I like to consider myself as being reasonably environmentally friendly but I’ve not been as systematic about it as I might have been until now. So 2008 I’m going to do better…
- All electricity at home is green electricity, supplied by Lampiris and I have a smart electricity meter to monitor my consumption
- All CO2 emissions from flying will be offset using the excellent service from c02balance.com and their Carbon Bank system *
- Emissions from my home gas heating system will be offset in the same way – as soon as I can manage to decipher the Lampiris bill for that
- Journeys between London and Brussels will be with Eurostar who already offset their emissions (and a flight generates 10x more CO2 than the train, so Eurostar is much better)
- Trips made with friends by car or with car hire will also be offset with co2balance.com, and all journeys in Brussels and London will be made by bus, metro or bike *
- As much waste as possible recycled using the blue and yellow recycling bags system in Brussels
Areas where I need to improve:
- This website is not hosted with a firm using green electricity. Firstly, I can’t bring myself to leave uRevised.com as they are so good. Secondly, my experience with Green Web Host has been far from satisfactory. Might have to offset that one too…
- All lamps at home use low energy lightbulbs, but the roof lights use halogen bulbs – and the landlord has installed them to mean that only small size GU10 bulbs fit – so small fluorescent bulbs are no good, and LEDs give a very strange blue light. So I just better keep the main lighting off…
- Fly less – while it might be helpful to offset, I should simply fly less. Not sure I’m going to manage that though.
* – journeys already included are a single flight from Arlanda to Brussels, a return from London to Berlin at the end of January, and a 400km car journey in Sweden
