever wondered how these chicken breasts or beef burgers can be so cheap?  Well, there is a reason for it - and it’s not nice. 

Large food retailers (chain restaurants, popular take-aways and large superstores) have demanded that the meat for their meals be cheaper - and to make things cheaper, you have to make more.  One quote was that large chicken factories have machines that need to process 8000 birds every hour just to make enough meat to sell at the low prices we are used to.

Around 2 million chickens are ‘processed’ every week by one of the largest factories in the US - just to break even - and that is just one.  Imagine how many chickens are ‘processed’ a week in the whole US?  Or the whole World?

Down-Size Me!
It is a hard thing to think about the minimum you could eat to be satisfied - or in the rising number of people ‘full’.  You always think ‘it would be a waste of money to buy the smaller size and finish it when for just a few pence more I could get a lot more’.  And that’s what retailers want you to think.

They have to produce so much food to keep the prices down that they are forever trying to sell you more of what you already eat to still make money.  And we fall for it every time!

Buy 1, Get 1 Free, 20% extra, 3 for the price of 2.  They are all doing the same thing - they are making the retailers money - not saving us money.

How much stuff do you buy that you don’t eat, or that goes out of date before you get the chance?  Loads.  The stats are terrible.  But they make us buy it because it’s ‘cheap’.

Well, I think you need to change you tactics - and fight back!

First Steps:
Plan your meals - by knowing what you are going to cook and eat on certain days means that there won’t be time for food to go out of date as you have planned to eat it in due time.  Buying too much food sometimes makes you unable to choose the most short-dated ingredients. 

Busy lifestyles also make us eat whatever is ‘quickest’ to prepare rather than what we should be eating - all this leads to waste.  We end up replacing the fast-food over and over again, leaving the healthy foods to sit and rot!

Don’t be lured in by special offers - they are only really there so the store doesn’t lose money.  If the store gets a great deal on 10 million of product A, then they have to sell it - so down goes the price and you buy it.  They win!

Start buying enough to be satisfied rather than full - It’s all too easy to cook to much, then try to cram it all in leaving you ready to pop!  But you don’t want to waste money and larger meals are cheaper per serving, arent’ they?

Well, only if you eat them!  So why not prepare a meal for 4 people to use bulk ingredients, but plan to divide up equally and freeze the remaining portions for another meal time.

Buy Smaller Utensils - if you only had a small oven tray, then you wouldn’t be tempted to cook more than you needed - and you would save power on your cooking as they were smaller. 

Also, rather than cooking parts of your meal at different times or all over the kitchen, why not use smaller pans and fit them all in the oven at the same time.  That way, nothing has to share trays - so the meat juices don’t ruin the potatoes!

And less to wash up - which is always good news!

Choosing The Right Font For Your Printing & Help Save The Planet!

Well, I’m not saying that this new invention will drastically reduce levels of methane in the atmosphere, nor will it clean up the oceans and help coral to re-grow - but it will make a difference to your contribution to other environmental issues haunting us today.

It will save ink - lots of it.

What Is This Great Idea?
Basically it’s a typeface - like Verdana or Tahoma - that has got holes in it!

It’s called EcoFont, and at normal printing sizes (size 10 for example) it looks just like every other mainstream font. Perfect for printing your emails or on-line receipts.

You can’t see the holes in the letters until you make the font larger - for example up to size 32, but for normal use you won’t really notice them. So you can carry on as normal.

Apparently the Dutch company that invented this EcoFont are called Spranq, and they say that this will save a fifth of the ink used in similar fonts - that is a lot of ink for personal uses.

And let’s be honest, there isn’t a lot of personal printing that needs to be in perfect font, apart from the odd letter to the bank or a job application. The rest of the stuff you print won’t do any harm if it’s a bit ‘holey’ will it?

What Can You use It For?
Well, you can download the font free from ecofont.eu and get a good look at it and see what size you are happiest with - or whether the holes at the larger sizes even bother you that much anyway.

And it can only be used for printing drafts of homework and things at the last minute anyway. I mean, you can write you essays or reports in your preferred fonts and sizes, and only when you want to print the draft can you highlight the whole thing and change the font to EcoFont before printing.

After you have printed you can hightlight it all again and return it to your nice fancy font for the final report. That way it doesn’t have to be your ‘new font’ for ever - it can be your new printing font!

And why would the kids mind if their things were printed in a font with microscopic holes in it anyway?

Think of the money saved in ink-cartridges and the reduced pressure on natural resources by using a fifth less ink than you currently do!

Add this to other eco-office inventions such as the Eco Printing Software and recycled paper and you could be eco friendly and money-saving at the same time!

Several continuous small steps are better than one big single one.

I have put together some simple steps in the ‘beauty & fashion’ department that can help you make a move over to more environmentally friendly products without too much hassle.  And it can be a bit of fun too.

Many people are worried about which brand of this they should chose or what brand of that is better - but really the answer is to change bits of your lifestyle not just swap one thing for another.

It is always easiest to Reduce - this is the key to sustainable and eco friendly living.  Reuse comes a close second and of course never forget to Recycle - but focus on the life cycle of the items you are buying or thinking of buying and follow it from production, through use and then to disposal.

This brings me to the first fashion tip:

1) Stop Shopping!  The greenest products and clothes are those items you already have.  They have already been made - and it’s up to you to use them or recycle them.

If you decide to become ‘green’ overnight and go and buy something ‘organic’ or ‘bio-degradable’ instead - you are wasting all the energy, transport and ingredients that have gone into the one you already have, but are going to leave on the shelf.  Wasted.

We need to Reduce our consumption, so make sure that you keep wearing all your old clothes, use the last of that old shampoo or bubble bath, and don’t throw something away because you want something new.  Or, try Tip 2:

2) Have A Swap Party. There are many people like you who grow tired of the same shoes/top/beauty products/etc - so why not give them to your friends in exchange for something they ‘don’t want’.

You could come away with a whole new outfit, and change of facial regime or some household ingredients that your friends would otherwise have wasted.  Similarly, your ‘waste’ finds a second life!

3) Simplify Your Life.  Another things to consider when going to purchase a new item, is whether you actually need it right now.  I mean, rather than buying some nutritional supplements - why not actually consider eating more healthily instead!  Buying fresh local fruit and veg produces far less waste that factory-made tablets in tiny plastic bottles!

Similarly, technology out-dates itself overnight it seems - so rather than make that rash purchase - think about ways you can make do with what you have until you really have to upgrade.  Otherwise, you could be disposing of something that was perfectly usable for something that will be out-of-date in 3 months anyway!

And, most technology and appliances come ‘eco friendly’ these days.  With low energy rating listings and reduced-chemical electronics readily available and at a similar cost to the short-use energy-hungry models we brought last time!

4) Back To Basics.  Why do we need everything so perfumed and highly specific these days?  Can’t we just use unscented nappy-sacks, hygiene products and ‘exotic’ air-fresheners?  Use natural instead: tea-tree oil, lavender, along with other plants and herbs all have their uses - and without the chemicals!

Try Aloe for sun care, oats for facial scrubs, cucumber slices for eye recovery - and many many more.  I have seen quotes that ladies apply, on average, 126 ingredients and chemicals in daily beauty regimes!  That’s amazing really - and seeing as so many of those are potentially harmful to us.

Babies are particularly sensitive to chemicals yet we use an array of man-made (and potentially hormone-affecting) toiletries for them without any real reason - other than ‘we saw the advert’ and it said ‘this does this…..’.  Well warm water and an organic cotton cloth cleans even the dirtiest of bottoms!

See Part 2 tomorrow for further eco friendly tips…….

An Easy Way To Stop Wasting Money At Home…..

I have always been the person nagging others at home or in the office to check what they print before they print it.  The number of times they churn off 3 or 4 pages of just a tiny line or a few words rather than having taken the time to check their ‘print preview’ before taking action.

Even an information sheet a friend got from her local hospital one time had just 2 lines of information on the second sheet!  It was headed and footered (if that’s a word) with all the important pre-printed Hospital details as well!  What a complete waste of money from our health services!  Why on earth someone couldn’t have checked this before printing off a batch I don’t know. 

They many only have needed to delete a few non-important words from the introduction or joined one short papragraph onto the end of a neighboring short paragraph and the paper, money and energy saved would no doubt be amazing!  What if every hospital didn’t do this for all their every-day information sheets?  Its no wonder there is always a waiting list at the hospitals here - they are wasting goodness knows how much on headed paper and the staples holding empty sheets of paper together!!!

Anyway, no matter how hard I tried when printing spreadsheets and documents, I still had great trouble with the Internet.  How many times the information went off the sheet at the non-existent right margin!  The number of sheets of paper printing off just the website address and page 12 of 13 on them was unstoppable!  I needed help.

Sure enough, after some searching, I found a free piece of software that could help me out here!  This fantastic ‘i can’t believe someone hasn’t thought of it sooner’ software is sure to amaze you and also save you a fortune - and the planet!!!

Does It Really Make A Difference?
When I first visited the site earlier this year, I noticed that they had a count-up facility, that monitored how their software was saving printed pages of waste and how much that was in terms of carbon emissions.  It said then that they had saved around 4.5 million pieces of paper (thats just under 500 trees by their calculations) and just over 3 million lbs of C02 saved in energy and inks printing the useless things!

Since then (about 8 weeks), their calculators are showing that they have saved another 100 trees, and stopped a further 500,000 lbs of C02 being spat out from factories to print our blank pages!

Obviously this calculation is only based on the people that have downloaded the software, but maybe something like this should become standard for businesses, like hospitals, so that waste is severely reduced.  The example of the information above is frightening that with just a few minutes of better preparation the costs of printing could be halved - and staples would stay in their boxes!

Of course, you can save printed waste without this software by using ‘page preview’ every-time and cutting and pasting information from websites onto your preferred written software (reducing the font size and editing the information down to save ink and pages), but this is free and easy to use.

What Does It Do?
It helps you to highlight and remove unwanted pages that are going to print from the pages you have selected allowing you control over what it prints and what it deletes.  It also allows you to create PDF’s with one click to avoid the mess that usually prints from a web-page.

Their GreenPrint World Edition always self-deletes the wasted pages at the end of most article itself.  You know - the ones with just the URL, banner ads and legal disclaimer on them that you no doubt have to then shred or recycle having served no purpose at all - except increases your overheads!

For fun (or serious if it’s your own business), it also allows you to keep a track of what you have printed since installing the software and how much paper you have saved!

It’s not like you will be missing anything important - just saving time, money and resources.

Green Print software is compatible with Windows 2000, XP and Vista (32 bit only). And it’s free to anyone.

They are aiming to save over 100 million trees and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 300 million tonnes (and while I have been writing this they have saved another tree!!!).  They also offer great deals on recycled office supplies!

You don’t need money to make the world go around according to the millions of LETS schemes being implemented and successfully run around the world!

These rapidly growing Local Exchange Trading Schemes basically allow people and communities to become more people focused and sustainable - lowering the need for external services and supplies, and reducing the amount of ‘old’ products thrown out and new products purchased.

What Do LETS Do?
The whole system is set up on the basis that everyone works for nothing - there is no money involved. You do things for credits.

Now these credits can be called anything you want in your community - whether it’s Acorns, Gooseberries or Gribbets - and they are all worth the same. You only get ‘paid’ whatever others think you are worth in your community and many skills are equal.

For example if you were a secretary and did an hours work, it would be equal to a solicitor working for an hour. If you made a piece of furniture for someone, it may well be equal to someone mowing you lawn.

Each scheme has it’s own moderated credit system and all the members decide what should be worth what. Your credits are stored up for your services and then you can spend them by using the services of others.

That way, if you offer to babysit for someone for 7 Groats, you can then call on someone else to help you put up your shed for that same amount. The idea is that people can get things done by local people without having to spend money.

How are they helpful?
The way that LETS come into their own are where people have a skill that they can share. If a person is not currently working for whatever reason, they can still offer that skill to others without the hassle of having to be employed or having to draw up contracts.

It also means that people can practice and improve their current skills without having to be employed by a larger company. So a part time photographer can put their skills to use without leaving their current job in the towns supermarket. Or a retired person can still offer their advice as a lawyer or soliciter in exchange for heavy gardening or a dog sitter while they take a holiday.

It’s also great for those with niche skills who can get to practice their trade and get their services recognised without having the drag of finding formal employees or a retail premises.

They also offer a great service as it is not a direct swap - you are not offering something to the person you get your service from - so the person who’s flat you are cleaning isn’t the one who has to give you something back - you pick and choose the services you want to receive.

Why not see if there is one in your area - and give it a go?

I’m not a fashion follower and I don’t buy the latest models of everything the minute it changes, but I am planning on buying myself a new laptop.

My current laptop is getting rather tired, and I know that buying new technology can be a waste of resources but I am in a dilemma. I have been using the same piece of equipment for several years now, it is very slow and sometimes doesn’t start up at all! It’s also getting a bit tricky to keep on top of things as often as I’d like.

I don’t want to buy a PC as I don’t really have room for the whole unit and I want flexibility to use it wherever I am - also a PC uses more energy than a laptop AND laptops are designed to run cooler so no need for the great big energy-sapping fans found in desktops.

To send and receive emails, write new articles and research projects and everything else - I need access to the Internet and my current laptop is a bit behind the times. It doesn’t have WiFi, so to become ‘connected’ outside of my home, I would need to buy a 3G stick to replace the cable to my broadband server.

If I use someone elses laptop or PC (and security is not an issue - which it usually is) I already need to use a flash drive (USB stick) to transfer the data back onto mine. My laptop is now so old that it won’t run at all unless it is plugged into the mains, so I am really in the laptop ‘dark ages’.

And working online is always going to require certain technologies and securities, so it’s not like I just want a laptop to mess about on occasionally or to show off to my friends - it is part of my life.

So, What Are My Options?
A) Change the way my life is going and try to live a technology-reduced life. This would result in a complete turn-around for my laptop needs (so I wouldn’t rely on the Internet for day to day things) and the old one will be fine.  Although I might aim for this in the future, I’m not really in a position to do so now.

B) Stick with what I have and just put up with everything taking longer and hope that it doesn’t break down and lose all my important data. This means I will need to buy other smaller additions to make up for it’s age and to keep up with the times! However, if I buy upgrades and other USB attachments and it ’stops working in the next 6 months or so - then I will have to buy another old one (see C), or a new one anyway - and have to sell all the now unnecessary attachments!

C) Buy a reconditioned laptop and hope that it has been completely cleared so no sensitive data or damaging viruses are on it. Also without really knowing how much better than mine it is and for how long it will last is this even a very good option?

D) Buy a brand new netpad - a tiny laptop that only runs programs that I use. It comes with guarantee from the manufacturer that they will recycle it when I no longer need it, removing all the toxic materials before disposal and they will reuse any parts they can. Obviously that won’t be anytime soon, but at least the manufacturers now-a-days have to be more responsible!

So, Where Am I?
I’ve been checking out the options for new laptops, and here are some of the things I will be looking out for:

Efficient Running:
I need the technology to determine when my laptop needs to use less energy. Ideally as a result of this, it will adjust the flow into the machine saving my battery and extending it’s running time and reducing my drain on my electricity supply.

Many machines lose energy as heat when being used and this new technology (already in some laptops) claims to make them more than 96% power efficient.

Reduced Chemicals:
There are many hazardous chemicals currently used in laptop technology. Many companies claims to have removed up to 37 hazardous chemicals - including both lead and mercury - from their products. The current WEEE directives only ask for 6 to be removed.

This step would also make sure that discarded computers would pollute less. And of course that their factories are free of these chemicals too - perfect for retaining the health and safety of their employees!

Eco Friendly:
Ideally the company and their suppliers are sticking to green methods as well. I need to know that the long list of components and added ‘ingredients’ used for new technologies and equipment is not harming others along the way to their finished products. Also that foreign companies are not exploiting the environment or the communities that they rely on for raw materials.

Recycling:
I would like to be reassured that manufacturers are designing their products with their dismantling in mind, so that the components can be reused, recycled or discarded individually (rather than the whole lot just being thrown away).

I have also heard of several companies including Asus who have already collected over 5500 unwanted pc’s from their customers and have been reusing the parts where possible and reclaiming the precious metals and technology from machines that cannot be repaired.

They also claim to have donated over 1000 usable computers to local schools in disadvantaged communities as part of their ‘recycling’ package.

The Results:
I know that shoppers need to talk with their money, so I intend to do just that. If I make sure that I buy from a company that is heading in the best direction - this is not just true for laptops and other technologies, but for kitchen appliances, food, clothes and cars to name a few - then I know I am part of the change.

The more people like us that support the efforts of those companies that are trying to make a difference - the more of an impact they can make. If other companies start to see their designs out-sold by such ‘eco-friendly’ companies - they may well start to be more responsible too and clean their own acts up.

If we keep buying products because of the brand rather than the good they do, we can never expect any changes to take place.

So do your bit next time you buy!