EcoTeams

In autumn 2005 twelve Cotteridge Friends signed up for an EcoTeam .  We agreed to meet four times and to measure our waste output (weighing rubbish and recycling weekly), our gas and electricity use and our water use (reading meters monthly) over four months.  At each meeting we discussed our effect one a major environmental issue, sharing both knowledge of both problems and solutions.  We agreed individually two actions to take in the following month to address the issue of the month.

 Although I was one of the leaders of this project, I felt I personally had little left to learn and doubted if the EcoTeam would change my own energy usage.   However, to my surprise, I found monitoring my monthly gas and electric usage made energy use real and manageable in a way it had not been previously.

Interest awakened, I rummaged in my desk, finding gas and electric bills from most of the twenty-eight years we have lived in our house.  Entering these onto an Excel spreadsheet together with annual mean temperatures let me see real changes to the patterns of our energy use over decades.   Against this background of data I could quickly see the effects of any changes to our current energy use.  Unnervingly I could also see a steady creep upwards in temperature that is called Global Warming.

A fellow EcoTeam member introduced me to Plug-in Power and Energy Monitors. which measure exactly the electricity used by appliances even in standby mode.  (Approximate energy consumption of appliances can also be found on the web.)  I made a spreadsheet showing all of the electricity hungry devices in our home and our usage of them.  It was this that convinced me of the value of unplugging or turning appliances off at the wall when ever possible. 

Now, a year on, I rejoice to see both our electricity and gas consumption down by about a third in 2006 from 2005.  In the case of electricity savings were mostly the result of leaving absolutely nothing on standby and almost never using the tumble dryer or dish washing machine.  Gas savings resulted from dropping the thermostat setting to 16 ^o or 17^o (depending on fortitude) while turning it off completely in bedrooms not used in the day.  In general one saves 10% fuel for every 1^o C of thermostat reduction.  I’m afraid some of our 30% reduction is the result of the mean outside temperature averaging half a degree warmer in 2006 than 2005 (and two degrees warmer than it was twenty years ago in 1986).