150 000 Hot Air Balloons filled with ...

... Carbon Dioxide (CO2)

The amount of Carbon Dioxide sent into the environment by leaving lights on unnecessarily.
The equivalent to 770 000 tonnes of Co2 or £180m annually. Switch off lights when you leave the room

We all need to reduce our overall Co2 emissions by 80% to negate the effects of global warming. Energy Saving light bulbs can reduce your lighting energy consumption by up to 80%, or £12 per year (based on daily use of 4hrs per bulb). Not only will you be saving the world, saving a bucket load of cash, you will be saving the effort of having to climb a rickety step-ladder risking your life to change a bulb twice a year as your average energy saving bulb should last you a whopping 6000 hours (about 5 years for domestic use). Then you wont have to go to tesco (or any other supermarket) to buy a bulb when it blows ten times more often saving you;

petrol, your own and the transportation of the bulbs to the store,
time, which is highly precious and expensive to us, especially businesses,
money, on ten times the rate of a normal bulb, overall you should save £100 over the lifetime of the bulb and;
energy, on the production of the actual bulb, saving 10 normal bulbs being produced

"Nineteen percent of global electricity generation is taken for lighting"
Paul Waide, Senior Policy Analyst, International Energy Agency (IEA)

So how do energy saving bulb work? Traditional bulbs waste energy through heat rather than light. Energy saving bulbs work like fluorescent lights, a current passes through gas in the tube, making its coating glow brightly. This in reality means that they use less energy and are cool to the touch.

Where before they were expensive and only came in limited styles, they now are available for as low as 83p at tesco, in both screw cap and "twist and lock" (bayonet) and in a variety of shapes and sizes. And if the financial gain of £100 in savings per bulb was not enough for an outlay of 83p you will also prevent 38kg of Co2 from being emitted into the environment.

Due to the rise in the concern about mercury content in CFL bulbs I have added an article called CFL Mercury Myths

Where to Buy ...

• Tesco (from £0.83 to £2.98, plus clubcard points ... double points for a limited time)
• Energy Saving Trust (available online for £4.99 for 4 inc P&P)
• If you know of other suitable retailers of energy saving bulbs please add in the comments section

No where more is energy saving more applicable than in businesses, I was in a restaurant recently with 36 standard light bulbs, after further inquiries, these bulbs are in use 12 hours per day, every day of the year. Taking this into account that would equate to a saving of £1200 per year in electricity costs alone. Considering the average lifetime of a standard bulb, there would be a total of 250 bulb changes per year. The cost in man hours to change bulbs and the risk posed by working at heights is reduced.

April's Questions and Answers

How to calculate carbon footprint?

It would be very complicated to offer a manual calculator due to the huge variations in regional areas, carbon emissions from varying types of cars and each source saying varying amounts sometimes with a huge range.

If you still wish to go with the manual calculation here are some of the multiple factors for the calculator from sources I have looked at in the past.

Electricity - 0.43kg of Co2 / kWh (Defra 2005), if from renewables, then 0.00kg/kWh

Natural Gas - 0.19kg of Co2 / kWh

LPG - 1.49kg of Co2 / litre

Oil - 2.69kg of Co2 / litre

Coal - 2.55kg of Co2 / litre

Car Milage - You can find Co2 data for all car types at
VCA Car Fuel Data it might be best to offer 3 to 5 different types of car in varying engine ranges.

Bus - 0.073kg / mile (Department of Transport, Canada)
Train - 0.027kg / mile (Virgin Trains)
Underground - 0.070kg / mile (kingston.ac.uk)

Flights - This is not hugely accurate however you can break this down to; Short-haul (within US) 600kg of Co2, Medium-haul (transatlantic / east coast to west coast) 1300kg of Co2 or Long-haul (world wide) 3700 kg of Co2. If you want to work this on miles rather than types a factor of 0.15kg of Co2/km (Defra 2005)


You should also include a secondary carbon footprint as follows (these are UK figures);

Food and Drink - 585kg
Clothes and Shoes - 486kg
Car Manufacture - 715kg
Buildings, Furniture and Appliances - 982kg
Recreation and Services - 1,546kg
Finance and other services - 361kg
Share of Public Services - 1,276kg

Total Secondary Footprint - 5,950kg

What is the amount of water Singapore consumes in a year currently?

Using figures from the Ministy of the Environment and Water Resources, the daily requirement of water in Singapore is 1.36 billion litres per day, of which 0.72 billion litres are for domestic use. Over a year this equates to 496 billion litres total use and overall domestic use of 263 billion litres.

50% of this consumption is supplied by rainfall, with the remainder originating from imports from neighbouring Malaysia. Two contracts for water importation from Malaysia are due to end in 2011 and 2061, the two countries are engaged in a price dispute over the charges which has lead the government to implement measures to become self-sufficient in its water supply. These include conservation, building additional reservoirs and the worlds largest desalination plant.

What are some ways to make my house more eco friendly and save money?

A few ways you can save money around the home are;

Installing CFLs in your home can reduce your annual electricity bill by 14% and last 6 to 8 times longer than incandescent bulbs. They are now widely available in many styles and designs for as low as $1.50 a bulb.

Insulation, you could consider installing cavity wall insulation or roof insulation. 25 - 40% of heat is lost through the walls and 25% through the roof. Installing both will signifigantly reduce your annual heating bills and you should beable to recoup the cost within 2 to 3 years. This will save about 2-3 tonnes of Co2 per year. The cost is about $750, but grants are available.

Purchase local produce and use tap water not bottled, not only does this support the local economy it also reduces the carbon emissions from food transport, which accounts for about 19% of all emissions.

The average household wastes $76 in stand-by a year, turn your appliances off when not in use.

Reduce your heating thermostat by 1 degree can reduce your heating bills by 10% per year. Reduce your hot water tank thermostat to 50 degrees, each 5.5 degree reduces you hot water heating cost by 13%. Put a thick insulation jacket on your hot water tank (about $20), this prevents heat loss from your tank and can save about $20 a year in hot water costs.

Also check out these free energy saving tips.

Considering the mercury content of fluorescent bulbs will the disposal of these bulbs cause a bigger environmental problem than the energy consumption posed by the more common bulbs used now?

Whilst the amount of mercury used in production a CFL bulb is at most 6mg, the average mercury content is 4mg. The total emissions of mercury created by a CFL bulb from electricity consumption over its lifetime is about 2.4mg of mercury. In comparison the emissions from an incandescent light bulb is about 10mg. Therefore overall CFLs result in a slightly less amount of mercury emitted over the lifetime of a CFL bulb. The real gain is the reduction of 38kg of Co2 per CFL per year and an overall saving of 14% on your electricity bill.

To ensure the safe disposal of CFL bulbs you should return them to the retailer or to an appropriate recycling facility. Once collected the bulbs are crushed in a machine that uses negative pressure ventilation and a mercury absorbing filter allowing the mercury to be reclaimed.

In countries where recycling facilities do not exist, you should contact the manufacture who should have details of how you can safely dispose of the CFLs.


Note: It is assumed the emissions from electricity consumption is from standard electricity supply. Should renewables be used then the emissions of mercury would be 0mg (not including the production of the renewable source), however for the use of incandescent bulbs to be effective we would need to be using a high proportion of renewable energy.

PS ... you can now get CFLs with ultra-low mercury levels.

Regarding the total road humps in the UK (a) how much have they cost (b) how many tonnes CO2 have they caused?

Road / Speed humps are extremely popular the world over as an effective traffic calming measure. However there are many negatives to them;

In 2003, the chairman of the London Ambulance Service, Sigurd Reinton was reported as claiming that delay due to speed bumps was responsible for up to 500 avoidable deaths from cardiac arrest each year, however, he later denied the statement.

Research in the USA from Boulder, Colorado suggests that for every life saved by traffic calming, as many as 85 people may die because emergency vehicles are delayed.

Each speed hump slows the average fire engine by 3-4 seconds and an ambulance by 10 seconds.

The Association of British Drivers is critical of speed humps claiming Drivers are distracted by the bumps, therefore ignoring other hazards such as children.

(a) On average a road / speed hump cost from £500 to £4 850, the upper range being for the latest "smart hump" which reduce or eliminate negative effects of speed bumps such as increased noise and pollution, uneven traffic speed, and impeding emergency vehicles. Traffic tables can cost upto £10 000.

I have been unable to find a figure for the total number of speed humps, however statistics from Edinburgh Council Meeting Questions & Answers state there are 794 in Edinburgh, which has a population of 448 624, or about 1.77 per 1 000 residents. This is a lower figure as it does not include private developments. Taking the Edinburgh figure and muliplying it by the UK population of 60 609 153 this would equate to 107 269 speed humps in the UK (however this is a very unstatistical analysis of the total).

(b) Speed humps cause atmospheric pollution from the speeding up and slowing down of traffic between the humps. For example, TRL reports a 59% increase in CO, about 50% increase in HC and about 25% in CO2 from petrol catalyst vehicles averaged over all types of traffic calming measures, with even higher numbers over more "severe" measures such as speed bumps. In addition the use of bumps and cushions seems to encourage the use of larger vehicles which are more polluting.

Why should I recycle, when the government can always build a new landfill? Recycling just takes too long?

The main reason you should recycle is that it does actually save alot of energy. That in turn actually saves you money. If packaging companies have to continually use new raw materials that will mean that the price they pay for packaging will be higher than purchasing recycled material.

For example by recycling aluminium cans, it takes only 4% of the energy to recycle them than to produce them from raw materials. Saving 64,300 kWhs per tonne. Taking the US average kWh price across all states at 8.14c per kWh, this equates to a saving of $5234 per tonne of aluminium in energy costs and emissions of about 29 tonnes of Co2.

Any additional landfills that are provided by the government will increase your taxes through land purchase, construction and legal & consultancy fees.

So as you can see recycling is financially beneficial as well as environmentally friendly.



If you have any Questions please feel free to ask them in the comments section or email us at support@howtosaveenergy.co.uk. If you need immediate answers for that question that's just nagging you why not try out Yahoo! Answers Environment & Ecology section where you can get a plethora of answers from other members of the public.

Energy Saving Tips

Save Gas or Petrol

• Walk or cycle to work – you’ll save money and get a good workout.
• Take public transport, which is twice as fuel efficient, per passenger kilometre, as driving the average private vehicle. Taking the bus or other public transport once a week will cut almost 15 per cent off your vehicle fuel bill.
• Driving 90 kilometre per hour on the highway uses 20 per cent less fuel than driving 110 kph.
• Join a car pool.
• Don’t warm up your car by idling (it doesn’t need it) and turn it off if you’re stopped or parked for more than 10 seconds, except in traffic.
• Get rid of your old clunker. A pre-1998 car produces 65 times more hydrocarbon emissions than a 2001 model and gets much worse fuel economy.
• Consider Alternative Fuels, such as Biodiesel.

Save Water

• Install low-flow showerheads (about £10) – They cut your shower water use in half.
• Replace old toilets, which can use upwards of 20 litres per flush, with models that use as little as three or six litres.
• Install low-flow aerators on your faucets. They cut the flow rate in half by mixing air with the water, with no discernable change in performance.
• Water your lawn only once a week during dry summer periods and run the sprinkler for no more than 45 minutes. Keep your grass longer to conserve water.
• Take a five-minute shower, which uses half as much hot water as a bath or a 10-minute shower.
• Minimise water used per flush in your toilet by adjusting the float and/or putting a Hippo Bag / water bottle in the tank.
• Don’t run the water continuously when washing dishes by hand, shaving, washing your face and hands or brushing your teeth. Avoid rinsing dishes with hot water before putting them in the dishwasher.

Cooking

• Don’t peek while using your oven; you lose about 20 per cent of the heat every time you open the door.
• Reheat small food portions with your microwave oven, which uses less than one-half the energy of a conventional oven/range.

Hot Water

• Install low-flow showerheads (about £10) – They cut your shower water use in half, with no change in performance, saving sweaty families more than £50 a year in hot water use.
• Wrap foam insulation around the first metre of hot water pipe above your hot water tank and put an insulating jacket around older hot water tanks.
• Set the temperature on your hot water tank to 50 degrees Celsius. Every 5.5 degrees C. reduction saves up to 13 per cent on your water heating costs.

Refridgeration

• Buy energy-efficient refrigerators, which use as little as 400 kilowatt hours of electricity per year, half the energy use of standard fridges from the early ‘90s and one quarter of those from the early 1980s.
• Set the temperature in your refrigerator between 1.7 and 3.3 degrees Celsius for the refrigerator compartment and –18 degrees C. for the freezer.

Washing Clothes

• Wash clothes in cold water whenever possible and always rinse in cold water (heating water typically accounts for up to 90 per cent of the washer’s total energy use).
• Dry clothes outside on a line or indoors on a rack, when possible. Use the moisture sensor feature on your dryer, if it has one, to prevent over drying, or select the permapress setting, which uses cold air at the end of the cycle.

Save Electricity

• Turn your computer off when it is not in use . When your computer is on but not in use, turn off the monitor, which uses at least half of the computer’s energy.
• Unplug DVD players, TVs, games consoles and their set-top boxes when not in use. Even when turned off, their standby power consumes a considerable amount of electricity.
• Turn the lights off when you leave a room.
• Install CFL bulbs in your home

What's in Season from Your Local Farmer in April?

Vegetables
Carrots
Cucumber
Leeks
Onions
Parsnips
Savoy
Scallions

In Season All Year
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Lettuce
Mushrooms
Pammphrey
Potatoes
Red Cabbage
Soup Veg
Swedes

Fruit
Bramley Apples
Rhubarb

Meat
Beef
Chicken
Lamb
Pork

Other
Eggs
Milk
Oats
Other Grains

Please note the above selection of foods is based on what is in season in the United Kingdom.