Unit 6/ 16.....

Okay, so I always thought I was doing enough to be considered 'green' but I have been proven wrong. I decided  I needed to take a closer look at my lifestyle and what I was doing at home.


First thing is first let's have a look at my Electricity and Gas bills to get an idea of how much of each I have been using!

ELECTRICITY - ORIGIN


Account period: 14 May 2010 to 13 Aug 2010
Usage: 350 kWh
Average Daily usage: 3.9kWh (2 people)
Amount: $62.68
Average cost per day: $1.07
Greenhouse gas emissions: 0.469 tonnes C02

GAS - ORIGIN


Account period: 13 August 2010 to 27 August 2010
Usage: 661MJ's
Average Daily usage: 47.2 MJ (2 people)
Amount: $12.94
Average cost per day: $ 1.12
Greenhouse gas emissions: 0.03 tonnes C02

Just by examining our bills I can see that I need to make some changes regarding how we use our gas and electricity. We have not received a Water bill since we moved in so that is why this is not recorded.

Come with me as I walk you through some changes I have made so far.

 

Electricity

I am proud to be a member of the Power point Police :) I have always turned off the power at the wall whenever it does not need to be on. I get a little bit crazy over this and will often get out of bed just to check they are all off (won't I Ben? haha).

One of the things on my to do list is change our light globes over to the energy saving ones. I will get onto it this week I promise.

Unfortunately our electricity bill has not arrived yet (long story short, communication break down with supplier)however I can tell you that at our old address I averaged 1.48 daily kWh for the billing period: October 09 -January 10.

I think this might be an area where I will find it hard to reduce my usage as I already do my best not to waste or use too much electricity. But as the saying goes- there's always room for improvement!

Power off - always

Gas

Heating

We (Ben and I) use the gas heater in the loungeroom for our heating. Most of the time I try to be good and keep it off as much as I can, but come on, it's FREEZING in winter! But I know I need to be on my best behaviour so I keep it on low and I have put towels near the doors to stop the draft. I really need to invest in the real things - towels do not look pretty!

The ever reliable gas heater, off during the day.

Cooking

Before I started this challenge I never took much notice of how high I had the gas turned up when cooking. Now I am more aware that flames licking up the side of my pan is energy wasted. Ben is even onto this now.

I will show you some of my cooking skills soon.

(Waiting on bill to arrive - in the meantime I will try to find an old one from previous address).

Water

I have always been very conscientious about how much water I use and get very angry when I see it getting wasted. I have always tried to have short showers and wash the dishes in shallow water.

This might shock some people or even cause some to cringe, but when we don't have visitors I even enforce the "If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down" moto.

(Ben has to put up with a lot - but it's all in the name of Planet Earth so it's not that bad.... is it?)

What I plan to do is get a timer for the shower - Ben is trying his hardest but loves stretching out his shower time (hey I'm not perfect either, I am guilty of the occassional long hot shower). I also want to record on an average day how much water we use to see where we are in comparison to the target of 155 litres p/p per day.

Oh and we dont have a washing machine so that makes a difference too.

Waste

Improvements can definately be made here. Although we recycle I don't think either of us really take much notice of how much waste leaves our place each week. Here is a picture of the waste for week 1 of the challenge.

Not much recycling this week, I wonder if we were being slack?

This load weighed in at approx. 3.5 kilos