Is the grass greener?

Born in a barn

2010-02-01T14:07:00.001Z

The Carbon Mother-in-law comes to stay. For ten days. The pavement is covered in ice and she arrives wearing a pair of stiletto shoes, tottering around like a celebrity skater. She walks in, greets the children and firmly shuts the door. The house is warm as we know she likes it that way. In fact it’s tropical, with the radiators blasting away all day and half of the night. It gives the new boiler a chance to show us what it’s made of. It’s bliss. No more shivering in the morning, reaching over the double duvet for polo neck sweaters. The carbon copies wander around in their pyjamas, having shed their usual layers of pyjamas, sweaters, double dressing gowns, socks and slippers. All that’s missing now is underfloor heating in the kitchen for maximum comfort when making breakfast. Hurrah for the Carbon Mother-in-law.

But the Carbon Mother-in-law is cold. She is also very irritated: by the doors. Not just one door, but all of them. Each rooms downstairs is interlinked with another, and each has two doors. The breakfast room even has three. The kids rush in and out every few seconds with their dolls or prams, footballs or games. “Shut the door,” their granny rants. “You’d think you were born in a barn,” she rails. At first the kids attempt to comply, but after a week they can’t be bothered, and they rush out leaving doors ajar. “I told you to shut the door,“ their granny booms. She turns to me and berates me on my lack of energy efficiency, “Why don’t you teach them to shut the door? They’re letting all the heat out every time they come into the room.” I remind her that there’s normally no need to shut the door because there’s only a small window in the year when her son permits central heating. But the Carbon Mother-in-law isn’t listening. She’s busy blaming the entire heat loss of the planet on our lack of door closing habits.

By the end of the first week, I can’t bear to hear her repeat the phrase any more, so I take it on myself to remind the kids. As soon as the door opens a crack, I tell the opener to close it immediately. I’m like a door obsessed parrot. I consider taping off rooms, and think about moving to a bungalow. Half way into the second week, I start to get paranoid about door handles: before touching one I stop to consider whether the effort of turning it is worth the reminder about closure. Meanwhile the house is way too hot, I feel like I’m living in Spain, and I’m tempted to start opening the windows to let fresh air in again.

We take the children and the Carbon Mother-in-law to Morecambe for a walk. The Carbon Copies have laser guns and are keen to play on the beach. But their granny is cold, so we make for the nearest café. The middle Carbon Copy goes to the toilet, and I wink at him as he pushes the door to with a very firm hand and clicks the lock. “See Granny, you’ve got them trained up,” I say. Five minutes later the wailing begins. While I check out the adjacent toilet to see how the lock works, other customers line up with table knives, coins and pens to try and jiggle the lock. The middle Carbon Copy can’t be comforted. When we finally get him out, with the help of the café owner and a kitchen implement, he glares at his Granny.

The Carbon Mother-in-law departs for London and I firmly shut the door. The house might have retained warmth better while she was here, but it wasn’t worth all the stress. I turn the switch down on the boiler. It’s back to arctic conditions for us. After all, the most energy efficient boiler is one that isn’t using energy. The eldest Carbon Copy walks through the living room, leaving both doors ajar. I can tell he’s enjoying the simple pleasure of hassle free door opening. We exchange smiles. “Do you live in a barn?” I ask. “I was born in one,” he replies.

Greenhouse Gas

2009-12-01T14:15:00.001Z

Our new boiler is installed. We hope in the long term it will provide substantial savings on energy usage and bills. But in the short term we are instantly rewarded by hot water that is actually hot. In fact it’s so hot it’s scalding. I am in bath-time heaven.

But the heating side of it turns out to be a damp squib. As Carbonlite selected the wall panel that controls the system, we have a tiny digital box mounted on the wall in the hall instead of our usual Starship Enterprise boiler console. At first glance it looks easy to use. But of course it’s a nightmare. No knobs to push, no buttons to flick. Just a series of numbers.

He explains the first figure is the outdoor temperature, which, he points out, is currently 17 degrees. I tell him I don’t care what the temperature is outside. So he moves on to the all important figure of indoor temperature. “It’s 18 degrees in here, which is just about right for the evening,” he says. ”But that’s only one degree hotter than outside,” I complain. “Turn it up!” He refuses, reminding me it’s not cold outside, or indeed inside. I tell him I’ll do it myself. But how, when the whole panel resembles a great big buttonless digital watch? He shows me what to do to reset water and heating, but computerised gadgets aren’t my strong point and it’s all a bit of a blur. He goes out to work and I settle down with a hot water bottle and the manual. Two hours later and I’m no further on. I throw the book on the floor and go to bed.

It’s my birthday. Carbonlite is away and my mother comes to celebrate it with me. She turns up with six bottles of Radox. I line the bottles up in the bathroom so I can scald myself with a different flavour of boiling water every night. It’s lunchtime but unusually the house feels hot. I check the temperature gauge on the digital box. It reads 23 degrees. Inside! The heating shouldn’t be on in the daytime so I look closer and find the panel displays the word, ’fault.’ I shrug. Too bad if it breaks when Carbonlite is away. I have no idea how to turn the heating down or off. What a great birthday present.

As the day goes on the house feels hotter and hotter. My mother is sweating and asks to open a window. But Carbonlite hasn’t quite finished the restoration job on the sashes, and has warned if anyone touches the woodwork, the glass will fall out. “It’s like a greenhouse,” my mother says as we sweat our way through dinner. I fumble around with the manual for a while and stare hopelessly at the digital figures, before giving up.

At breakfast time my mother comes down, her eyes heavy. “I didn’t sleep at all last night in this sauna. How much is all this heating going to cost?“ I know exactly how much the electricity is costing, because Carbonlite has reinstalled the carbon calculator next to the kettle. But as for the greenhouse gas? No idea. Probably all the money we’ve saved this year by installing the new boiler. So much for low energy bills.

I stand at the box in the hall. It still reads 23 degrees while outside remains constant at 17. I never thought I’d long to press the ’off’ switch on the central heating, but I do.

Six baths in seven minutes

2009-11-01T14:14:00.001Z

There’s only so long you can go on recycling cardboard boxes and composting vegetable peelings and pretending you are sorting out the environment. Eventually there comes a time where you either need to get your photo in The Guardian by getting arrested at a power station protest, or back your green aspirations up with some hard cash. I decide on the latter. Prison wouldn’t suit me.

Carbonlite is pleased. He’s been keen to push some money into greening up the house for years. The first thing is he does is call in Boilerman to find out his views about the latest in energy efficient water and heating systems. We’re talking combi-boilers and zoning. But Boilerman has his own ideas, “A fantastic system that will let you have three baths, then after just seven minutes another three baths! It’s new, it’s beautiful looking and I can install immediately.” My mother, who has joined us for a cup of tea, snorts into her Princess Diana mug, “Even the Radox Queen here would struggle to have six baths in one day!” I try to shush her, but Boilerman isn’t listening, he’s busy describing the sexy curves of the new tank he’d install to facilitate the six baths in seven minutes.

Fed up with going round in circles on the subject of boilers, we turn our attention to the attic. A new roof several years ago left us with little insulation in the loft. Greening it up will be a substantial job. But can we find a builder to even come and give us a quote? Not until the spring, it seems. “Perhaps I’ll do it myself? ” wonders Carbonlite. The re-pointing job to plug the gaps in the exterior wall notches up a similar level of enthusiasm from the building community, and the chances of getting a workman down to view our cellar-with-a-stream-running-through-it are now seeming rather remote.

We move on to the windows: the sash windows that we looked at replacing in the spring. They’re still rotten, but if we can’t get them double glazed, is there any point in paying a thousand pounds a window for their non-efficient replacements? I stamp my feet. “I want to pay someone to make the house more environmentally friendly, and the planet is crying out for people to save energy. Why won’t anyone take our money?” Carbonlite goes online. “I know how we can spend some cash,” he says.

Two days later a special delivery arrives. A very, very long ladder. One by one, Carbonlite rebuilds the sash windows. We have to go with single glazing, but at least some of the gaps are plugged. Boilerman mark II can source the exact system we need. And we look at materials to insulate the attic and consider clearing it out for the first time in eight years. OK, I admit it’s not going to stop a polar bear from falling off his perch of melting ice, but at least it’s a start. Six baths in seven minutes? Clean, but not green; and we can do better than that.

Compost capers

2009-10-01T14:13:00.001Z

“Ugh. That’s disgusting.” I slam the lid back onto the compost bin. While we’ve been away all summer, nature has gone into full throttle on the vegetable peelings. It’s like a creepy crawly version of Noah’s Ark; there seems to be at least two of every insect on earth crammed under the lid. It’s all wriggling about and it smells like a cow’s bum. Even the eggs have laid eggs. I’m not going to compost anything any more. It’s too foul.

After dinner, I scrape the remains and peelings into the regular bin, announcing to the kids that I’m through with composting. There’s a sharp intake of breath. Even the Carbon-Toddler raises her eyebrows. “I don’t care about the planet any more. I’m through with being an eco worrier,” I tell them. “I’m going back to not being green. It was more convenient…and less…wriggly.” “But…”the youngest Carbon-Copy volunteers...” “Talk to the hand,” I tell him. The conscience isn’t engaging any more.

The drought in Kenya is in every newspaper. National Geographic does a feature on Venice; more at risk of flooding than ever before. The miserable British weather continues. Global warming is ramping up. But I don’t care. I’m not being green any more. The Guardian brings me news of the 10:10 campaign. I read all about it, devouring every celebrity endorsement, and despair that so few of the population have signed up. But I don’t join myself because I’m done with trying to help the planet. My mum has bought a new car. My brother’s flying to his second home in France again. It confirms I’ve made the right decision. There’s no point in making any effort when everyone else undoes it. I only bother to recycle the papers so I don’t have to digest news of any fresh environmental disasters.

Carbon-Lite is down at the compost bin, shovelling the earth out of the bottom of the barrel. It’s not like the top of the bin; all wormy and horrible. It’s fresh, moist and plentiful earth, which he spreads on top of our thin, weedy soil. It’s new life; all healthy and organic. I pick out bits of plastic shrink wrapping and wonder at how all those potato peelings, banana skins and egg boxes have miraculously transformed into this. I’ve always bought my compost in bags from the garden centre before. Suddenly I can see the results of our efforts and it feels good. Like those little green shoots they talk about in a recession. It’s not going to change the world, or save the world, but it is undeniably a positive start. “Ok,” I say to the Carbon-Copies. “I might start composting again.” They jump up and down and cheer. In the compost bin beside them, the worms are wriggling with delight.

All Green Wedding Blues

2009-07-01T14:08:00.001Z

We receive a wedding invitation through the post. Carbonlite’s old friend, the best man at our wedding, is getting married. Again. But this time he’s saying ’I do’ in an obscure part of Germany. My whole family are invited. I sigh. Here we go again.

The last time we had an invite to a far-flung wedding we debated it for months, talking about whether or not the celebrations were worth the emissions. The planet is still trying to deal with my sister-in-law’s Slovakian wedding which involved five of our family sized bums on airplane seats, plus all the transfers and a long weekend of excursions to Borat-like attractions.

Watching Carbonlite’s brother waltz his new wife around a church hall without taking the fag out of his mouth probably wiped out a year’s worth of plastic bag saving by the population of Hastings, and formed a low point in my eco-worrying life.

So understandably we are reluctant to go. Love miles they call them. A modern wedding in another country is a test; one of the most challenging tests for the eco-minded. Especially if it’s the wedding of someone you like.

Now if I’d been invited to take a mini-break in Germany I’d have no trouble in making up my mind. The devil himself invented long haul mini-breaks.

Carbonlite’s best man and his fiancée have a website. A whole website about their wedding. I go on it, not to check out the wedding list, but to see whether we can get to the ceremony by boat, bike or horse. And the first thing I see is a picture of us. They have uploaded pictures of all their favourite wedding guests onto the site. Saves doing it on their honeymoon I suppose.

There we are, the whole family, grinning like the Waltons. And on the preceding pages are the full families of the happy couple. But when I look closer, I find no trace of his ex-wife or children. I can understand the ex-wife part of the equation, but his two little girls have also been airbrushed out of his life.

Now this puts a whole new slant on things. Not only would we be screwing more polar bears, but we’d be in serious trouble with the ex-wife of our best man. She’s probably gone right off us already after seeing our mugshots on the happy couple’s web display.

Now it’s a no brainer. Love miles plus wrath of ex-wife equals no show. If only all our environmental decisions were as easy.

a giant plastic polar bear on the bar?

2009-02-24T13:14:00.002Z

Rugby club kitchen duty is compulsory if you want your kids to play rugby.
As a new member, and one of the last to sign up, I am allocated a ‘match’ day as all the easy slots have gone. It's a heavy duty catering job. Bacon butties, coffee’s and squash until lunchtime, then a meal for each of the players.

By midday it’s manic. Tray loads of dirty plates, cups and cutlery arriving by the minute. I throw them into soapy water along with the plastic pint glasses the players have used for squash to quench their thirst after brutal matches.

“Are you washing those? Oh. I’m just putting them straight into the bin,” one of the other helpers says to me, chucking a pile of the plastic glasses into a black binbag. I take a quick look inside it and among the leftovers lie dozens of the see-through pint glasses. But as they’re covered in bits of stew and old teabags, Im not inclined to pluck them out.

As each team finishes their match, they pile in to the clubhouse, muddy hungry, cold and tired. The demand for meals quickens, and I abandon washing up the plastic glasses when I see that all the other kitchen volunteers are chucking them in the bin as well.

We finish serving, mop up and haul a giant plastic bin bag full of rubbish into the yard. I’ve just served two hundred people without having breakfast or lunch myself, and I feel slightly sick. All that waste, much of which I’ve just helped send to landfill. I should have kept on washing the plastic cups.

When I return home, Carbonlite and the kids are watching a David Attenbourgh programme on the i-player. “Come and watch, it’s about polar bears.” says Carbonlite. I am tired and hungry, and frankly not interested in polar bears. But sitting on the sofa is the easiest option. And watching a polar bear try and last out the winter on the ice makes me realise I’m not all that tired or hungry after all. Starving after months without any calories the creature makes it’s way back on to the newly formed ice pack in spring to catch its prey once more, and try and replenish its energy. It's a cycle that has repeated itself for thousands of years. But this year for the first time, the ice is too thin. I hug my son as we watch the bear crash into the icy waters and try without success to haul its giant body back onto ice that continues to crack and break under its weight. It’s pitiful. Even the carbontoddler is now silent. The programme ends and we continue to sit in silence. The empty feeling in my stomach isn’t just down to lack of food.

“I’ve just melted more of that ice,” I say. Everyone looks at me, so I elaborate, “I tossed a load of Ribena cups away today and now another polar bear is going to fall in.” I tell Carbonlite the tale, and confess my part in it.
“We all do it," he says, trying to cheer me up. "...we forget the big picture. That what we do in our own little village can have consequences on the other side of the planet.
"I know people say who gives a stuff about polar bears, I’ve said it myself, but how can you watch that and not care?” I reply.
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” asks Carbonlite?
“Ask the rugby club to use glasses from the bar instead?”
“Think bigger,” he says.
“Make a giant plastic polar bear out of milk cartons and bubble wrap and sit it on the bar every Sunday to remind people that every one of those cups they chuck away is helping melt each new millimetre of ice?”
“Now you’re thinking,”says my mentor.
“I've got an idea,” shouts the eldest Carboncopy, and he runs upstairs. He returns moments later with the dung beetle costume he has made for his school show assembly on Egypt.
“Rugby players know nothing about polar bears. But they do know about Dung don’t they Mum? Sit this on the bar next to the plastic glasses. No one will be interested in Ribena any more."

new best friend

2009-02-10T13:50:00.003Z

In another day in my cafe life, I pick up the Daily Express and start browsing through. Several pages in is a column by the prolific Richard from Richard and Judy. And within this column is an opinion piece on recycling.
Now I like columns in newspapers and expect a lot from columnists. I expect to be entertained and amused. I also respect a strong opinion, and a bit of topicality.
But while Richard is certainly topical, his dismissal of recycling is ill informed and irresponsible. Sure it’s fine to question the point of recycling, I huff and puff about going to the tip all the time. But even I know it’s important to present a balanced argument. And to suggest that in ten years time we’ll look back and wonder what the fuss was all about global warming is contradicting scientific evidence and giving the sceptics reassurance. Frankly, irresponsible.

With some reservations I show it to Carbonlite and as I predict, he explodes. "You need to write to him," he says, chucking the newspaper on the table.

"Me...write to a newspaper?" I query.
"No to him. That book club tosser." he replies.

The first problem I encounter is that Richard is so famous I have no idea of his surname. That's sorted out by googling him. Then I'm so fascinated by what turns up that I waste an hour. Then I have to work out what to say. I begin by announcing that I've never written to a newspaper or a columnist before, but it's not long before I've got into my stride telling him that there are many people out there who deny global warming through laziness or ignorance and 'opinion' like his only encourages their behaviour. I tell him that his children, and grandchildren, like mine will be left to pick up the pieces of our selfish living in future years. And I inform him that it is a privilege to be given a platform in a national newspaper and along with this privilege comes responsibility. And while I’m sure he would not dream of using this platform to make racist or sexist comments, how can it be ethical to incite people to damage our vulnerable environment even further?

I wonder if it'll scare him? I wonder if I'll get a reply. If I do he'll become my new 'friend,' along with Emma Thompson who is still sending me e mails.

Job done, I put it in the post then sit down to watch the Bafta's and check out if any of my new mates are there.

57 letters

2009-01-28T22:15:00.000Z

Emma Thompson writes to me. My inbox isn’t generally stuffed with correspondence from Hollywood names, so I read it. 62,000 eco minded people have now signed up to own a piece of airplot land, and as one of them, I'm being urged to petition the 57 labour MP’s that have so far opposed Heathrow's extra runway, in the hope they’ll take the same action in Wednesday's Commons vote about the airport expansion.
I sigh inwardly. While Emma may have nannies and cleaners and all the accessories of a glamorous filmstar life that give her time to write to 57 MP’s, I don’t. And how will I know which ones to approach? What are their addresses? Is a personal letter necessary for each one or will the same one do?

I fill Carbonlite in on my dilemma. He tells me a personal letter is much more effective,
“You’ll get a reply from all of them whether it’s a standard letter or one you’ve taken the trouble to compose yourself. But in my experience they engage more if it’s written directly to them,” he lectures.
Great. Now I have to write 57 different letters. I’ve only just managed to get all the Christmas thank you’s off to the right people, and that’s only because I bribed the Carboncopies to do it for 2p a letter. I wonder if their rate is any different for MP’s?

Then I notice a link. Of course, Greenpeace have made it easy; they’re not going to expect all those thousands of people to sit at their desks for a lifetime, writing to unfamiliar politicians. I follow the link to another website that tracks the movements of MP’s. There’s a mechanism for finding my own MP, and details of current and former bills, votes and speeches, on every subject known to political man. I scan for the word Heathrow and find it under ‘recent searches.’ Emma’s other friends have been here before me.

Unfortunately the link doesn’t bring up the names and addresses of 57 MP’s. Instead it brings up a query in the House of Commons by the MP for North West Leicestershire David Taylor. He complains that within a two hour window on Sunday he received 6,000 e mails from Greenpeace members, most of them living in the South East and none of them from his own constituency. He asks if the house can do anything to legislate against this mail bombing? Jokingly the Speaker tells him to treat Sunday as a day of rest and not read his e mails at all. But then he goes on to reassure the MP that the house will look into the issue.

So now I have the name of one of the 57 MPs. I click on his details, and make it 6001.

56 more still to do. So little time. But the carbontoddler needs collecting from playgroup, so I leave the computer and walk to the hall. After lunch we have a children's party to go to. And the vote is tomorrow. A library run follows, then beavers, then work committments when the kids are in bed.

I start to really feel bad about the other 56 MP's, when I read in the papers that some of them have already been 'won round' by the government. But, in a miserable attempt to deflect the guilt and clear the way for some late night TV watching instead of letter writing, I ask myself whether we should be virtual bombing the MP's that didn't oppose the action last time around rather than the ones who did? Aren't they more of a problem? Is Emma really on top of all this?

I go back to my in-box. In the mailbox, below Emma’s request, is a message from the South Lakeland Action for Climate Change group, inviting me to a talk about what I can do before the Copenhagan talks on November 30th. They’re my local group and I’ve considered getting involved before but never done anything about it. The meeting is in a hall in Kendal. It isn’t going to be full of the great or the glamorous, and I doubt Emma Thompson has been invited. But it’s still national action at a local level. I put it in the diary. And feel a little more able to sleep.

walking the talk

2009-01-21T20:25:00.003Z

On whim I decide to buy into the Airplot group’s purchase of land near Heathrow to stop the planned new runway from going ahead. It turns out to be surprisingly easy. Much easier than buying a piece of land near Heathrow 20 years ago when we moved to London and couldn’t afford much in the way of property. That purchase, in a run down part of run down Hillingdon cost me £80,000 and took months for solicitors to argue about shared drains and parking. This time I log onto a website, add my details and bingo, I own a few millimetres of West Drayton or Sutton or some other godforsaken village that can’t hear itself think because of increased flights to Heathrow’s other terminals.
Apparently I’m in good company. Environmentalist thesps, members of the mighty Greenpeace, and also quite a few people like me have already signed up, led by Emma Thompson, who, in her own version of Shakespearean prose told Geoff Hoon to “get a grip, Geoff.” Quite right.

While I’m online, I take a peek at the other offerings, and find a campaign to tell Gordon Brown to ‘give coal the boot.’ Well obviously I sign up to that, saying “Get a grip Gordon,” as I click on the button. Perhaps this could become a nifty environmentalist catchphrase that the world could share, a sort of global putdown? If the new American president fails to act on the environment as he has promised, can we all collectively shout at him “Get a grip Barack,” only to find that he springs into eco action?

I enter my details into the boxes designed to help me help Gordon to give coal the boot, but find it isn’t as straightforward as buying Heathrow. It presents me with a map, and asks me to add my footprint to the map. But before that I must choose my shoe. Now choosing shoes is something I’m good at. I come from a long line of women who thrive on choosing shoes. But this isn’t about choosing a fashion statement, a cheap Far East made accessory to be thrown away after a few wears. This is about declaring who I am. My personal shoe identity, with my first name and postcode attached, to be left for all time on the footprint map of the Greenpeace website. The choices are stark. I can be a sandal. Or a cowboy boot. A cowboy boot? Or an army boot. Or a kitten heel. Or a loafer. Or a flip flop. Oh God. What am I?
I should be a welly boot but I don’t want to be. I’d like to be a kitten heel, but if I’m honest I’m not. I can’t even walk in them, let alone stamp out global warming with them. I toy with being a cowboy boot as an ironic feminist statement, but in the end go barefoot. Probably a classic cop out on the Greenpeace shoe labelling front, but at least it doesn’t tie me into in any particular decade, gender or fashion. And if Carbonlite reads it, he might feel guilty about not buying me those M and S slippers for Christmas. I take a look at what everyone else from Cumbria has put in. There’s a few wellies, a couple of sandals and some very uninspiring loafers. And quite a few have opted for the barefoot option. Thankfully there’s no cowboy boots in my neighbourhood. A cowboy boot-wearing environmental activist on your doorstep would frankly be quite scary.

When Carbonlite comes home, I tell him about my new purchase of terminal busting land.
“Good,” he says, picking up the paper.
“Just Good? This is a legal document, like a house purchase you know. I could be summonsed. To appear. At a big enquiry or something,“ I cry. He continues reading the paper. “And I’ may have to turn up barefoot,” I carry on, “Because that’s what I signed up to do on the “Get a grip Gordon carbon coal campaign. And as everyone else from round here will be there in their wellies and loafers, I’ll have to watch my toes.” My husband nods his approval, still reading the paper.
“You haven’t even asked what it cost,” I shout. “To buy Heathrow.”
He finally looks up, “Well? How much did it cost?”
“It was free,” I reply sheepishly.
He goes back to the paper. I stomp out of the room.
“But there may be some costs to follow,” I mutter, wondering if there is such a thing as an environmentally friendly brand new pair of kitten heels.”

carbon coffee

2009-01-19T22:24:00.002Z

It’s dark outside. Dark and cold and uninviting. The Carbontoddler cries when I remove her from her Tigger sleepsuit and force her arm into as many layers of clothes as I can. With the usual bickering and chivvying, I walk the boys to school then return for my daughter. Today I intend to drop her off at nursery by car, drive to a village seven miles down the road, and work in a cafe, on my laptop. I avoid meeting Carbonlite’s eye as I grab car keys and run out of the door with my daughter and her lunchbox. The temperature outside isn’t very different to inside. Even though it’s the depths of winter, we’ve made a pact to keep the heating off during the day. Carbonlite deals with this by piling on layers of clothes; at the last count he had five. I deal with it by going out..

I order a coffee and try to shut out the guilt. Not only have I left Carbonlite at home to suffer in frosty silence with a massive workload, but I’ve used the car for a short journey again. Why? Because I’m a pathetic fair weather cyclist. I just can’t motivate myself to open the shed. I know it’s damaging; economically, environmentally and also physically; I'm putting on weight faster than the carbon mother in law gets through a litre of whisky.
Disgusted with myself, I pick up a magazine. “The lazy girls guide to going green” the cover shouts at me. I sigh, opening it to page 64. “If you’d like to save the planet, but think it all sounds like too much hassle, here are some easy tips that won’t turn your life upside down.” Why not turn your life upside down? It might be fun. It might save the future for your kids. Resistant as I can be to some of Carbonlite’s improvements, we at least both understand that life, post Al Gore can never be same again.

It's all the usual stuff about buying an eco kettle, sealing the gaps, washing clothes at a lower temperature, and turning off the tap mid teeth clean. I’m mildly interested in the fact that I’ll save more energy if my fridge is full. But the only time a car is mentioned is to inform me that driving is more efficient if I put more air in the tyres. But air never trashed a polar bear. What about emissions, petrol, unnecessary journeys? I leave my coffee to go cold; while it might be unleaded, it tastes too much of carbon.

The gift of gold?

2009-01-16T14:46:00.004Z

A copy of National Geographic lies unread on the table. I tidy up around it. It’s been there for weeks; a reminder of Christmas past. Carbonlite wanders into the room and sprawles down on the sofa. I grab the magazine.
“I’ll just take this for recyling,” I say pointedly.
“But you haven’t read it yet,” he exclaims.
“It’s my magazine,” I tell him. My only Christmas present. I start to flick through it, grumbling under my breath how friends got expensive handbags and gold jewellery, while I got a magazine. Not even a year’s subscription, just a magazine. Even baby Jesus got gold for Christmas. A pair of M and S slippers would have been fine. Why does even my Christmas present have to be an education?

At the recycling bin, I pause. Something in this glossy magazine is glinting at me. It’s a global obsession that’s worth more than human life. A glittering industry that’s rotten to the core. In the world’s most remote places, whole families risk their lives so we can have cheap earrings. To extract a single ounce of gold, the amount in a typical wedding ring, 250 tons of rock and ore are taken from the ground, from vast open pit mines where accidents are commonplace, and chemical or mercury poisoning is a daily hazard. Villagers in the high altitudes of Peru work for 30 days a month for free; dirty, backbreaking work, without any pay. On the 31st day their reward is a single shift, of four hours or maybe a little more, where they are granted permission to haul out and take away as much rock as their shoulders can bear. With a bit of luck this sack may contain nuggets galore and make them instant millionaires. More commonly it contains nothing, or perhaps a few dollars of gold flecks which will barely feed their family, once miller and merchant have been paid.

All that human misery and exploitation. But what of the environment? Thanks to huge mining corporations, the gold now left in our world only exists as traces in remote and fragile corners. What was once untouched rainforest housing thousands of species is now razed and turned into pits that can be seen from space. Diggers carry out tons of earth each day in the search for the golden grail. The gold is processed with the help of mercury, and the chemical effluent is piped straight to the bottom of the sea.

I fiddle with my wedding ring. I take it off. I roll it around in my palm, examining its texture and shape for the first time in years. I look at how the light falls on it, and smile when I read the inscription. Sure, its precious. Sure it’s valuable. The question is, is this symbol of our union worth the human and environmental sacrifice that it took to make it? I put it on the table. I leave the room. My ring finger feels strange. I haven’t taken my wedding ring off in almost a decade. Ten years? Where did that go.
“I’m going for a bath. I’ve left something on the table for you,” I call to Carbonlite in the living room. He’ll either think I’ve read the feature and be pleased I’ve decided to do something about it, or he’ll think I’m leaving him, and might reassess what I’m worth.

the silver enemy

2008-11-28T19:56:00.001Z

“You’d better take your Christmas presents home with you today as we’re off to the Caribbean soon,” says my mother, clearing the dinner dishes.
The Carbon-copies, the Carbon-baby and I have made a quick dash over to Liverpool for the weekend. The carbon cost of a 100 love miles to see granny? 30 kg’s at my reckoning. But it’s nothing like the environmental cost of a cruise around the Caribbean. I bite my tongue and stifle my opinions about those climate-corrupting fun factories and the 24 hr buffet fuelled hedonism that she indulges in three times a year.
“I just hope you’re cutting down on clothes this time,” is all I say, referring to the start of her last cruise where she was fined £93 in excess baggage after stuffing more than 40 evening dresses and ball gowns into her suitcase and trying to get on a plane.
“I wouldn’t say I’m cutting back, but we’re definitely not taking the fancy dress pirate costumes this time,” she says. “I think half of that fine was probably the weight of the parrots.”

She brings in the pudding, scooping out a large helping of tiramisu, while informing me my brother will be flying his family to his French second home for Christmas. I sigh.
“I can’t help but feel a bit jealous,” I tell her. “I can’t imagine justifying flights like that for fun again.”
She looks up at me in astonishment, and the spoon of tiramisu does a nosedive into a bone china espresso cup. “Not fly again? Why not?” I shake my head.
“Haven’t you heard there’s a climate crunch going on mum? Don’t they cover the environment in the Daily Mail?”
Her response is a snort. “Oh, don’t give me that climate change nonsense” she says. “That’s Carbonlite speaking, not you. You like shopping and going on holiday. Has he been indoctrinating you again?”
“I do NOT like shopping,”I begin to shout. Why do all my family seem to think I spend my days shopping?
“Most of my clothes come from Oxfam,” I tell her, banging my spoon into my bowl.
“Not that lovely coat,” says my Mother, “that’s from Boden. I saw the label when I hung it up.” I enlighten her to the fact that it was once from house of Boden, but not for at least two owners.
My mother shudders. “Please don’t mention that to your sister. I don’t think she’d ever speak to you again. And by the way I don’t want any second hand clothes for my Christmas presents thank you very much.”
I remind her that she’ll be cruising the good ship lollipop by then, destroying the future for my kids.
“Well thank heaven I won’t be around by then,” she says.
I stand up and push my chair back. “That’s just typical of your generation,” I cry. “It’s only 90 years since the war you know. Think what they had to live on…darned tights and marrow soup. You’re the first generation to have everything and you abuse it. Fat pensions, a house that will net you a quarter of a million in disposable income, cheap short haul flights, and cruise ships the size of the Starship Enterprise. And you think you can leave the mopping up to my kids? Why should they have to spend their adult years continually cruising Cumbria because the sea levels are so high due to your carbon addiction?”
But she’s not listening. “A nice case of wine would be fine for my Christmas present,” she says.

The eldest Carboncopy looks up from his pudding. “Mummy, I know that you buy some presents as well as Father Christmas,“ he says. Now I can no longer stay at the table, but start pacing round it.
“Now is not the time to shatter my illusions about Santa,” I yell at him. To diffuse the tension, my mother clears the plates and takes them into the kitchen.
“I’ll just put the kettle on again. Now would like a nice bit of brie before we go and admire my new outfits?” she trills.

ride the climate rollercoaster

2008-11-03T11:30:00.001Z

Carbonlite and I are climbing steeply. We push ever higher and suddenly the whole of Coney Island bay stretches before us. But no time for admiring the view as we hurtle over the edge and shoot back to earth, screaming and waving our hands in the air along with 50 other riders.
The rollercoaster we’re all on is the usual mix of anticipation and terror. But this is no ordinary ride. With the help of a screen, a short film, a dose of audience participation and some facts from our host, we are riding the Climate Change Rollercoaster.
“London’s underwater and two thirds of the world’s glaciers have gone,” he shouts as we plunge downhill, screaming. “Oh crikey moses the whole climate system has gone into reverse,” he bellows, as we wave out hands wildly in the air.

I glance at Carbonlite and he catches my eye. Just for a change I’m responsible for organising our latest eco outing; to a climate change stand up comedy night at our local theatre. Our entertainment is provided by the Carbon Detox writer and climate change campaigner George Marshall, who runs an environmental charity and teaches others to lecture about the world’s problems. But tonight he tackles the issue through humour; highlighting our denial strategies, pointing out the eco stereotypes, myths and contradictions, and making us laugh at an issue that others portray as dry, boring, or downright scary.

We disembark the rollercoaster and our comedy coach continues with an education about evil carbon twins.
“Last year I dropped in on my neighbour to settle some minor boundary dispute,” George tells us. “There was a walloping four-wheel-drive tank in the drive, his house was as hot as a sauna with the back door open; every room was lit up like an operating theatre by halogen spots and a 1.8 metre plasma screen TV was going full throttle in the corner. As soon as I saw his house I realized all the energy that my own energy efficient house and low impact living was saving was being used up by him.”
He pauses for a moment before throwing his hands in the air in despair. “I might just have well have run cable between our houses and sent all the energy that I was saving over there.”

On the way home Carbonlite and I discuss our evil carbon twins and who they could be.
“Well it isn’t our next door neighbours,” I say. “One heats their whole house with just a single real fire; I’ve seen her out collecting fuel. And the other goes on the Wheely Good Communities trolley dash to get her shopping.” But I admit it could be some of my friends, many of whom still fly for fun and breed 4x4’s faster than they produce children. And as for my mother, currently and always ‘off on a cruise,’ well she sucks out more energy savings than a family of sextuplets. I’m thinking all of this out loud when Carbonlite interrupts.
“Don’t you get it? You’re my evil carbon twin,” he says, “I go biking to make more space on the road for your tin box. I wear an extra jumper all day and you blow our carbon rations on heating the house at night. I replace all the lightbulbs and you….”
“Hey ok, ok.” I say, my hands up in the air. “I might be your evil carbon twin but we’re stuck on this climate change rollercoaster together. So you’d better hold on tight to me and we can ride the cyclone. Let’s face it baby, I could be the only thing between you and the abyss.”

road miles

2008-10-02T22:50:00.001Z

We had barely been on our summer cycling holiday for a few hours when a message pinged into Carbonlite’s in-box. It was a request from a TV company making a ‘new iconic British road movie.’ Would Carbonlite be interested in sharing his views about alternative transport to the motor car? Would he? Several long texts later he had given his opinion on the car versus the bike to a very happy researcher.
“They’re very good but you’re too keen.” I tell him, reading back through his texts. She’s going to ask you to be on her programme and then stitch you up like a kipper on a tricycle.”
Carbonlite grabbed a bicycle off the car roof and started to load it with luggage. “No she won’t, she’s just doing her research,” he said. Her enquiry was a timely one as we were just leaving our car in a car park in Portsmouth for six weeks while we cycled across Northern Spain.

Carbonlite’s correspondence had obviously made him think. In fact he started to get quite evangelical. For the next six weeks, he pushed his message on all of us, as we pedalled up and down the hills of Spain.
“Cycling is such a positive alternative to travelling by car. It brings you back into contact with the elements, terrain, the natural world, your physical being and other people.”
“You’re quite right,” I agreed on the first week of our holiday.
On the second week he pressed on with his argument. “There is no insulation, no tin box, no protection from the sun, rain, storm, wind. You feel the weather and know what it is. You know the terrain more intimately too; feeling the rise and fall of the road, noticing the slow drag, that gentle run down, that hill you never sense in the car.”
I nodded, despite the fact that the hill I never sense in the car was taking me to the brink of exhaustion.
On the third week he really got into his stride as he cried, “Feel your legs working, your heart pumping, the air in your lungs! Feel yourself growing stronger on this hill.” By now even the Carbonlites started to put their fingers in their ears and hum loudly as they pedalled. But Carbonlite carried on regardless, sure only of one thing; the superiority of bike over car.
“On a bike you are part once more of the social world of pedestrians and that special club of other cyclists amongst which there is a camaraderie you don't get amongst drivers – the passing nod, wave or hello, a recognition of someone else who is willing to make an effort to get where they want to go.”

On our return, the car was waiting, but it was a few days before I got around to using it. I’d completely got out of the way of it. And when I did use it, I found I agreed with some of Carbonlite’s sermon. Ok the car was both convenient and fast, but where was the feeling of the wind in my hair and my connection with the land, with the weather, with the road? I felt like I was pinned in to a tin box, and hardly used it for the rest of the week.
Instead I rigged my bike up with baby seat and carried on biking. I hardly noticed the hills coming into the village. I hardly felt the miles. And I was saving money. Even a short ride to Deerslet tea rooms was saving me both petrol money and carbon emissions. Carbonlite on the other hand having cycled 1000 miles with ease, cricked his back on a bus while trying to accommodate a lady with a generous girth. Now he couldn’t cycle at all, and had to drive everywhere. Suddenly I was the queen of green and he was the lowly peasant.

The TV researcher got in touch to ask if he’d be on the programme, as predicted, a request he politely declined. He mentioned this fact as he was getting in the car to visit the osteopath, wincing as the torn ligaments in his back gave him grief.
“Want a lift?” he said?
“In that tin box? No thanks,” I replied hopping onto my bike.

Feeling the pinch

2008-08-01T12:48:00.002Z

The tumble drier sounds like an aircraft coming in to land. I’m worried it’s going to cause a house fire if I use it again. I’d buy a new one, but it’s the third appliance to break down this month. They always go bust in three’s don’t they? So no more tumble drying in the carbon household for a while.

And then the gas bill comes in at £550. I express my shock that six months of heating can cost that much.
“Three months,” Carbonlite replies. “And it was summer. We shouldn’t have had the heating on.”
He goes around the house turning the lights off and shouting at people to unplug everything and switch off computers instead of leaving them on standby.

He reminds me of my father. “It’s like Blackpool illuminations round here” my dad used to say every time someone turned on a light. He used to compost things too, and make soup from anything past it’s sell-by date that was lying around in the fridge. In fact my dad had us on a cabbage soup diet long before it became a fashion fad. I used to think he was just miserable, but now I have a new respect. He saved energy, discouraged waste, and kept the bills down. If my dad had ever got a £550 gas bill, he’d probably have had an angina attack down by the compost heap while drinking a beaker of cabbage soup.

I stare at the bill and try to think of an excuse. “It’s been a rainy summer” sounds a bit pathetic. “Gordon Brown is to blame with his 40% price hikes,” is convenient but not strictly true. I’m still trying find a way to wriggle out of it when I pull up at the petrol station and find it costs £75 to fill my car up with unleaded. When did that happen?
On the way home, I imagine cutting the bottom out of my vehicle and pushing my legs through, powering the vehicle along from Carnforth like the crew from the whacky races. I am angry that my car costs so much to fill. But then, I reason, a litre of petrol is no more than I’d pay for a cup of coffee. Coffee is a renewable source, you just drink it, grow some more beans and hey presto. But our fossil fuels can’t be renewed. They’re highly precious, having taken millions of years to produce, and masses of effort to extract. They’re a dwindling resource and we’re terrified of them running out, and yet we waste them on trips to Carnforth that we could cycle without breaking a sweat.

I think back to my green resolutions two years ago and the excruciatingly slow progress I’ve made. I cycle sometimes, but not often enough. I put the fire on when a jumper would do. I hang out the washing only when it’s sunny. This “eco worrier” needs that financial pressure to make her worry harder. As a family it hurts when we’re out of pocket with the gas and petrol bills. But as a mother of future generations, the price of carrying on as we are is far more alarming in the end. When our homes are flooded and our fossil fuels run out, we’ll dream of tough bills and petrol at £1.20 a litre.

I pick the Carboncopies up from scouts. They run in and switch on the lights.
“Hey, it’s like Blackpool illuminations round here, turn them off.” I say.
“What’s Blackpool laminations?” asks the youngest Carboncopy.
“Grandad’s favourite place,” I reply, thinking fondly of my elderly eco relative, who turns out to have been way ahead of his time.

Turf wars

2008-07-01T12:36:00.003Z

I was putting the Carbonbaby into her car seat when I noticed a yellow ‘post-it’ note on my windscreen. In neat writing it chastised me for taking up two parking spaces on the village square, and suggested I park in the Royal Hotel car park instead. I looked around, wondering if it was a joke and I was on candid camera? But no, the note was serious, and signed by a neighbour. I walked around my car, parked outside my house, wondering if I’d made some terrible error of judgment. In fact I had to concede my neighbour was correct; I had taken up two spaces. I probably do it all the time as my parking is rubbish.

I found myself thinking about this note over the following week. My neighbour was right. I shouldn’t be taking up too spaces on the Square. I shouldn’t be taking up any. Why has such a focal point and natural meeting place in the village become a car park, and when did this happen? For the first time I started to notice who was parking outside our house, and how jammed it had become at night. I began to see just how full the Royal Hotel and memorial hall car parks are by the end of the day. And it worried me. The modern obsession with having a car, or two cars (and sometimes three and four cars) for each family has created a big problem for a village like Burton in Kendal that wasn’t built for any cars at all. Our reliance on the motor means we don’t want to walk far to get to them. And we regard parking as a right, not a luxury.
I wondered what would happen if the new owners banned parking in the Royal Hotel Car Park? Would people be forced to part with one of their cars altogether if they could no longer put it anywhere at night? Then I got to thinking ‘What if the square went back to its former glory and became a village square again?’ A centre point of the village; with children playing and people stopping to have a chat and waiting for the bus without being surrounded by stationary metal boxes.

I told Carbonlite my concerns and together we brainstormed how we could make our village square a greener place. “I’ve got it!” he said, “Let’s make it a greener place. Literally. Guerilla gardening.” He gave me an article in The Guardian, about eco minded people making urban places more attractive by planting grass and seed by stealth. “We wait till they’ve all driven off and we lay turf. Then it becomes a real village green.” I laughed it off. It was such a blue skies idea.

Then I mulled it over. What if we weren’t the only people in the village who would like to see the square become a greener place? What if all the green fingered in Burton were potential guerrilla gardeners. So what’s the price of turf these days? A quick search of the net told me I could turf the whole square for £500. “I’ll pay for it myself,” said Carbonlite.

So what do you think, villagers of Burton in Kendal? Would you like your village square to become a square again? Or how about it becoming a green? Surely a turf war between Burton residents in the future is a higher price to pay. After all, how long before our cars start to outnumber our homes and drives and we start to fight amongst ourselves for available street space? It’s your village. What do you want…a green clean environment or a giant car park?
Answers on a ‘post-it,’ but not on my windscreen please. Alternatively drop us an e mail at burtonecoteam@btinternet.com or write to the Burton News. Let’s get this debate going. With your help, I’m looking forward to sunbathing on the village green next summer.

A package holiday?

2008-06-01T12:09:00.002Z

“We ought to take a package holiday sometime,” says Carbonlite as we cycle down to the farmers market in Milnthorpe. The hedgerows are flush with wild garlic and the breeze pushes pink blossom under our wheels as our feet spin in the sunshine. On this glorious day I don’t feel the need for a holiday and I’m curious Carbonlite should put forward the suggestion. “A package deal? You mean a fortnight in a Spanish hotel with all our drinks included?” I ask. “No,” he replies. “Not that type of package holiday. More of a ‘packaging’ holiday really. No cardboard, plastic or glass coming into or out of the house. For a week.”

Once I’ve got over the disappointment of no free booze, I begin to mull over his idea. A week’s ‘package holiday’ would cut down the endless trips to the tip to recycle plastic and cardboard, which I always end up having to do. And it might force me to shop more healthily and locally. But why wait for the peak of summer to liberate myself from the burden of cereal boxes and tetrapacks? Why not start straight away? And where better to start than a farmers market? I don’t mention anything to Carbonlite; my transformation into package holidaymaker will be a surprise for him at dinnertime.

My first purchase is easy. A loaf of wholewheat bread. I’m slightly concerned it’s been driven in from Liverpool that morning, but reckon the package-lessness of the product will cancel out the road miles. Joyfully, I ask the scouser bread man to drop it straight into my pannier next to the tool kit and the bicycle lock.

I then pop over to the olive stall and drool over green and black delicacies in their big curved yellow bowls. Simple and delicious. But where to put them? Olive man can’t just tip them into my pannier like bread man did. After cursing myself for not bringing a range of Tupperware tubs on my cycle ride, I decide to give olives a miss. But now olive man is all fired up to make a sale. He starts pushing an assortment of olives my way on cocktail sticks. And when he gets no interest he moves onto the pickled garlic. To stop him charging at me with any more sharp sticks I grab one of the large plastic containers stacked up next to the bowls and fill it up. “Climate death by olives and feta cheese,” I mutter to myself, “and the first failure on the Carbon family package holiday front.”

As a penance I move on to the vegetable counter and ask the assistant to tip the carrots and onions straight into my bag. Then I stroll to the opposite stall. I need a new quilt cover as ours is beyond repair. But all the quilts are wrapped in cardboard and plastic. As a compromise I unwrap the quilt, pay for it, then hand over the packaging to the sympathetic saleswoman. “So good to see a young person caring for the environment,” she trills as I shove the quilt deep into the pannier around the vegetables and olives.

Finally it’s over to fish man. Now this stall is good. Freshly caught fish and seafood, all laid out on ice filled platters. No polystyrene, no cardboard. Just a thin plastic bag that I can recycle, if I can get the smell of smoked haddock out of it. I slap it into the pannier, heave it closed and return to the bike.

“Have I got a treat for you,” I tell Carbonlite. I reach for the black pannier. Inside is a warm fish with a split bag and a brand new bleach white quilt now tie dyed with fish juice. As I pull it out of the bag to assess the damage, a Greek salad of olives, pickled garlic and feta tumble onto the kitchen floor. Meanwhile the bread is a funny shape and has a distinct whiff of onions. “You’ll notice I’ve started our package holiday already,” I say. “But I’m not very good at it yet. I think I’ll need a bit of practice. ” “Take an extra suitcase next time perhaps?” Carbonlite suggests with a grin. “Perhaps two. One for the fish and another for the duty free.” I reply, grinning back and plonking a bottle of wine from the local Spar down onto the table. Planning my next market trip in finer detail, I pour a glass of Chardonnay and pick flakes of smoked haddock from the buttonholes of the new addition to the bedroom.

The Eco Chick hatches

2008-05-01T12:12:00.002Z

I attend a pub quiz in the village. “What tree does palm oil come from?” the quiz-master asks. It’s the final question of the night and up until the last round only one point lay between my team and another for top position. The team turn to me. “Come on then Eco Worrier, what tree does palm oil come from?” “Well my initial response is the palm tree,” I reply. “But that can’t be right as it’s too obvious.” So I rack my brains about palm oil. I know palm oil is bad. Super bad. Bad, bad bad. And I know it’s encouraging the decimation of much of the rainforest of the world just so we can have longer lasting processed foods. But what I don’t know is…what tree it comes from. “It’s definitely from trees in hot areas,” I say. “Coconut?” someone weakly suggests. We decide on Mangrove as it’s the only tree we know that grows in paradise aside from the coconut or palm tree, even though I know they tend to grow in swamps and their ingredients are unlikely to enhance my Flora Light.

Of course the answer is palm, and of course we lose the point. But while the team go home thinking they could have won the wine, I am cursing myself for my lack of detailed knowledge about…well anything, but particularly the green principles I claim to live by. The thing is, I read the papers every day, shaking my head at the carbon profligacy of Western governments. I know that 4x4’s are instruments of global destruction. I know that those pretty islands you see advertised in the Sunday Times are going to be underwater by 2020 and that the coastline of Norfolk is crumbling away. But ask me about the specifics of global warming, of the icecaps melting or carbon footprinting and my mind is a blank page and my grasp of the real facts is, to be honest, a bit woolly. It’s partly that I get much of my information second hand, from Carbonlite or even the Carboncopies. I read reviews of books on global warming but never get around to reading the actual books. And it’s not even like I have to go and buy them. They’re a toppling tower of eco words next to the towel rail in the bathroom, and they’re all over the bedroom floor like a green carpet. Carbonlite says I don’t read them because I’m in denial. And I suspect he’s right, although I couldn’t furnish you with any specific details about the problem.

The next day I pick up the eldest Carboncopy from school. His teacher rushes up to me. “We were talking about trees and, playing the devil’s advocate I said to the class that it was fine to chop them all down. But your son stood up and protested. He told the class that trees take in all the bad air- the carbon dioxide- and turn it into oxygen so that we can all breath good air.” Obviously I am pleased with his brilliance. But also a bit cross that a seven year old could come up with that explanation when I’m still wondering which type of tree she’s thinking of chopping down. For a moment I wonder if I’ve got a ‘swampy’ on my hands before my son bobs into view. “Which tree produces palm oil?” I ask. “Palm.” the eldest Carboncopy and his teacher answer in unison.

At home I rifle through George Monbiot's extensive explanation of how we are doomed. I briefly consider reading Mayer Hillman’s definitive book on the state we’re in. Then I put them both down and log on. To the ‘Eco Chick’ website. Well a girl’s gotta start somewhere.

No prizes for points

2008-04-01T12:31:00.000Z

Once upon a time I had my weekly supermarket shop down to a fine art. Not any more. In an ever warming world, not even the purchase of a sausage is a simple process. Today I stand over the frozen food counter holding my usual selection of pre- cooked Weight Watchers meals. But something is stopping me putting them in the trolley. My Personal Carbon Counter. And no it’s not Carbonlite. And no I’m not having an affair. I curse under my breath and put the boxes back. Then I pick them up again. Then I put them down. Unable to make up my mind, I shuffle around the counter. Now I look like I need the toilet. It used to be so clear cut. In the past I could dash around with a trolley in half an hour, buying everything the Carboncopies need to keep them alive and healthy, and everything I need to keep me under ten stone in weight. Having ‘found’ my thinner self after three lots of childbirth, I’ve been obsessive about counting points.

But that was before I visited Booths with a carbon footprint specialist. Now carbohydrates are no longer the enemy. I’m now resolved to count a different kind of carbs; the carbon emissions clocked up by the manufacture, processing and delivery of our food. That’s a whole other set of points from the ones clocked up by eating too many crisps, and not quite so easy to calculate either. A Weight Watchers Chicken Tikka packaged meal used to put six points on the fridge door chart. Simple, easy to calculate and written on the box. But tot the same dish up in carbon points and it’s… a lot of points. For a start it’s been packaged twice, once with plastic, then with cardboard. Then it’s been cooked twice, or it will have been by the time I get it into my stomach. And there’s not very much food in it, which means you have to eat other things with it to feel satisfied. Or I do anyway. It’s not exactly locally produced. And it’s meat, which means the animal will have had to be fed and kept in a warm place before meeting its’ fate at the hands of a Weight Watcher butcher.

I try to calculate how many carbon points that might be and fail. So I abandon the dinner. Fruit and vegetables you would think would be more simple. But they’re not. I know where each fruit is coming from, but if it isn’t grown locally I have no idea whether it’s been air freighted or got here by ship. And as its winter, there aren’t many local fruits available. For the further flung foods my adviser told me to opt for fair trade wherever possible, so I pile some bananas into the trolley. I move to the lettuce. The words of my friendly carbon adviser ring in my ears, “Now that could be a disaster area,” he said as I reached out to grab a bag of the ready washed stuff. “It’s processed more than it needs to be and packaged unnecessarily. You might get some vitamins, but practically no calories. Just consider where it’s come from and how much you’d have to eat to sustain yourself.” I put the bag back on the shelf. Until that moment, the activity of lettuce consuming seemed a thoroughly happy, healthy, green thing to do. But evidently it isn’t always. “There’s a good chance it’s been flown from Florida,” my fellow shopper pointed out, “Air freighting lettuce has surely got to be the world’s most pointless activity.”

These days as I move around the supermarket, I’m much more aware of how much things are packaged. Why is cereal both bagged and boxed? Why are cakes individually wrapped then boxed as well? Why are so few brand of toilet paper recycled? Why isn’t more washing powder eco friendly? “Have you brought your own bags?” asks the checkout assistant when I finally make it to the till. Have I brought my own bags? Like Russian dolls the Bags for Life tumble out of a holdall.

At home I tell Carbonlite how confusing it all is. I’m also ashamed that my desire to be thin is still outstripping my desire to be green. “Why do I do?” I ask him. “Actually, I think I might be able to help,” he says, producing a manual from the shelf. “Grow our own food?” I read from the cover. “But we haven’t got a garden.” “We don’t need one,” he replies. He opens the book at a square of earth, only four foot by four foot, growing sixteen different vegetables. “…only thing is, you’ll have to pop back to the supermarket to buy a trowel.”

Furniture matters

2008-03-01T12:30:00.002Z

The living room is full of furniture. Dismantled wardrobes line the hall. When our friends announced they were moving to Australia, I asked them to pass on anything they didn’t want to take or couldn’t sell. I couldn’t face the thought of perfectly good wardrobes and tables ending up on the tip. So now we have new furniture, lots of it. “Do you only ever make friends with people who are about to emigrate?” asks Carbonlite’s sister, climbing over a wardrobe to get to the kitchen. She’s referring to the fact that our house has been almost entirely furnished by other people and their house moves.

7 years ago we moved to our Burton family home from a tiny two bedroom cottage in London. At that point we only had a bed, a wardrobe and a kitchen table. Luckily, shortly after our arrival some Swiss neighbours moved back to Switzerland, leaving us with a couple of unwanted set of chests of drawers and a wardrobe they’d have otherwise taken to the tip. Another friend moved to London and only had a small van, so our furniture collection expanded further. A further friend decided that Far Sawrey was too far to take three single beds, a filing cabinet and a mound of duvets, so we inherited them too. And so it is that our home is an eclectic jumble of…well, other people’s jumble. While other people’s houses are a reflection of their tastes, ours is a reflection of our ex-neighbours’ shopping trips.

But it doesn’t stop at the furniture. It was when Carbonlite really got into the green stuff that word began to spread. Now people regularly turn up with bikes, helmets, tyres, printers, files, and my personal favourite…back copies of Hello Magazine. My brother sent a pristine Ford Mondeo our way because he already had three cars in his drive and wanted rid of it. People constantly arrive with bags of clothes for the kids, which the children love, saving me a small fortune on the high street. When they grow out of them I give them away to others, a small scale community fashion industry.

Most of the time it’s great, we get free furniture, as well as saving it from being wasted and causing landfill emissions. At other times I wonder why I don’t get the chance to go shopping like other people and buy the things we really want, that reflect our personality and personal wealth. Sometimes I wonder why we accepted the huge 1970’s office sideboard that stretches the whole of our living room. And our crockery has depleted so drastically that we fight over cereal bowls in the morning, but don’t buy any just in case some bowls come our way for recycling. Last week we stayed with friends in Kew. Their newly refurbished house looking out onto the river is every home owners dream. But I couldn’t get past the spoons. When they opened their drawers and revealed a collection of soup, dessert and teaspoons that made me drool, I had to confess to the green eye of ‘spoon envy.’

But every spoon matters. Every impulse purchase puts another kettle or teapot into landfill. An American scientist recently told the world that the ‘Arctic is screaming,’ as a result of global warming. This is a direct result of our consumerism. Every time you take a wardrobe or microwave to the tip because it’s ‘not your colour,’ then the screams get louder. Next time you’ve tired of something, offer it to a neighbour or friend. They might need it, or know someone who does. Or contact Carnforth or Kendal Freecycle, and someone will immediately take it off your hands. On the other hand, if you’re thinking of emigrating and have a particularly nice set of spoons….

Basket case

2008-02-01T12:29:00.002Z

Six weeks ago the washing machine broke. To a family that processes one load of dirty washing and sometimes two almost day of the week, this was quite an inconvenience, especially as a call to Indesit established the repairman couldn’t come for a fortnight. When small mountains of washing started appearing throughout the house, I braced myself to brave the launderette. Did they still exist outside of Eastenders? I was reliably informed there’s a good one opposite the chippy in Carnforth. Perfect.

I took six huge bin bags of washing. Lugging them into the launderette gave me backache, but otherwise it wasn’t an unpleasant experience. I loaded up three big washers, bunged in nine quid and a bit of powder, and sloped off for coffee at a local cafe. Half an hour later it was all over and I bought chips to surprise the family with on my triumphant return home as the whiter, brighter Washing Queen of Carnforth.

The washing machine man showed up after two weeks and diagnosed the fault but didn’t have the right part to repair it. After he left I assessed the overflowing washing basket and decided it was time for another chip and laundry run. But here’s the thing. This time I went with less washing.

On Christmas Eve he showed up with the right part. But it was faulty. So in the new year I was back to the laundrette. But my six bags had now become two. As the weeks progressed the sheer effort of lugging loads of laundry in the winter weather from house to launderette and back again discouraged unnecessary washing and drying. The Carbonbaby was able to wear her skirt three days on the run if I prevented her from smearing jelly and ice cream into the denim fabric. I began inspecting the Carboncopies clothes to see if they could be recycled for another day. I employed Carbonlite’s legendary sniff test on his clothes, (much to his delight,) and put them back in the wardrobe if they passed. Everything from tea towels to sheets started to have a longer shelf life. As a result the laundry decreased by about a third and I rediscovered a life without being chained to the washing machine. I had more free time, and I didn’t need Carbonlite to point out the maths; we saved money on electricity and washing powder, but more importantly the planet benefited from my reduced use of my domestic machine.

But why did it take a defunct washing machine to change my habits? I’ve been trying to be environmentally conscious for the last two years so why hadn’t I tackled this issue before now? The simple answer is the washing machine is too convenient to resist. If loading the machine was as difficult as in my mother’s day where the unreliable twin tub blocked the kitchen for the day, with it’s overflow pipes filling the sink and everyone sweating over the steaming piles of laundry, then I might think again about dropping clean washing into the laundry basket. On a trip to Samoa a few years ago we discovered room service laundry meant the maids took the washing down to the river and beat it with sticks. If this was our only method of doing the laundry, I suspect we might wear our socks for one more day.

I tried to research just how ungreen our washing habit is. But the facts weren’t easy to find. The best estimate I found was that about £800 million of electricity is needed to pass 500 billion litres of water through UK washing machines, tumbledryers and dishwashers every year. 90% of UK households have a washing machine and each one averages 274 cycles a year, (so Im not alone in my daily wash) with each cycle using 50–120 litres of water (14% of household water use). But the main figure I was after was carbon emissions. Assuming the lifespan of an average washing machine is 11 years, apparently 1.6 pounds of carbon dioxide are emitted for every kWh of energy consumed. If that sounds a lot, that’s because it is.

The man from Indesit eventually returned with a part that worked. He was overjoyed to sort us out; more happy than I was. The white dalek in the corner of the utilities room sprang into life, exterminating stains and nasty niffs as efficiently as ever. The Carboncopies miss the chips. I miss coffee time in Carnforth. But laundry rationing and sniff tests continue.

The ghost of Christmas future

2007-12-01T12:27:00.001Z

A journalist drops me an e mail. “Wonder if you can help?” she writes. “I'm planning a feature for Prima magazine on women who will be celebrating Christmas in different ways this year. I’m looking for a mum whose family will be celebrating a very eco-friendly Christmas - ideally cooking a meal using some of their own produce, giving sustainable gifts, or in some way generally rejecting a lot of the commercialised junk that often accompanies the season! I wondered if your family might fit the bill?” I write back and decline. “The truth is that the Carbon family Christmas is a plastic, greedy and environmentally damaging affair,” I reply. But as I press send, and imagine it winging its way to London, I see what a terrible admission that is. If an eco worrier can’t cut down on waste at Christmas then what chance have the consumers of women’s magazines got?

If it was up to Carbonlite, Christmas would have been cancelled in our house years ago. And the Carboncopies aren’t to blame for all the waste either. Their list this year consists of a modest chocolate pooing reindeer and candy grabber. I admit I’m part of the problem. In my mind Christmas should be fun and present filled, and full of all the traditions I enjoyed as a child. I know we can’t carry on mindlessly shopping, destroying trees and over-consuming, but if I’m honest, I don’t want it all to end just yet; not while my children are children. I still remember not receiving my requested ‘Girls World’ make-up mannequin when I was seven, and am of the opinion that Santa should honour all reasonable requests. I make a list of how we can cut down on our Yuletide Carbon Footprint while still keeping the fun. First on the list is transport. Could we cycle to church, the supermarket and Santa’s grotto? Can we source our sprouts locally? I gleefully strike the annual trip to the mother in law’s house in London off the calendar. I ask the Carboncopies what else they think should be on my list. “Turn the tree lights off when we leave the room?” the youngest suggests. “Let’s not have turkey,” says the oldest. “Me like chocolate poos, me no like turkey,” says the Carbonbaby, running with the food theme. I decide to ring the council to find out what their environmental people recommend. “When Christmas shopping, use less carrier bags and more cotton bags; compost your peelings; recycle trees, buy presents that are less wasteful,” a council officer reels off down the phone. “Don’t just get people an extra bit of something random, buy an experience day, or a goat. There are so many people that have got the gadgets, the gismos and all the CD’s they want, but if you still have to get them something then there’s ways of doing it without ending up with loads of stuff cluttering the house and landfill.” I cast my mind back to the day my brother bought Carbonlite a goat for his 40th birthday instead of season 5 of ‘24.’ He wasn’t exactly overjoyed. But then I think of all the unwanted Christmas DVD’s rotting in the ground for the next 200 years and shiver. The ghost of Christmas future has walked over my grave.

I begin to search charity shops for presents for my extended family and pick up some unexpected treasures. A neighbour offers to sell me some unwanted and unopened games and I accept. I buy baby presents at the nearly new sale. We get down last years cards to make our own tags. My mother rings. “I’ve seen a beautiful rocking horse for the Carbonbaby,” she tells me. I rush to cut her off. “She doesn’t like them, they scare her,” I reply. “Oh good, then I’ll get a baby Annabel. And a cot. And all the accessories.” “She has dolls,” I cry. “Five of them.” “But not a baby Annabel” says my Mother firmly. “They’re all the same!” I shout. She puts the phone down in a huff muttering that we’ll have to come over soon to collect three bin bags full of presents. I suddenly have a vision of last year’s Christmas, surrounded by plastic toys, plastic packaging and acres of wrapping paper and I find I can’t remember a single present she bought them that they’ve still got or have actually played with. I start to feel angry. Such a waste of money and the planet’s scarce resources. Meanwhile, wall to wall adverts play behind me on TV offering cut price sofa’s, hoovers, and thousands of plastic toys. Carbonlite breezes in and smiles. I ask him how he’d improve Christmas this year. “That’s easy, no presents,” he says grinning. The Carboncopies howl. My mother rings again to say she’s seen a ‘ride’ for the Carbonbaby. I sigh, realizing what a lot of work lies ahead to ensure future Christmases for our carbon heavy planet.

Trolley dash

2007-11-01T12:23:00.000Z

Carbonlite and I go on the local Wheely Good Communities trolley dash. We pitch up at the Square with our bikes to find our neighbour is the only other volunteer dasher, even though it’s a crisp sunny day, one of those days you dream of on gloomy grey mornings. We race along in the sunshine with Carbonbaby in her seat. I try to calculate how much carbon we’ll save by not taking the car, and reckon it’s probably about half a living room full. “This is great, why don’t we do it all the time?” I say to Carbonlite. “Because you always take the car to get the shopping,” he replies. Good point. “Well I won’t in future,” I promise. When we reach Carnforth, I hop off my bike at Weightwatchers. “I’ll pop in and get weighed then see you in the Brief Encounter café,” I tell him.

When I get there, (half a pound lighter) he’s on his second coffee so I join him and order cake. “You can’t have that, you’re on a diet,” he says, swiping it off me. “But I’ve just cycled here so I’ve burnt off about just enough calories,” I say, grabbing it back and stuffing carrot cake into my mouth. “You know we’re really lucky where we live,” I remark between mouthfuls. “We’re a cycle ride from three supermarkets. And how many places can boast that?” “So why isn’t there anyone else out trolley dashing then?” Carbonlite replies. “What about all the Mums and older people, why aren’t they on their bikes too?” “Well, I’m here,” says our neighbour, joining us for cake. But we can’t stay long as I have to get up to the supermarket to return a pack of nappies Carbonlite bought on a rare ‘man shop’ last week. Even the Carboncopies sighed when he came home with the bumper pack, “The baby doesn’t wear nappies Dad, she wears pants,” said the oldest Carboncopy. “Dad doesn’t do shopping,” the youngest Carboncopy reminded him.

I lift the nappies out of the pannier outside the supermarket. “Are you coming in?” I ask. He shakes his head and tells me he’ll look after the bikes. “Shall I take the Carbonbaby in with me then?” He says no, so I leave him outside, tinkering with the gears.

At the checkout I load a basket of vegetables onto the conveyor belt, enjoying the peace and quiet without screaming kids and babies. Someone even packs my pannier for me. But as I’m about to pay, a shout from the entrance breaks the silence. “What are you doing?” Carbonlite stands by the entrance with his hands on his hips. “Shopping,” I reply. “Shopping? But you only came in to change some nappies and I’ve been standing outside waiting for you for twenty minutes.” The assistant smirks, along with the rest of the queue behind me. “Come on, we need to go,” he shouts. “But I’ve got to pay for these.” I tell him. “The Carbonbaby is crying,” he yells. “What am I supposed to do with her out here? You’ve been twenty minutes you know,” he looks at his watch and stomps about in the doorway. Now everyone in the other queue is smirking as well. “It’s a trolley dash?” I remind him, trying not to shout across the supermarket. “A what?” he says. “A Trolley Dash!” I yell, pulling my credit card out of the swiper and legging it outside with the shopping.

We cycle home in the sunshine still bickering. “Right, next week we’ll just do the dash bit and leave the trolley out of it then shall we?” I say. “Look I thought you were just going in to change some nappies,” he sulks, “Anyway, what’s for lunch?”
“Pampers,” I reply, changing gear and dashing off without him.

An all enveloping experience

2007-10-01T18:17:00.001Z

Carbonlite is in the living room, surrounded by mounds of paper, glueyrubbish and scissors. I glance down at his feet where several bulging carrier bags spill onto the carpet. Each bag is stuffed with used envelopes. A multitude of once healthy trees, pulped, posted and nowpacked into plastic bags.

I lift a bag onto the table. "What are you doing with all this?" I ask him suspiciously. While I'm glad he's moved the piles of bags from the downstairs toilet, I'm fearful of the implications on my tidy living room. "Well, if you look here you'll see I'm snipping the plastic window out of this envelope and cutting out the gum and paste." he says, manoeuvring his scissors around the envelope. "Those bits can't be recycled you see. And now I'm cutting the rest of the envelope into a small usable square. If I stick all these squares together I'm thinking maybe I can make a little book." I struggle not to smile. " A book?" I repeat. "Yes, a little book of paper, perhaps the kids could use it for colouring or something," he explains. "Or we could give them away as Christmas presents."

He looks at me, I look at him, and we both start to laugh. "It's nuts isn't it?" he acknowledges. "But if I don't have a go then what will I do with all these envelopes? I can't put them in with the newspapers for recycling because of all the plastic and glue. There's always the option of composting the ungluey bits on the compost heap, but it's such a waste of good paper. What would you do with them?" We both know my answer before it's even formed. I glance at the bin and then glance away before picking up the scissors.

"I like to do my bit to save the planet," I happily tell Carbonlite as I snip away at a pile of envelopes. He pauses, then sighs. "You know it's a trap, this 'doing your bit' attitude. Cut up a few envelopes, recycle the milk bottles and reuse a bag or two by all means, but don't pretend your 'doing your bit' to stop global warming. You’re still driving. You still use the tumble drier. You flew to Slovakia earlier this year. Do you know how many bags you'd have to re-use or refuse to pay for that one flight? Millions of the things. A mountain of bags the size of Helvellyn. Doing your bit isn't about doing what’s convenient for you. It's about completely changing your life," he says, still snipping out miniature squares and dropping them onto a table now resembling a haphazard mosaic.

I check the time. "Well it's nearly school pick up time and I've got to take the kids swimming later so I probably haven’t time to change my life right now," I tell him, "but I do have time to make a little book or two. Come on, we can road test them on the Carbon Copies." I snip a small square of paper out of a large white envelope, and try to work out how many carrier bags would have to be reused as payback for this afternoon’s drive to the swimming pool. Then I recall Carbonliteonce told me a six mile drive produces roughly the same weight in carbon emissions as a bag of sugar. I reflect on this as we enjoy some quiet companionship, cutting and assembling bits of paper.

"We’re home Dad," shout the Carbon Copies, dumping their wet swimming kit on the table. "What took you so long?" asks Carbonlite, sipping on a cup of tea in a living room free of paper, scissors and envelope."Oh, just doing our bit," I say, plonking a bag of sugar on the table. "We cycled to the swimming pool and saved a bag of sugar,"cries the youngest Carbonlite. "No, we saved the planet and bought a bag of sugar," corrects his brother.

Carbonlite smiles when I explain the relevance of the sugar. "That’s great, because I've made all the Christmas presents," he says opening the kitchen door with a flourish and revealing a wide selection of tiny assorted recycled books. "The only trouble is, I can't find an envelope to package them up."

The Anti-carist

2007-09-01T18:23:00.001Z

'Why did that car just throw coffee at Dad?' asks one of the Carboncopies as we head out of Bridgwater. Carbonlite wipes coffee off his face and jersey as we crunch over the now empty styrene coffee cup lobbed from the window of a Ford Fiesta boom-box. If he had the energy to sprint and catch the youths, I think he'd find a new use for his penknife, slicing tyres and scratching go-faster stripes."Maybe they thought we were thirsty?" I tell my son lightly, but inside I'm sighing. Now Carbonlite has a new platform for one of his rants.

Two weeks in to our cycle tour 'holiday' of Britain, he's quickly become the anti-carist; a motor-hating bicycle vigilante. And the worst thing about it is, I can see he has a point. I pedal on, knowing he is fuming away to himself. Not just at yobs who think it's a laugh to chuck coffee at cyclists, but at all the cars, lorries, campervans and caravans that cut us up, stare-eye us, beep at us or joke 'Can't you go any faster?' as they pass us on the hills. OK, I admit not everyone has been so negative; the long distance lorry drivers have obviously had training and give us a wide berth. Campervans carrying bikes wave as they overtake, and everyone stops for a chat when we stop to refuel at the supermarket or campsite.

On our way into Bristol, four drug-eyed teenagers even put their spliffs out to lend a hand and get us around some difficult gates, but most motorists prefer to watch the show from the safety of their tin cocoon. Traffic is not only choking up Carbonlite but it's choking this country.

South of Bristol, we stop briefly in the pretty village of Chew Magna. The volume of cars speeding down single track lanes to get quickly to the village traffic jam is unbelievable; and parked cars, vans and traffic queues make it hard to negotiate our way through the village. It's sad to see once quiet rural environments strangled like this. And cyclists are second class citizens: given cycle routes and facilities that never match those given over to the car. In the Tesco car park in Taunton we struggle to find a place to park our bikes to do the weekly shop. Give them their due there is a signposted cycle path, but there are only spaces for twenty cycles while the car park must have spaces for five hundred plus cars. Once we've parked our bikes, they are obviously something of an inconvenience to those trying to get their trolleys back to their cars.

In the twenty years I've been cycling, I've never classed myself as a cyclist, more a lass on a bike. A fair-weather biker who scuttles back to her car when the heavens open, but even I can see we've given too much of our country to the car. Just look at the swathes of roads, eating into the countryside with each improvement and widening scheme, the acres and acres of car parks in towns, cities and shopping centres. And all so we can be free to travel wherever we want whenever we want. Does no-one see the price of this freedom?

We follow the cycle path on the M5 road bridge across the River Avon, just yards from the deafening noise of thousands and thousands of vehicles going nowhere on important business, while we try to pick our way along a cycle route littered with shards of broken indicators, glass, straps and debris from traffic accidents. That's the price we pay.

But sometimes we 'anti-carists' and 'lasses on bikes' get our own back on the motorists. On the way to Chepstow, we ascend a steep narrow hill on a B road. We have no idea the local A road is closed for the day. All we can hear is chugg chugg behind us, as two tractors crawl up the hill in our wake. At the top of the hill we pause and pour ourselves a coffee from our flask as the tractors slowly overtake. Then we count the cars that follow. "One, two three" shout the Carboncopies as they help themselves to a biscuit. "Seventy one, seventy two, seventy three" completes Carbonlite with a smile, counting the last of the cars through ten minutes later. Each car waves enthusiastically at us, thinking we are the hold up, unaware that they are now behind two slow-moving John Deeres each pulling a huge trailer. "Shall we invite them to join us for coffee?" says Carbonlite, smiling at a motorist for the first time since the trip began.

Plastic fantastic

2007-08-01T18:29:00.001Z

I search the kitchen yet another time, opening draws and slamming them shut again, desperately searching for that brash red and white Tesco’s logo, the soft green and gold hues of Booths, or the old familiar ‘Asda price’ carrier. Nothing. Not one single sniff of a bag. It used to be so different. In the days BG (before Green) we had carrier bags full of carrier bags hanging from the walls. Every crevice or shelf in the utilities room with stuffed with them; carrier bag heaven, in a long sock shaped holder. Now we have four ‘bags for life’ that even the Carbonbaby can’t destroy. Only trouble is while I have a bag for life, I don’t have a bag for the bin. As a household we might be fantastic with our plastic, but doing the routine stuff is proving impossible.

My friend turns up with a Tupperware tub she’s bought for me after listening to me moaning on about having nothing to wrap the sandwiches in. “Did you get a bag with it?” I ask her eagerly. She looks at me strangely, “Surely the point of the Tupperware is to avoid using a bag.” But I don’t reply; I’m routing through the cupboard again, trying to find any old scraggy bit of plastic to line the bin with. I give up and leave a pile of rubbish by the sink. I will have to go foraging.

I start with the village shop. I don’t need anything, but bundle a pile of things onto the counter anyway. But no one asks if I want a bag, and I’m too embarrassed to ask for one. So I pile some more things onto the counter. Eventually the balance is tipped and I’m offered the precious carrier. But just as I’m about to accept, a neighbour walks in. Now I’m torn. I need that bag. But I also feel I should set an example and refuse the bag. “But it’ s recycled…” I argue with myself, ‘…it’s not new.’ The angel and the devil sit on my shoulders arguing about global warming. “Take the bag,” says the Devil. “Save a polar bear,” says the Angel. Eventually the angel shouts the loudest, “If we got all the carrier bags we use in Britain together and extracted all the energy that are contain in those carrier bags, we can run a sixty watt light bulb for four hundred thousand years, or power Carlisle for the whole year.” She’s right, although I’m not sure what Carlisle has to do with anything. “No thanks I don’t need a bag,” I hear myself say. Aargh. I bundle up twenty five different grocery items, trailing toilet rolls and mushrooms all the way down the street. Back home I avoid the kitchen and dump what’s left of the shopping onto the living room table. Luckily its time to get the kids from school. Perhaps they’ll bring their PE kits home in a plastic bag.

“Are mouses grey?” asks the youngest Carboncopy. “Sometimes,” I reply, “Why?” Because if mouses are grey then there’s a mouse by the sink in the kitchen.” I run helter skelter into the kitchen to find the pile of rubbish disturbed and all the bits of food I’m not allowed to compost nibbled around the edges. “That’s it, I can’t stand it any more. I’m going to Tesco,” I shout.

“Don’t forget to take your bags,” say the Carboncopies, running in with four bright blue Bags For Life. “We know you like to save the planet.”

Love miles

2007-07-05T21:19:00.000Z

Two years ago it seemed like a good idea. A family affair - christening, blessing and hog-roast. No matter it was in Slovakia, with airfares so cheap we promised we'd fly over for an international gathering of the clans. Two years ago we didn't really think about the environmental consequences of our actions, but that was then and it's now we're being called on our promise.

The whole thing has sent me into something of a panic, trying to work out if there's a way to keep a longstanding family promise while honouring our environmental pledge to reduce carbon emissions. The cost of breaking either promise is high; family let-down and the breakdown of Anglo-Slovak relations on the one hand; or two tonnes of extra carbon on our tab, enough to wipe out all this year's emission reductions. Mind you the cost of going wipes out our savings too by the time you've added on all the little extras budget airlines don’t advertise. And cars, buses and trains are no better, environmentally or financially; this party is costly whichever way you travel. But this dilemma isn't about money vs the environment, it's about family and the environment.

It would be easier if others in the family sympathised with our environmental predicament, but like much of the population they just don’t seem to get it or perhaps just don’t care. I've tried explaining but it's deaf ears, counter-arguments and rationalisations. "Well, you were happy enough to fly to New Zealand and back for your holidays two years ago." " Flying isn't a major cause of global warming you know." "You don't think you not flying is going to make an ounce of difference to anything except us?" It's a pointless argument. So it falls to us to decide; to fly or not to fly, that is the question.

After our environmental awakening we'd made a rule not to, but this has really put it to the test. When I weigh things up, I can't seem to balance the scales. In my head I know to fly is 'bad, wrong, environmentally irresponsible' but in my heart I fear the more immediate consequences of family strife, the prospect of which seems far more frightening than long term global meltdown.

George Monbiot describes jetting around to see family and friends as clocking up love miles. He recognises the double-bind we face when trying to visit far-flung loved ones and cut-down on carbon; it's just not possible. In a carbon rationed world something will have to give, and given that not even the greenest of us will find it easy to give up love miles, he reckons there's only one thing that will help us put planet before family and that's grounding the airplanes. For a while last weekend, it looked like terrorists might just do that and resolve things for us, but airport closures were short-lived, security was tightened and flight disruption minimised. It's going to take a lot to stop those love miles.

It's with something of a heavy heart and against my environmental conscience, we're going to put family first. And wipe out in one short flight a year's worth of carbon saving small stuff. I guess putting family first is something we all do in small ways everyday, but it's for family now at the cost of family future and how selfish is that? It's going to be a long haul to recover from this short-haul environmental blow-out.

We're all going on a summer holiday...

2007-06-20T22:26:00.000Z

As the summer holidays loom, tea time time talk has inevitably turned to 'Where shall we go?' and 'What shall we do?' Just the prospect of spending six weeks at home while the kids run riot is already driving me crazy so that's out of the question. We've got to go somewhere and got to do something, but what?

How about that wilderness trip of a lifetime canoeing down the Yukon? Or a fortnight on safari in Africa? What about biking in Cambodia and Vietnam? Or trekking in China or Nepal? The travel supplements, family adventure brochures and guide books are full of ideas and inspiration. But just thinking of flying five of us to an exotic destination for a hedonistic family adventure doesn't seem very responsible any more. So it's just as well we can't afford it financially as well as environmentally; makes my unfulfilled dreams a little easier to live with.

And so thoughts turned to holidaying at home, which has not been so immediately full of inspiration. After arguing a lot about the best place to go we agreed to compromise and make our destination a journey. So having established that we couldn't go somewhere and that going nowhere was not an option, it was obvious we had to go everywhere. And so emerged a somewhat absurd plan to take on a classic road trip, from one end of the country to the other; from Lands End to John O Groats.

Only thing was we couldn't possibly do it by car; never mind environmentally, just mentally, cooped up in a tin-box day after day, guzzling fuel, enduring the great British summer and accompaniment of traffic jams. No, there's only two green ways to do Lands End to John O Groats - by foot or by bike. And with just six weeks of holiday and three kids, one is clearly impossible and the other..... Well, there's only one way to find out.

The Small Stuff

2007-06-06T15:05:00.000Z

World Environment Day had sent Carbonlite into a tizzy. He was beavering away at letter writing when I returned from Weightwatchers. ‘Oh God’ I thought, ‘here we go again.’ I went to the shed to get my bike out.

“I thought you had a meeting in Kendal soon,” Carbonlite muttered.
I confirmed that I had, “We’ve been asked to do one thing to make a difference on Environment Day haven’t we? Well I’m going to cycle to my meeting.” I had hoped to pledge to cycle to all of the days meetings but looking at my schedule it would involve seventy five miles of cycling, and I wasn’t that committed to change.

I grabbed my cycle helmet; if I didn’t move quick I was going to be late for my first meeting with a new client and I had at least twelve miles to cycle. “Oh and while I’m cycling to Kendal, Fenella will be buying eco washing balls and Natalie plans to plant and recycle a tree. It doesn’t have to be the big stuff you know.”

At the mention of a couple of our more environmentally aware friends, Carbonlite looked up. “How do you know what they're doing ?”
“Because I asked them to do something for World Environment Day last night. If you want to save the planet, you have to think ahead.” And I waltzed out of the front door.

Just one more thing....

2007-06-05T09:35:00.000Z

It's UN World Environment Day and the great and good Climate Change and Environment Minister Ian Pearson wants us all to mark it by thinking about our impact on the planet and committing to do one thing differently to reduce it.

Well, that's just great. As if I don't spend enough time already fretting about this. And now the government without the backbone to commit to any radical action to really address the causes of climate change wants me to do more.

Well I want them to do more, to move beyond aspirations and rhetoric and show some real leadership with tough action, even if it might be unpopular. I want to see them toughen up the climate change bill, commit to reduction targets that are based upon best scientific evidence, ban energy inefficient products, invest big time in renewable energy, tax to the max high polluting cars, invest in world class public transport infrastructure, tax, discourage or ban non-essential flying, look seriously at personal carbon rationing, and stop waiting for the enlightenment of the masses or the markets to sort the problem out. It's not going to happen.

So what's my one thing? Well, I'm going to write to my MP and the government and respond to their consultation paper on the climate change bill, asking them to toughen it up.

So, if you''re stuck for an action today, then why not do the same. The Friends of the Earth Big Ask campaign website makes it very easy for you - with letter templates, details of your MP and a way for you to email them directly, making you doubly environmentally pious by saving ink, envelopes, stamps and letter miles. You can email your MP or respond directly to DEFRA's consulation. But don’t leave it too late, the closing date for responses is 12th June.

Go on it only takes a minute or is your planet not worth that?

Apple crumble

2007-06-03T23:15:00.000Z

What a fuss about half an apple. All I said was it seemed a terrible waste to throw it away. I mean it had only been nibbled around the edges and there was plenty of apple left to offer round, make juice, cook up a crumble or chuck on the compost. That's all I was trying to say but the point got lost in a stupid row.

It was an argument about something and nothing - the fate of a half eaten apple - but it stayed with me for days. And you know why? Because it's not an argument about apple, it's about attitude. The attitude that says it's OK to be wasteful, to bin without thinking, to dispose of the inconvenient or not quite perfect, to not to think about our everyday actions or concern ourselves with how all the small stuff adds up. Like we do most of the time. Like I do a lot of the time. Like the Washingqueen did with said apple.

And it makes me mad; mad with the Washingqueen, mad with myself, mad with the mindless masses that continue living wasteful, carbon guzzling lifestyles, acknowledging the very real dangers of climate change, debating it at dinner parties, making the right noises in the recycling department but still not really sweating the small stuff, preferring instead to put their energies into making excuses. "Well…. does it really matter? I mean what's the point in me bothering if no-one else does? It's not easy being green you know. And besides what difference is one apple/lightbulb/plastic bottle/journey going to make anyway? We all know there are bigger fish to fry than me, bigger problems that need solving elsewhere first eh? "

That's the apple attitude and it will make the world crumble. While we all wait for someone else to do something, making excuses about why we can't.

Small stuff matters, no matter how small. It matters because it makes us more mindful and requires us to take responsibility for our actions and the consequences that follow. It matters because it makes us part of the solution not part of the excuse making problem. And it matters because it may encourage others to do their small stuff too, in their own small ways. And as every charity will tell you, every little helps.

Anyone for crumble?

It's just an apple

2007-06-02T23:09:00.000Z

The littlest Carboncopy has been up all night with a cough, so I keep him off school for the day. At lunchtime Carbonlite rings to ask for a lift home from the station. He’s been in Manchester for a business meeting. On the way out of the door, the Carboncopy begins to whine. He’s hungry. My first reaction is to give him a picnic lunch, but then remember the new rule. No food in the car. What’s to be done? An apple. A lovely fresh green organic apple, full of vitamin C. Well it’s fruit not food isn’t it? No calories, you see. The Carboncopy munches on it happily as we drive to the station.

“Which platform for the Manchester train?” I ask the ticket man.
“Platform number two, under the bridge and last on the left,” he replies.
“And do you have a bin?” I enquire, feeling like a model citizen, as I hold up the remains of the apple by the stalk.
“Platform number two, under the bridge and last on the left,” he says, without glancing up from his computer.

I carry the apple, arm outstretched through the ticket office and into the tunnel. It has hardly been touched, but bears a neat circle of nibbles all the way around its circumference. The Carboncopy spots his Dad as we turn the corner under the bridge. He runs to him. I pass them by. They clasp each other tightly, while I hold the apple stalk at arms length. Carbonlite raises his eyebrows in a silent question.
“ I’m looking for a bin. Platform number two, under the bridge and last on the left, apparently” I tell him.
“You’re putting that in a bin? Why? It’s a perfectly good apple.” he exclaims.
“It’s a perfectly munched apple,” I say, pointing to the ring of mini teeth marks. “What do you suggest I do with it? ”
“Eat it.”
“No thanks. Second hand spit. Not my thing.” I head off towards platform two once again but Carbonlite grabs me by the arm.
“Take it home then.”
“What for?”
“To eat. You could….make a crumble.” says Carbonlite.
“A crumble. With half an apple?” I ask, turning around reluctantly and starting to walk back under the bridge behind my husband and son, all the time holding the apple by its stalk.
“Yup, its called Recycling.”
“It’s called a stupid idea.”

I catch up with Carbonlite as he reaches the car.
“I’ll drive,” he says.
Oh no you won’t.” I reply. “You can hold the apple. Here, take it!”
“No, it’s yours.” The other passengers who spilled out of the station with us are now staring as I open the door and thrust a half munched apple into my husband’s lap. He puts it on my chair and starts the engine.
“It’s not my apple!” I cry, then, “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.” I plonk myself down into the seat, once again holding the twig at right angles to my body. “It’s ridiculous and pedantic.”
“It’s a perfectly good piece of food.” Carbonlite replies. “And it’s not me being pedantic. You still don’t get it do you? It’s symptomatic of the way we live and this whole wasteful society. Just because an apple is cheap and easily available, you throw it away.”
“I don’t normally waste them, but I happen to be at a railway station miles from home…and the teethmarks aren’t my own and…it’s just an apple!” I am shouting again.
“Yes it is just an apple and it may seem like a small thing but if everyone in the UK threw away an apple every day of their lives then it’s not a small thing any more. It’s the same as the argument as the lightbulb; if everyone changed to a lower energy lightbulb we could shut down a power station. And in any case, didn’t I ban food in the car?”
I sigh, my thumb and finger aching from holding the stalk..Another argument lost. Our Carboncopy has tired of us and fallen asleep. Carbonlite starts the engine and I am left, like Eve to his Adam, still holding the now discoloured apple. “I am so not going to make you a crumble when we get home.”

A lighter shade of green

2007-05-18T20:55:00.000Z

Eighteen months ago I knew little about the environment. Sure, I’d heard about global warming but to me it was a global problem. My life was lived at a local level in a South Cumbrian village with three young children providing the challenges of daily life. But my husband had begun to read books on climate change and pay more attention to the news. He talked about the state of the planet as much as he talked about his kids, he got frustrated, he got angry, and then he got to work. Action begins in the home and that’s where he started his campaign to make us a greener family. From being a carbon guzzler like the rest of us, he slowly became Carbonlite, and began to change our household habits in small, at first almost imperceptible ways. Water butts and compost bins started appearing on the patio, he would weigh and catalogue our rubbish, measure gas and electricity on a spreadsheet, log every car mile and question any unnecessary journeys. I put all this down to being one of his Projects. Just as I had been the shed widow, the cycling widow, and the DIY widow at various points of our married life, I was now the green widow. It wouldn’t last.

But it did, and through his efforts and obsessions, I was dragged kicking and screaming into the reality of what it means to be on this planet at this time in history.

He transformed our children into Carboncopies of himself; eco worrying Carbonlite miniatures who hassle me as relentlessly as their Dad continues to do. Around here, you don’t necessarily need to leave the room to have the light or computer switched off, and putting on the heating requires a family conference.

Making our lives and our home more environmentally sound has been a long, and at times difficult process. We live in an old and draughty former village post office, with thick walls and thin, crumbling windows. We don’t have a garden to house all the necessary compost heaps, recycling crates and water butts that being environmentally conscious requires. We are both self employed and money is often tight. At first I offered endless resistance to my husbands plans, clinging onto the notion that I should prioritise the needs of my own family above those of our ailing planet. Even now I stumble at some of the major hurdles. Where Carbonlite would happily do without a car, I argue that we live in a village five miles from the nearest town and our children need to be shepherded to swimming lessons, football practice, cubs and nursery. Where Carbonlite would do away with the boiler and central heating for eleven months of the year, I hate to be cold in my own home, and love to relax in a bath. Where Carbonlite would live on left over scraps and home grown tomatoes, I worry about my children having a balanced diet. All this provides the same tensions and conflicts in our house as it must do in many homes around the UK.

Some things have changed. I now call myself a cyclist, enjoy using human powered transport, and despair of those who drive the school run. We eat organic and local. We wear extra jumpers around the house. I’ve even managed to tackle my addiction to the washing basket, wearing the same clothes for more than one day, and using the washing line instead of the tumble dryer….most of the time. On the bigger issues like the car, the house, and wasting energy and resources, we still bicker and fight, and try to convince each other of our arguments. But then that’s all part of bringing the global down to a local level isn’t it? We aren’t environmentalists, just a Cumbrian family trying to be more aware, and paint ourselves a deeper shade of green. The blog entries here and now on the Westmorland Gazette site are part of a blogging project we’ve been working intermittently on for 18 months, part of our attempt to understand each other, to grapple with the everyday demands of juggling family and an environmental conscience, and to wade through the barrage of information that’s published every day about our changing world. And while it won’t save the planet, it might help save our marriage when faced with some of the tough decisions we’re all going to have to make as our climate hurtles towards chaos.

Less is more

2007-05-18T10:35:00.001Z

To my mind going green is very simple; it's all about less. Consume less, travel less, waste less, use less. Trouble is achieving this always seems to involve more; more hassle, more time and often more money. The more you look at it, the more you realise becoming anything more than the palest shade of green touches all aspects of household life - food, waste, shopping, water, travel, work, leisure, holidays. Beyond making simple changes (like your lightbulbs) becoming a darker shade of green means changing habits, changing routines you just don’t think about day to day, routines that have served you well for years, unconscious routines that are hard to change. While I find the idea of greening simple, it's still a challenge personally. And then there's the Washingqueen.

To make a change in any household you not only need to change your own habits, you need to nudge, cajole and persuade your housemates to change theirs too. And if they don't believe in the same things you do, have the same fervour, enthusiasm, sense of urgency or aptitude for change then things get harder still. Let's just say the Washingqueen and I have different interests in this, move in different ways and at a different pace. I try to think of it as a healthy tension, especially when I'm completely exasperated by her lack of buy-in to my latest green scheme.

Still, the Washingqueen has come a long way in her greening, so much so she wants to change her name to Ecoworrier. It's a change I support and reflects a change in her and the progress we've made in 18 months of trying to keep being green high on our household agenda while bringing up three kids, trying to keep food on the table, empty the washing basket, earn a living and share a little of the experience through our blog. She's campaigned hard to persuade me that we should publish our blog more widely through the Westmorland Gazette, to encourage others to think greener, act greener, be greener. Well, put that way it's a project I can only support. I hope that something of what we share here, despite being one more thing for me to do will help us all with the greatest problem of all, how to live with less.

Inconvenient truths

2007-05-10T20:03:00.001Z

I’ve heard on the greenvine that Al Gore has been in the UK recently, training businessmen and eco enthusiasts to deliver his environmental lecture and slideshow ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ As the official Eco Worrier of Burton I am wounded that Al hasn’t selected me to be one of his disciples to spread the message about global warming.
“Can you believe he asked Richard Branson and not me?” I grumble to Carbonlite as we swat fruit flies in the kitchen on an unseasonably hot day. “Richard Branson. What’s he ever done for the environment except pollute it with his stupid planes?”
“Well,” says Carbonlite, ever the voice of reason, “he’s promised to invest £1.6billion pounds over the next 10 years into to lowering our dependency on fossil fuels.”
I glare at him momentarily before replying, “Ok, fair enough. But what -apart from chucking 1.6 billion pounds at it - has Richard Branson ever done for the environment?”
Carbonlite charges at the flies with a sweeping brush, pushing crowds of them out of the velux window. “He’s joined the steering board of the Energy Future Coalition and has set up a good few of bio-fuel refineries in US.” Unworried by Carbonlite’s broom, the flies zoom straight out of one window and back in through the other.
“Ok, apart from promising 1.6 billion pounds, being on an energy coalition, and building a heap of oil refineries, what has Richard Branson ever done for….”
“Well he’s related to the guy who founded the World Wildlife Fund,” Carbonlite interrupts, “…and apparently he’s planning to turn the British Virgin Islands into the first entirely renewable energy powered Caribbean island.”
“All right, all right, Richard Branson is an international environmental hero, and I’m just a nobody,” I say irritably.
He grins at me and pushes gently on my arm with the brush. “Look, put it this way, if Richard Branson just gives that lecture once to his senior managers, that’s thousands of people educated about global warming in one stroke. How many people are likely to turn up to your Inconvenient Truth lecture in the memorial hall on a wet Tuesday night?”
“Every green convert counts,” I sniff, before quickly formulating a new plan. “You know what? I’m going to write to Al Gore to see if I can get on the next round of his training courses.” I reach for my laptop as Carbonlite puts down his broom, defeated by the fruit flies. Clouds of them are now storming the living room. “Cheer up, even Al Gore would say it’s not easy being green…unless you’re Kermit the Frog,” I reassure him, already wondering if Mr Gore will be listed in the Yellow Pages under Environmental Winners or Presidential Losers.

Before very long I have a raft of addresses for Al, but where to send my request? To his publishers, his campaign officers, his film company, his home, his UK or US office? The White House? All activity has now stopped in the kitchen but there’s a cacophony of banging outside. On the patio Carbonlite seems to be building a big wooden box with a lid.
“This is where all the flies are coming from. The compost bin. I’m going to box ‘em in,” he tells me. Typical. While I’m faffing around trying to contact Al Gore, Carbonlite does something environmentally practical. I’m never going to get the hang of being green.

Two days later, the sun is still shining and the fruit flies are in heaven. They’ve now got a beautiful wooden villa, with free buffet 24/7, plus if they get too hot, they can have a quick dip in the water butt, then retire into our house for a quick joust with Carbonlite and his broom. There are now thousands of them swarming into the kitchen, probably looking for directions to the compost holiday resort. Carbonlite is permanently installed on the kitchen worktop with a broom in one hand, a pan lid in the other, and a tea towel wrapped around his face; our very own domestic gladiator.
“What have I done?” he cries. “They’re so happy with their new home they’ve invited all their friends and relatives from the city to join them.”
“Come on Russell Crowe, we need to empty the peelings into the compost bin.” I tell him, grabbing the green mini bin from under his feet. What was once a quick chore of dropping potato peel into the bin is now a two man job requiring nerves of steel as the flies wage war against the humans trying to invade their new sauna. I make a mental note to ask Al about compost heaps and fruit flies, and add his reply to my future lecture on Inconvenient Truths.

Blushing Green

2007-03-20T12:13:00.000Z

We are expecting weekend visitors and it’s bringing me out in a rash. Jenny is an ex BBC colleague and Mark is a barrister. They live in a house on the river in Kew with their two young children. Their children are well behaved and quiet. Their house is new and modern. I fear we will look like a Cumbrian version of The Beverly Hillbillies, and they’ll wish they’d remained in suburbia.

The latest green war to be triggered in the Carbon household is about the kettle, or more specifically the lack of it. I scowl at the flask, sitting on the kitchen surface, an unassuming silvery tube that’s now ruining my life. At the start of every day, Carbonlite boils a full kettle and fills the flask, screwing the lid on tight. All boiling water for cooking or drinking is to come from this flask. The whole process has totally put me off my coffee; practically the only vice I have left.

“I can’t understand why no one has come up with a kettle that’s insulated like a flask,” says Carbonlite as he dunks his biscuit into a flask facilitated cup of tea.
“I can’t understand why anyone bothered to invent a kettle when everyone could have a tepid cup of coffee like this one,” I reply, polishing the unused kettle with a dishcloth and wondering how to sabotage its aluminium partner. Then I catch sight of Carbonlite's frown. “Yes, yes I know. The average person has 4.3 cups of tea a day and if you boil a full kettle for just one mug you can cause up to 8 times the carbon dioxide emissions."I quote the figures without thinking about it. "But see it from my point of view. Im being force fed lukewarm water with a tea bag dipped in 4.3 times a day. It doesn't make for a relaxing tea break. Although there is a plus point to all this. The water is so lukewarm by lunchtime that it doesn’t melt your biscuit when you dunk.”
“No dribbles down my jumper, so no laundry needed either,” says Carbonlite, delighted by his own cleverness.

“There. A nice shiny kettle for Jenny and Mark,” I say deliberately. Carbonlite doesn’t reply so while I’m on a roll, I get in a quick dig about how many of our mugs are chipped and cracked. And unfortunately crockery cracks and colour clashes aren’t restricted to our mugs. Since we started going green, we haven’t replaced any broken china, but simply bought odd pieces from charity shops. Now we have a selection of plates for five, unmatching bowls for four (with cracked glaze) a random drawer of cutlery and thirty chipped mugs.

And as there has also been a ban on buying sheets for several years (“Whats wrong with all those pink stripey ones your Mum gave us?”) making up four extra beds proves a headache. Before long I am shouting at everyone because I can’t find a quilt to match a pillowcase. Then I notice how thin the quilts seem and start shouting at Carbonlite for forcing the kids into inadequately togged bedding. Eventually he storms in and holds the labels up to my nose.
“ A twelve…it’s a twelve…that means it’s a winter quilt, not a summer one. The children are NOT cold at night.”
“Yes we are,” shouts the oldest Carboncopy from his bedroom.
“But not when we have our hot water bottles and our socks on and our blankets,” his brother replies.
“Except when Daddy fills the hot water bottle from the flask,” they cry in unison.

I move on to the next bedroom and stuff a kingsize quilt into a double duvet with blue ink stains on the front. I lie it onto the bed and try to smooth out the creases, wondering if I should explain to Jenny and Mark that I would have done the ironing except it isn’t good for the planet. (The one rule imposed by Carbonlite that made me cheer out loud!) I almost weep as I think of that other world in London that our friends still inhabit; white cotton percale pillows match white cotton percale duvets, people go shopping for garlic presses and fancy bottle openers and kettles aren’t black market goods. As we clean the bathroom in a show of togetherness, I brief my husband on how to treat our guests. “Don’t go on about waste, don’t keep turning the heating off all the time they’re here, and whatever you do make their tea with HOT water.”

I’m interrupted by the sound of a doorbell, and the Carboncopies rush off with Carbonlite following. I clean the toilet and go downstairs to greet my friends. They are standing in the living room shivering.
“It’s cold today,” says Jenny, giving me a hug.
“Never mind,” says Mark. “We’ve a cup of tea on order.”
I can’t face going to check up on Carbonlite. I’ll know from the biscuit dunking whether it’s a flask or a kettle job.

The good old days, the green old ways

2007-03-06T10:19:00.000Z

I got collared by one of the elder members of our community recently; a lovely old woman who just loves to talk. A lot. She usually collars the Washingqueen but she was out so I got my ear bent instead. Now I don’t have much patience when it comes to small talk but as I half listened to her stories of ‘the good old days’ and her complaints about the pace of life today, the other half of my mind got wondering whether she might actually have a point, if I could only be bothered to listen.

I mean who said more, faster, cheaper, is progress? That growth, economic development, increased prosperity, new technology are good, necessary, the way forward? Why can’t progress mean going backwards? Perhaps that’s the kind of progress we need right now. But it does seem to go against the grain, in fact it goes against everything I’ve ever been subconsciously indoctrinated with in our society.

It’s easy to dismiss ‘oldies’ fond recollections of the good old days as the rose tinted musings of dinosaurs, technophobes or others unable to adapt to the demands of modern living. But perhaps they’re right; perhaps things were better back then. When people couldn’t afford a car, shopped locally, walked to work, grew their own veg, holidayed in Blackpool, heated just one room, bathed once a week, owned less, consumed less, made do and mended.

When you get down to looking at the make-up of your great big environmental footprint, it doesn’t take more than a degree in common sense to realise that actually many of the good old days good old ways are actually green old ways. Maybe we really do need to go back to the future.

Global slamming

2007-03-01T12:55:00.000Z

“Look how many aluminium milk bottle top lids I’ve collected.” I tell Carbonlite, showing him a vase full of shiny round buttons…“you know, I reckon I’ll have this planet saved by teatime.” But Carbonlite has been reading his scary climate change books again and he’s pessimistic that we’ll exist at all beyond next Christmas. “Well if everyone is doing their bit like me….” I argue. “But they’re not are they?” says Carbonlite gloomily. “…and even if you and I save up a bottle top mountain the size of Helvellyn, it’s still not enough. We’ve got to get out there and convince people to change their habits.” I tell my husband that standing on a recyclable soapbox in the village square isn’t my thing. “I’m a creative,” I announce, “And I’ve decided to become a poet.” Carbonlite picks up a bus timetable and a large collection of books. “Well, let’s hope your sonnets have the power to hold back rising sea levels and tsunamis,” he says as he packs his rucksack for a visit to the library.

When he returns, I’m halfway through my first masterpiece. He reads it over my shoulder. “You’re writing a poem about your weight?” he asks. I tell him I’ve decided to develop myself by entering the poetry slam at The Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal. He looks blank. “It’s like Pop Idol for poets,” I explain, “Everyone is given three minutes to hog the microphone then the audience vote for the best two performance poets. They go through to another round, then the overall winner goes on to a regional final later in the year to compete for the title of ‘Slam Champion of Cumbria.” Suddenly Carbonlite is fully engaged, asking how many people turn up to enter and spectate, and whether there are any guidelines on subject matter. I go through the rules in further detail with my increasingly cheerful husband. “Fantastic,” he says, when I’ve finished. “You can be Cumbria’s first green poet, and I’ll come and cheer you on.”

The compere Marvin Cheeseman announces my name for the second time of the night and I walk into the pink stage lights accompanied by clapping and cheering. Half an hour earlier my poem about dieting went down a storm and landed me one of two places in the final. This time I am carrying an accessory; a green mini compost bin. I smile at the audience and ask if they like my new handbag. Everyone stares at the grubby home composting bin. I assure them it’ll catch on in fashion circles, and that Posh and Becks might soon be photographed in LA with matching compost handbags, although theirs will be branded with a Gucci logo, rather than a sticker highlighting the foolishness of home composting chunks of cheese. Through the pink glare of the lights, I see Carbonlite gesturing at me to get on with the poetry. So I open my compost bin, and pull out my script. But I hardly need it. For just under three minutes I am an eco ‘Eminem’; an unstoppable one woman anti- global warming poetry machine. I inspire greatness, perspire greenness, rewire people’s collective conciousness. I am a planet saving, carbon shaving, offsetting, unjetting queen of green. A prophetic, poetic, global worrier. I forget I’m at The Brewery and imagine I’m on a world stage. I am now Al Gore, Bono and Swampy rolled into one. In my rap, I recount my struggle as a born again green; my squirmy encounter with the Wiggly Wigglers on the patio, the burgeoning recycling HQ in our downstairs loo, the bottle top mountain that will save the polar bears, and my colourful relationship with the mini compost bin.

The whistle blows. My three minutes are up. Suddenly I’m not a global eco warrior, but Eco Worrier from Burton in Kendal. As I amble off the stage I remind myself that Al Gore had to begin somewhere, although admittedly he started by coming second in the race for American President, while I am being crowned runner up at a poetry event in Kendal. I return to my seat and sip on a spritzer. The panel awards me three nines. Now the other finalist takes to the stage. He is young and looks like a teenager. In contrast I now look like Pam Ayres. He raps an accomplished, word perfect poem about the boredom of being young and aimless on a Friday Night, and by the end of three minutes he looks bored of us as well. The audience panel votes. He gets two nines and one ten. He also gets forty quid and the chance to be crowned slam champion of Cumbria at a future event. I get a book of the nation’s favourite love poems and a cheer from the crowd.

When I return to my seat, Carbonlite gives me a hug. “You are the Cumbrian slam champion in my eyes and I’m proud of you. But now I’m even more depressed. It’s so typical. This audience chose dossing about on a Friday night over saving our precious planet and resources. What are we to do?” He looks for reassurance, but I have no answers; just a bunch of words in the shape of a poem.

Turkeys do vote for Christmas

2007-02-28T22:21:00.000Z

As a mostly vegetarian household, the recent outbreak of bird flu in Suffolk (UK) was seen here as more of a turkey style humanitarian disaster than a threat to the Sunday dinner table. It seems somehow symptomatic of society's cock-eyed view of the world that culling 159,000 turkeys in the interests of protecting human health goes pretty much unquestioned as being a right and proper course of action. Reaction to this bird-flu induced slaughter seems to have been governed here mostly by the inherent self interest of humankind or in some cases a certain sympathy for workers at Bernard Matthews who have been at risk of infection or lost their jobs as a result of the ensuing slump in turkey sales.

Now it's not that I don't appreciate the logic of all this, given the risk of the H5N1 virus mutating into a form capable of wiping millions off the human population, although it might just be one of the less humane but more viable way of reducing carbon emissions. No, my point is who speaks for the turkeys? Especially the one's that weren't infected, that might have been infected or were just at risk of infection. The most I've heard people say is that they were going to be slaughtered anyway, you know it was just like Christmas came a bit early for them. Only the turkeys didn't get a vote. They never do. But if they did, what would they do? Wisdom has it they wouldn’t vote for Christmas and they sure as hell wouldn't vote for it to come early.

Now I may be struggling to make a connection here but the washingqueen made me feel a bit like a turkey voting for Christmas when I signed the online petition on the Number 10 website asking the government to introduce carbon rationing. "Why on earth would you want to do that?" she asked incredulously, "bring all the misery of rationing upon us voluntarily?" "Because if we don't act now…" I began but knew I was wasting my breath. Last time I looked I was one of about two thousand citizens signed up to support this petition. Compare that with close on TWO MILLION people who signed up to protest at the vaguest threat of introducing road pricing in the battle against congestion and transport emissions. Clearly the unimpeded right to use our cars and emit carbon irrespective of greenhouse gases or congestion is far more important. And given all the scientific concensus about the impact of continuing such a business as usual approach, I can only conclude that these two million good citizens really are turkeys voting for Christmas and voting for it to come early. Not only that, but given the irreversible nature of the changes taking place and the fact that the full consequences of our self interested action will be visited upon future generations, we're not just voting for Christmas for ourselves, but casting votes for an early Christmas for our children and grandchildren too. Collectively we seem to have even less sense than the turkeys we slaughter. All the while believing we're acting in our own best interests. What capacity for delusion.

Big feet are getting smaller

2007-02-04T21:17:00.001Z

Well, the wait is over. After another four years of painstaking research, debate and analysis, the IPCC's Working Group 1 Report has confirmed the climate change threat as real, present, dangerous and almost certainly one of humankind's less clever creations.

Here at the familyecoproject we've undergone similar painstaking research, debate and analysis, drawing on Mayer Hillman's recommendations for calculating your carbon emissions, and concluded (at about the same time as the IPCC) that our carbon footprint is big and shrinking, a bit like the world's glaciers.

Through extensive studies of old utility bills, meter readings and MOT certificates, we have scientifically proven our historical (pre-2006) household carbon shoe size to be 16, the five of us accepting collective responsibility for 16.15 metric tonnes of direct CO2 emissions per year. (although I'm sure most of it is down to the others)

In the last year (to Feb 2007), by freezing to death by day, walking and cycling to keep warm, holidaying more locally, banning incandescent bulbs, draughtproofing doors and windows, and being more careful about leaving appliances on standby, overfilling the kettle and other miserly touches, we've managed to get down to a size 13.

So that's great news isn't it? We've made a 20% reduction in our emissions in a year, way beyond the 3% per year target we set to keep us on course to meet a 60% reduction by 2030 and 80% by 2050 as Hillman implored us to do in his book and one of my growing collection of eco-bibles "How to Save the Planet".

The bad news is that with our 2006/7 emissions coming out at 13.01389 tonnes per year, as a household we (well the others mostly) are still emitting some 723kg more than the UK household average which Mayer believes should be working to reduce its emissions to 12.29009 tonnes per year this year, then 3% less than that next year and so on.

In summary we're 20% down but still 6% over average, moving in the right direction but still oversize and need to keep the pressure on. I suppose it's not that surprising given our big (c)old house, rural lifestyle and regular long distance travel for work, but if carbon rationing becomes a reality, and it is a possibility (there's even a petition you can sign to ask the Prime Minister to introduce it), such excuses will count for nothing; we'll need to keep counting the carbon, and address our excess emissions or pay the penalty.

So our first year report says something like well done, some good work but not yet good enough. More effort needed. Keep at it. I don't think the washingqueen will find it too inspirational.

New Years Resolutions

2007-01-29T23:51:00.000Z

Well, it's been yet another week of climate change headlines with the IPCC preparing to release their latest report reminding us of the seriousness and urgency of the climate change threats, while the great and the good of the WEF have been meeting in snowy Davos and discussing the need for global action to reduce carbon emissions and improve the prospects for skiiing at future summits. Let's hope the news that glaciers are now shrinking three times faster than in the 1980's will encourage them to get their finger out.

Shivering around the table in our ice-house, struggling to believe it's been the second warmest January on record, it's nice to be able to tell the washingqueen that our efforts are part of an emerging global plan.

We're almost a year into our household carbon reduction programme and by the end of this week will have a reliable baseline from which to plot our way into a lower carbon future. After a year of painful monitoring of our gas and electricity consumption, car and public transport usage and other carbon emitting habits, our year end carbon accounting will be followed by the announcement of our 1st annual carbon footprint.

And while the washingqueen may hope that is the end of it, it is really only the beginning. The future is not about measuring your carbon footprint but about reducing it, year on year on year. So, when the numbers come we'll be having a summit of our own with a view to making some New Year resolutions and an action plan to improve the state of the little planet that is our household. I fear the washingqueen may prefer to kick me into orbit.

Thermostat wars

2007-01-26T18:06:00.000Z

With the new year came a new conflict. As winter cold and rain seeped in through our limestone walls and poorly insulated windows and doors, Carbonlite and I went to war over the central heating thermostat. Snatched stealth visits to the downstairs loo (home of the thermostat panel) soon turned from amusement to obsession. As the Carboncopies ran to school at the start of term, our carefree Christmas household emissions were curtailed and the radiators were already cooling. With a new year’s resolution of cutting our emissions, I took the recommended action and put on an extra jumper. But at my computer next to the kitchen, a gale blew under the door, feet turning to ice in double socks. I soldiered on, ignoring the onset of grumpiness, having just found out that our household heating emissions for last year came to four and a half tonnes of carbon dioxide, emitting more harmful gases than the family car. I made coffee, and warmed my hands on a half empty kettle. But thoughts of a warm living room kept creeping in and for a moment I imagined myself snaffling elevensies with my bum against a hot radiator. All of a sudden I felt as ungreen as an American President. I nipped into the loo and quickly flicked the thermostat switch before guilt set in. A light came on, and a ready brek glow spread through me at the thought of being warm once more. I returned to my desk and typed away with renewed energy. Carbonlite came down for lunch and entered the downstairs toilet. I listened through the door but heard nothing. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed my indiscretion? Perhaps he’d turned a blind eye to the tiny light? Perhaps the house would be warm enough for cheese on toast in comfort? Then behind my desk the radiator seemed to visibly sag. Carbonlite had flicked the switch.

We arranged for a man with a green plan to come and advise us. He told us energy efficiency measures could save two tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, and offered a range of practical ideas for sealing keyholes and blocking doors, insulating attics and double glazing windows. But our listed building status and original sash windows scuppered this, so the man with the plan revised the plan and recommended secondary double glazing at a cost of five hundred pounds per window. Although aware that radical insulation action could save us a few hundred pounds a year, we had no ready cash for windows. So Carbonlite took budget emergency action on the bedroom sashes, sealing crumbling paintwork and bolting down wood. While this kept us warm at night, it also trapped the condensation and each morning our windows resembled a winter wonderland as condensation clung to the panes, melting onto the wood and rotting woodwork. Carbonlite handed out cloths and instructions on wiping them down.

I raised the cloth to the glass and swept it across the misty pane. My arm became covered with a strange substance, which clung to my wrist and fingers like spiders web. In a panic, I pulled and ripped, and it wrapped itself around my other hand. On closer inspection I realised it was cling film. This explained why I had nothing to wrap the sandwiches in, but not why a window cleaning session had turned into a scene from a low budget science fiction movie. Suspecting a DIY insulation technique I questioned Carbonlite. “It’s home made double glazing,” he replied. “Don’t look at me like that, it’s a recognised technique. Well it is environmental circles anyway.” Carbonlite’s mother came to visit and gave us her motherly wisdom. “Heat one room and close all the doors. You’d think you were all born in barns.” Now I had almost no time to work as I spent all day closing doors and wiping down windows. But I was still cold. I considered lighting a fire in the chimney next to my workstation, but remembered we’d instructed the builders not to line the chimney to save money and while I wanted my home to be warm, I didn’t want to set it on fire. “The most effective insulation is to turn the heating off and wear outdoor clothes inside,” said Carbonlite, now walking around in two fleeces and a cagoule. “I bet Tony Blair doesn’t make Cherie turn the heating off during the day,” I shouted from the loo. “Perhaps you should have married him then,” Carbonlite called back from the kitchen. Suddenly feeling cross, I flicked the thermostat to ‘on,’ piled up the recycling crates in front of the panel to hide the light, flushed the loo and closed the door behind me. It might only be minutes before Carbonlite discovered my environmental recklessness, but at least until then I’d have warm toes.

Cut out Christmas

2006-12-23T21:07:00.000Z

It's that time of year again when I'm supposed to write and send Christmas Cards but this year, having become obsessed with the planetary consequences of the The Festive Season, the whole card business seems more pointless than ever. I mean besides investing energy sitting scribbling, signing and sticking, how can I justify all that card, ink, envelopes and stamps, not to mention the thousands of card-miles? And for what? To say hi, decorate a mantlepiece and end up in a recycling box. Not worth it.

But there's no denying the social pressure to conform. And with dozens of beautiful cards arriving each morning and the Carboncopies bringing home fistfuls from their friends, I have to admit the pressure got me. So I made a concession and let the kids send some cards. I mean it's one thing to risk being a social outcast yourself but another to see your kids in the playground with nothing to hand out to expectant friends.

So the Carboncopies got busy - making their own cards. Recycled of course; from newspaper, magazines, birthday cards and paper then stuffed into old envelopes. The productivity of my little eco-troopers was a sight to behold. And while Carbonbaby chewed on sellotape helping elder Carboncopy create complex 3D cut-out cards, little Carboncopy found the quickest method of production; taking one of last year's Christmas cards, ripping off the bit with the picture, scribbling a message on the back and sticking it in a carrier bag for delivery. In the space of half an hour, he'd made 17 eco-cards and saved 17 envelopes.

In the playground the next morning, parents and children dashed around delivering Charity Cards while little Carboncopy handed out his cut-up greetings, looking like a charity case.
Parents looked with bemusement at the scribbly scraps of card he was handing out to their off-spring.
"What's that?" one of them asked him.
"A Christmas card," he replied proudly.
The receiving child passed it to mum for inspection.
"How sweet," said the mum, looking distinctly unimpressed.

I think it's unlikely that card will make her mantelpiece. We can only hope it makes the recycling bin. Perhaps it's not just the thought that counts.

Happy recycled birthday?

2006-12-20T08:18:00.000Z

“Happy Birthday Mummy,” the Carboncopies cried, racing into my bedroom. They clutched presents wrapped in newspaper, and bounced on my bed as I ripped open the first of their gifts. “Careful, we may want to use that wrapping again,” said the oldest Carboncopy.
“Fair trade chocolate…just what a girl needs. Thank you,” I said, hugging them. They thrust the next gift into my hands and the paper came away without much of a struggle. I pulled two luminous green knobbled rubber balls out of the packaging. “Are they from Anne Summers?” I asked Carbonlite.
“Amazing Dryer Balls,” announced the oldest Carboncopy, reading from the recyclable box. “Save twenty five per cent on dryer running costs and soften fabrics without any toxic chemicals.” The youngest Carboncopy was fed up with all the waiting around and ripped open the last present himself.
“Ecozone Eco Balls,” said his older brother with respect in his voice, lifting out three green spheres in the shape of Jupiter. “Wow. It’s going to be a special birthday, Dad said so. We’re going to follow all of the ‘R’s.”
“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” the carboncopies chanted, throwing themselves off the bed like pyjama clad lemmings.
“Happy Birthday, Eco Worrier. I’ll take you out for lunch,” said Carbonlite, helping himself to a slab of Fair Trade Chocolate.

“Where would you like to go?” he asked, as I loaded the washing machine. The Carbonbaby clutched at the glass door, attracted by the brightly coloured Eco Balls. I suggested a couple of fancy restaurants I’d heard about in the Lakes. “Ah, right. I rather hoped we could cycle,” said Carbonlite. “I know a lovely new tea shop which means we can ‘Reduce’ our petrol consumption for today.
“Reduce the bill you mean,” I replied.

The children came in from school with little paper bags. “We’re having a party,” they said. “Don’t come into the kitchen.” They reappeared some time later with sausages from the butcher cut into small pieces and decorated with organic tomatoes, tiny pizza’s made from crumpets with pepperoni toppings, bowls of fruit, raw veg and crisps. They then produced little party bags made out of paper bags they’d begged from the Post Office, decorated with stickers and felt tips, and filled them with some of their favourite miniature toys. And then the room fell silent.
“Happy Birthday to you,” they all sang, as Carbonlite came to the table holding the remains of a chocolate caterpillar cake from my son’s birthday the day before. It was decorated with thirty nine candles. “‘Reused’ cake and candles,” said Carbonlite proudly.
“Blow out the caterpillars bottom and make a wish Mummy,” said the youngest of the Carboncopies.

In the evening we watched a ‘Recycled’ movie from the video shop. We ate chocolates and wine that would never last long enough to be recycled, although I did catch Carbonlite saving his foil wrappers down the side of the sofa. Half way through the movie, I felt cold.
“Have you turned the heating off? On my birthday?” I accused my eco- husband. We snuggled under a quilt quickly produced in compensation.
“My recycled birthday was great. I think we should try to have a sustainable Christmas as well,” I suggested.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Carbonlite replied. “This Christmas perhaps we should concentrate on the fourth ‘R.’
“What’s that?” I asked.
“ ‘Refuse,’” he answered with a grin. “Refuse all the pointless trappings of Christmas. Say no to presents and definitely no to sprouts.”

Before bed I checked my e-mails. In the semi darkness of my study an e-mail pinged in from The States. “Hello, my name is Rachelle.” it said. “I'm a casting producer with ABC TV's Wife Swap. I'm contacting families who are living ‘lightly’ and came across you. We always look for families with very strong family philosophies, and hope you might consider being on our show.” I sat back and imagined a week with an American family in their air conditioned home, driving a gas guzzling SUV to the mall to stuff myself with pizza, returning for cocktails and Barbeque by the heated swimming pool. Then I thought about my quirky sustainable birthday, compliments of my own little carbon crew. My mouse hovered over the screen as I contemplated the final R; my ‘Reply.’ It didn’t take me long to ‘Refuse.’

scary stuff

2006-10-30T14:01:00.000Z

"Of course we're going to the halloween party. The kids have got new costumes," said a mother in the playground, hugging her darling as I covered my own childrens ears and hoped they hadn't heard. In our house Halloween costumes this year were same as last year and the year before; a witches cape and a bit of improvisation.

We painted out fingernails black with felt tip, pinned rubber skeletons to our back and put on our capes. The carbonbaby was beginning the annual tradition of fighting off her headband adorned with pumpkins on spirals. Each successive carbonbaby had been made to wear it, and all had managed to throw it out of the pushchair before leaving the house.

We approached the party along with an elaborate range of ghouls, Adams family lookalikes and witches. The first thing I noticed on entry was how many babies sat head to toe in their parents arms in full fancy dress. They wore elaborate costumes; mainly black cats and pumpkins. I'd seen the pumpkin outfit reduced to three quid in Asda and wondered how many child slaves in developing countries had given up their childhoods to make it for that amount. It was a big fleecy orange puffball, with hat and accessories, made to kit out a very small child.
"What will they do with all these pumpkins next year when their babies are grown," I wondered out loud. But I already knew the answer. They'd pop out to Asda for a new costume for their little darling. And the pumpkin would join last year's Christmas Party dress as something that was worn once, for a couple of hours at a village party.
We got on with 'pinning the nose on the witch' and doing the 'unlucky dip,' and the kids won a range of treats including sweets backed in plastic and cardboard, plastic spiders had travelled all the way from China to be with us, and scary pencils with little plastic climbing ghosts. At no point did they win an organic pumpkin or toffee apple, or in fact anything that didn't involve plastic.

I went home slightly depressed. Because it's just another of those events that used to involve a bit of bobbing for an apple, that has now turned into a plastic fantastic carbon using nightmare. And while I felt like a scrooge as the whole point of the party was to raise money for the local playgroup, I couldn't help reflect on how many bad practices it was reinforcing to the kids involved.

And the really depressing thing is that what's happening in our village is also happening all over. Today I read in the paper that the whole of Britain is following the Americans in going Halloween mad. Five years ago we spent a total of £12 million on wigs, capes and broomsticks (not forgetting the little pumpkin costumes.) This year the figure is expected to reach £120 million. And that's just in this country. The figures from the States are even scarier. The report that sent shivers down my neck was the one that said in America, three and a half million people buy a halloween costume each year....for their PET.

Happy halloween!

Feeling the heat

2006-10-26T09:05:00.000Z

“Package for you,” said the delivery man, thrusting his electronic notepad into my hands. “Nice day,” he added, as I scrawled my name onto the screen, and accepted a brown package.
“Is it?” I asked, feeling like Eeyore without a tail. From where I was standing, this day was anything but nice. Without even breaking the seal of the cardboard I knew the contents would be disastrous for me and the kids. At the start of half term, the last thing we wanted was another 'expert' book on climate change, spelling out how quickly the planet was combusting and how we were responsible. This innocent little package of words would cast a cancerous shadow over the whole holiday week, by plunging Carbonlite into one of his global depressions. As far as I was concerned we'd only just recovered from James Lovelock's assault on our consciences and household working practices.

The first signs of panic followed the same day, as switches around the house, as if by magic, turned to 'off,'and when I went to take the Carboncopies' tea out of the oven, it was still frozen. Next the Carbonbaby was plunged into a bath only an inch deep, and then followed a whole evening fretting about why the water butt isn't connected to the toilet to flush away the water, rather than taking water from the system. Well what's the point in fretting about that? "You're an engineer aren't you?" I told Carbonlite, "either invent a new system or just enjoy the fact you have water at all. Some people don't, you know."

By the next day, Carbonlite's grey mood had turned into a black smog, enveloping us all and strangling any surviving holiday feelings. A morning of criticisms and interference was followed by a public enquiry into why I'd ruined the bedroom quilt cover. I explained my reasons for dyeing the pale blue cover to match a burgundy room, saving the planet from the manufacture of yet another burgundy quilt cover, but my protestations held no sway. It developed into a full on row in front of the oldest Carboncopy, at the end of which I threw my magazine into his face and stormed out of the house in tears, straight into my neighbour. "I can't cope with it any more. This whole planet can bloody well burn to a frazzle and take him with it." I told the elderly gentleman, whose gentle smile turned to a look of terror.

Over dinner, I gave Carbonlite an ultimatum. "Deal with what you're reading or don't read it at all. Find a way of coping with it. The only way you're using this information is as a weapon against me,and I won't stick around to be gunned down by all your dogma." He attempted to protest, informing me I was in denial, just like most of the planet. "The main emission in this house isn't CO2, it's your anger," I told him. He stormed off, book in hand, feeling the heat of my anger.

Butt out...

2006-10-26T09:02:00.000Z

The enormous green bucket had been sitting in the yard for a month. The problem was it didn't have a hole in it and I didn't have the right drill bit to make one. And without a hole there was no way to connect it up.

"Why is the water butt empty?" asked one of the Carboncopies nearly filling it himself as he clambered up to inspect it. "Is it because we haven’t had any rain?"
"No, it's because your Dad is full of big ideas and no follow-through," quipped the Washingqueen, dutifully hanging Carbonbaby's eco nappies out to dry.
I let it go, not wanting to risk a retreat to disposables or the tumble dryer. Truth is it has taken four months to get the butt installed, but three of those were waiting for it to arrive due to a surge in demand as a result of drought in the South East. However, I am responsible for the fourth month; two weeks to negotiate over placement and agree how to prevent toddlers drowning in it, a week to buy a drill bit and a further week to get the pipes and joints needed to plumb it into the guttering. Well the details do take time.

But now it's done. And just in time for the rain. And now it's overflowing and the Carbonbaby is soggy as a soggy thing crawling happily around in the puddle between the water butt and the compost bin.
"Why is the water butt overflowing?" asked the Washingqueen, interrupting Carbonbaby's wet play.
"Because the installation is just so efficient," I replied.
And it really has astounded me. OK so I didn't get the details quite right and the overflow doesn't flow back into the gutter but we did gather over 200 litres of rainwater in a couple of hours and that's just the run off from our back roof. It's one thing to read about rainwater harvesting but when you see how much you can collect and watch your kids splashing and crawling around in it, it really makes you wonder why systems like this aren't designed into houses.

So now we have to figure out what to do with it. With just a small yard there's not much garden to water, so I figure there must be ways to use it for flushing toilets, baths, washing clothes or something useful around the house. But I'll have to resolve the overflow issue before I discuss further developments with the Washingqueen. I don't think she'll mind waiting.

Beating the carbon clock

2006-10-25T17:57:00.000Z

A dark October morning. I switched on the kettle and began to prepare Carbonbaby’s Weetabix. ‘Beep, beep, beep,’ an alarm went off. A new digital clock on the worksurface read ‘1.87.’ “That can’t be right, unless Carbonlite’s reinvented time to make the planet last longer,” I told Carbonbaby as I slammed her milk into the microwave. The digital alarm went off again. I took the milk back out and inspected the clock. The red digital numbers said ‘1.87 kilowatts.’ I pressed a button and the figures changed to ‘1.872 kg an hour of greenhouse gas.’ I realised this was no clock but a device to monitor the destruction our household was inflicting on the climate. It then informed me I was paying 30 cents an hour for the privilege of warming up the globe.

“Do you two know about this?” I asked the Carboncopies as they ran into the kitchen for breakfast. Of course they did; Carbonlite had them all trained up. Within minutes they were racing around the house, turning everything off and watching the digital numbers rewind. I packed them off to school, then put on the washing machine and dryer, and as an afterthought re-boiled the kettle to see what that did to the scores on the doors. My reprimand from the carbon monitor was swift and shrill; and its’ greenhouse gas figure shot up to 2.200 kg/hr. I had no idea what that meant but feared it was massive. The price had increased too, to 38 cents an hour. I scooped up Carbonbaby, turned off the washing machine and grabbed some plastic bags. I’d have to go out for the day, staying in was way too expensive.

A trip to the supermarket would fill the morning. I’d been putting it off ever since we food audited the house, relying on the organic vegetable box deliveries, and picking up bits and pieces locally. But we were right out of Ecover and the cupboards were bare after the weekend guests had departed. However as soon as I walked through the supermarket doors I realised it was going to be an eco stress-fest, each aisle throwing up a new ethical dilemma as I tried to stick to the strict rules I’d agreed with Carbonlite. The fruit and vegetable section was the first hurdle and I took it at a dash, Carbonbaby trying to grab the brightly coloured fruit flown directly from Barbados. First I ruled out the organic fruit and veg department because of supermarket requirements to package the life out of it. Tomatoes were selected then put back after I noticed the air miles they’d clocked up, as were avocados. The South African sugar snap peas stayed on the shelf along with the long thin beans (from Peru), the 2 for 1 chantenay carrots (double packaging) and the ready to use salad (in a plastic bag, un-local and washed in twenty varieties of pesticide.) I gave Carbonbaby a banana, telling myself unless global warming ramped up significantly there was no way we were going to start growing these locally. I rejected fresh fish, (backed with plastic packaging) the entire convenience and frozen food sections (processed fast food in a box, with a plastic tray and lid, cooked twice over using double energy) and my favourite coffee (to avoid doing battle with the kettle and Carbonlite’s new clock) Organic biscuits and cereal were ruled out because of their unorganic packaging, and as I stalled in the bread section, I noted with alarm that the entire contents of my trolley was a banana skin covered in dribble, and a bottle of Anthony Worrall Thompson’s refillable Fresh and Green bathroom cleaner, ‘derived from natural plant extracts’ with a contribution of the proceeds going to the World Wildlife Fund. Carbonlite would be proud of the amount of boxes that product ticked, but as I approached the checkout after two hours in the supermarket, I had no lunch or dinner in the trolley. I cursed my husband’s rigid eco- rules, before dashing back and grabbing a bag of apples. What could be wrong with apples?

The cashier ripped plastic bags from the stand and handed them to me. “No thanks, I’ve brought my own,” I told her. Unfortunately I’d selected two black bin bags from the cupboard, previously used for the transportation of plastics to the tip. They smelt of sour milk and we both winced. I didn’t bother asking for green points.

At home, Carbonlite was reading about how farmers could change their cows’ diet to produce less toxic emissions. “I bought some lovely apples if you’re hungry,” I told him, “and if we have a raw food lunch it’ll cut down on emissions.” “But those apples are from South Africa,” said Carbonlite pointing at the bag. “Have you any idea how many air miles they’ve travelled, at a time of year when British apples are hanging from every tree?” I put the kettle on in exasperation. ‘Beep beep beep,’ went the carbon monitor, to remind me once more of my greenhouse gas profligacy. I stormed off to check my e-mails and found a leaflet on my desk for a kettle that only boils one cup of water at a time. The literature informed me ‘It’s estimated we boil twice the volume of water needed every time we put the kettle on. Which means twice as much energy, twice as much time, and with a 3kW kettle that’s the same as wasting the energy of around 50 light bulbs.’

I put the leaflet back where I found it. Carbonlite had obviously been internet shopping, and my birthday was just around the corner. Well at least I’d be able to consume birthday tea and cake without the carbon clock beginning its bleeping countdown to doom.

Emitting doing nothing

2006-10-23T20:05:00.000Z

I woke up in the middle of the night, sweating profusely, desperately thirsty and feeling black. I'd been reading George Monbiot's new book, Heat, and in my dreams the planet and I were already burning. Feeling anxious and wide awake I went downstairs to get a drink and came face to face with the Electrisave meter. I introduced the washingqueen to it recently and left it by the sink to remind her how many kilogrammes of CO2 she was emitting each time she boiled the kettle. Not that it made any difference. The meter blinked at me in the moonlight; 0.22kg per hour. That's 1.76kg of CO2 during a night's sleep, well over half a tonne a year. And for what? I looked around to try and figure out what was responsible. The only obvious thing was a 15W CFL bulb on the landing but that could only account for a small fraction of the emissions.

It took half an hour to identify the culprits: a battery charger; a child's night light; a radio, two computers, monitors and speakers on standby; the microwave and oven clocks; two phone handsets; the fridge and freezer; the washing machine at the end of its cycle; the burglar alarm and central heating controller. All sitting doing nothing really, slowly and silently killing us, generate unecessary emissions in the dead of the night.

Apparently it's something of a British habit to waste energy like this; the UK tops the European Energy Waster's League with people in the North West some of the worst offenders. According to recent research by the Energy Saving Trust, Northerners overfill their kettles twice as often as the national average and have more bad energy wasting habits than almost anywhere else in Britain. In the UK 86% of us feel guilty about this kind of energy wastage but 42% are too lazy to change their habits. How depressing. But I guess it helps justify the washingqueen's kettle boiling antics as normal, at least for around here.

But while she may want to carry on being 'normal', I want to see us change our bad habits. Trouble is while I can do my bit, it's not so easy to change other people's habits and I'm getting tired of the endless domestics that begin with me switching something off only to find it switched back on again a little while later. And as the first cool nights of autumn finally arrive and I get my extra jumpers ready, I know the central heating wars are coming; a month of arguments about whether or not it's cold enough to put the heating on, weeks of surreptitious programming, counterprogramming and overriding on the heating controls and then a big argument about the winter gas bill. I'm so not looking forward to winter.

I finished my drink, turned off the chargers, nightlight and computers and watched Electrisave blink a new reduced estimate of our emissions at me, 0.15kg. I guess every little helps. On my way back to bed I noticed the radiators were warm, my thirst perhaps the result of an overheated bedroom rather than my nightmare about an overheated planet. Sometimes, the future feels as black as carbon.

Political activist

2006-10-19T22:10:00.000Z

I found an entry in my diary in Carbonlite’s handwriting. ‘Fri 4pm. Meet Tim Farron, Sedbergh.’ I tracked down Carbonlite to the utilities room, labelling the new recycling crates he had begged from the County Council. The room was starting to look like Booths Car Park; at any moment I suspected the Salvation Army to turn up with a skip for clothes.
“Who’s Tim Farron?” I asked.
“Your MP,” he answered, putting the top back on his felt tip.
“I knew the name was familiar. I seem to be spending Friday afternoon with him. Any idea what that’s about?”
Carbonlite put down his pen, grabbed my shoulders and grinned, “Saving the planet of course.”

“I’m not doing it.” The idea of me lobbying an MP about anything was ridiculous. “I can’t. I don’t know anything about the climate. Anyway I’m already doing my bit. I’m recycling everything, look at all these crates for heavens sake.” Carbonlite logged on to a Friends of the Earth website and showed me the screen.
“You don’t need to know anything. It’s all in there,” he said. I sat down, defeated, to read about the biggest campaign Friends of the Earth have ever run. As part of The Big Ask, Friends of the Earth are requesting constituents to visit their MP in person to lobby for a Climate Change Bill. This would commit the government to making year on year cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. According to the website instructions, I was to ask Tim Farron to write a letter to Tony Blair and David Miliband, asking for the bill to be included in the Queens speech for the next parliament-“We need to take this message to where MP’s hear it the loudest- in their own constituencies,” it said. The campaign included full instructions on how to contact an MP, briefing notes, and a pep talk for the nervous, “Don’t be intimidated by your MP, they meet with constituents all the time and they’re keen to meet with you. After all, they want to make sure you’ll vote for them at the next election, so they will be nice to you.”
“Ok, I’ll go,” I told Carbonlite, switching off the computer. “But you’re coming too.”

Tim Farron stood in the doorway of his advice surgery, smiled, and gestured for me to come in. I was the last in a long queue.
“I’ll just bring the rest of the gang,” I told him, scooping up a biscuit covered Carbonbaby off the floor, and calling Carbonlite and the Carboncopies to action. We crowded into the office where our MP apologised that he was running late and could only give us a few minutes as he had an evening engagement with the WI he daren’t be late for. He asked what he could do for us.
“Oh just the small issue of climate change.” I replied, as the eldest Carboncopy took his brother’s neck in a head lock. I embarked on my speech, forgetting the name of the Environment Secretary, and fumbling the name of the bill I was asking to be included in the next parliament. Tim Farron sat opposite, listening intently, and stopped me as I got to the bit about the Queen.
“Actually, I think I’m ahead of you there. I’ve already written the letter,” he said. I stopped mid sentence. What was I supposed to do now? The on-line briefing had taught me how to tackle being fobbed off, how to put my case simply and how to launch in. It hadn’t mentioned how to retreat from his office gracefully. But thankfully he’d done this kind of thing before. He promised to send us a copy of the letter, agreed with the importance of acting now to curb growing emissions, and said he was optimistic the bill would be included in the next parliament. He thanked us for coming to see him personally and putting our case. At this moment the Carbonbaby made some unpleasant emissions of her own, and let out a wail as she smelt the result. It was time to leave.

I emerged into the afternoon sunlight feeling rather pleased with myself. I was now a lobbyist, an environmental activist, the kind of mother who sits in trees to save the countryside instead of sitting in a coffee shop to save on washing up. And if the Queen’s Speech includes a Climate Change Bill I’ll have achieved something bigger than my family; beyond my experience, beyond my own back gate. For a moment I thought of all the new appointments that Carbonlite might add to my diary. What if he tried to send me on climate camp, or to power station protests? What if he made me sit in trees on a regular basis? The CarbonBaby let out another cry. Her nappy was now the most pressing environmental hazard on my radar. Saving the Planet would have to wait.

From a field in Sweden

2006-09-23T09:29:00.000Z

Holiday-time but no air miles for us. Our green, lean, household policy means eco-friendly travel and holiday activities. Carbonlite went on a mission to find a suitable destination, poring over maps and becoming over-familiar with tourist information in a range of countries. He emerged triumphant from the bedroom he had turned into Holiday HQ, and thrust a map of Scandinavia in my direction. "Sweden", he announced, already there in his head. "What's in Sweden?" I asked, the only Swedish delights I could think of were ABBA and Sven. "Meatballs, saunas and blondes!" he said, folding the map, "and if we go by ferry - very low emissions."

We took the car as far as Newcastle with the bikes piled high on the roof - even these emissions Carbonlite found hard to offset in his conscience. But at least we weren't flying. Carbonlite tells me if carbon were rationed it's predicted a flight to New Zealand would emit as much carbon as our household for an entire year. Instead we would go by ferry, by bike and by canoe up the west coast of Sweden: a month of low-emission living.

But not exactly low-cost. Carbonlite choked on his beer when he found out how much it had cost on the ferry crossing. And as the Swedes and Norwegians settled in the restaurant, the English huddled in the bar while a giant furry parrot crooned "We are sailing" to the assembled crowd. We wondered if we'd be dining on crisps for breakfast when the eldest Carboncopy won the bingo during a break in the singing. We retired to our cramped cabin in steerage, looking forward to our smorgasbord the next morning.

As we cycled off the ferry, stuffed full of pickled herring and salami, we felt like we'd pedalled into a greener world. Family cycling wasn't a freakshow here, everyone was out and about on bikes. We crossed the city of Gothenburg without having to cross a road, on an intricate network of cycle paths. But we hadn't gone unnoticed: outside tourist information we were collared by the Press, doing a feature on tourism in the city. As Carbonlite bored them in pidgin Swedish about eco-travel, the photographer snapped away at us all on our bikes.

We made our way down the coast, pottering in and out of sandy bays, while local kids plunged from wooden jetties into the sea. On publication of the tourism feature we were greeted with enthusiasm by the Swedes, beers in hand that we couldn't afford, admiring the double-page spread of us on our "human-powered transport" as we travelled past.

In this country there was a definite pecking order: at the bottom of the pile was us Brits, with our low-value pound and bicycles. Then the Swedes, in their campervans with awnings the size of our house, and their smart Volvos. Then at the top, the Norwegians, cruising through in their yachts, rich on the profits of oil. While we were definitely the greenest, a touch of it may have been jealousy!

But we'd soon join the Norwegians on the Swedish lakes in our two big family-sized canoes. "Put the baby at the front", we were advised, "then if she goes overboard the person at the back can hook her out as they go past." Thankfully this was unnecessary, and much to my dismay I began to get hooked on this human-powered transport. It was peaceful and got air into my lungs and power into my muscles. I worried that the idyllic lifestyle there would have a negative impact on my life in the UK. If cycling and canoeing could get us around so cheaply, efficiently and environmentally soundly, would I feel obliged or pressured into ditching the car? (Carbonlite had already spent too much time hanging around chip shops discussing the benefits of alternative fuel.) I tried to sabotage the experience by getting a puncture or hoping for rain, but it was not to be. The roads, and the skies, were as clear as the beaches.

As we stopped for a lazy ice-cream and a swim one hot Saturday afternoon, a stream of people trooped out to ask where we were from. While now used to all the attention, even Carbonlite was surprised by the volume of enquiries. It was when several members of a wedding party came to ask about our nationality that we found out the source of their curiosity. On the back page of the weekend newspaper was a prize crossword, with a picture of us splashed across the centre. "What nationality are these cyclists who appeared in last week's edition?" one of the wedding party translated. "We thought you must be English", said the groom, "the Swedish prefer to drive around Sweden." He took his bride's hand, jumped into the silver wedding Volvo and sped off to a smorgasbord reception, leaving us to pedal on with zero emissions and a green, clean conscience.

How embarrassing?

2006-09-22T10:19:00.000Z

I got caught out yesterday. I was out for a cycle with carbonbaby and running late to get back to pick the carboncopies up from school. What to do? No time to go home first so I decided to stop off and pick them up on my bike. So what?

Well, it's not exactly an ordinary bike. It's a tandem (you know a bike for two), with kiddy cranks on the back (so a kid can ride stoker and reach the pedals), and a child seat behind and a trailer tagging behind (well where else are you going to put baby?) Oh and it's bright yellow with a luminous flag and one of those bright orange sticks that pokes out into the road to force cars to keep well clear or be scratched.

OK, so it's a bit unusual and we look like a reincarnation of The Goodies but I like it. It's fun, practical and I can take the carboncopies and carbonbaby out and about without emitting any carbon. So what's so embarrassing?

Was I embarrassed? No, not really. I rode up, left the bike outside the school gates, grabbed carbonbaby from her trailer and went to collect the carboncopies as usual.

Were the kids embarrassed? No they seemed pleased to see 'Maizie' (their nickname for the corn coloured bike), dropped all their clobber over carbonbaby in her trailer, climbed up onto their seats and urged me to ride them home.

So what's this posting about then? Well, according to an anonymous source, one mum in the playground was seen pointing in our direction proclaiming, 'Look at that. How embarrassing.'

Well, I'm not sure I get it but maybe I should expect it for doing something a little bit out of the ordinary. It's disheartening though and another small barrier to change. It's hard enough changing habits and tweaking your lifestyle when people around are encouraging and supportive. But for many (perhaps even my dear washingqueen) even little comments like that can be enough to put them off trying.

Fortunately, I am of stronger stuff and Maizie will ride again. Cycling helps keeps us fit and carbon free, which probably can't be said for the mum in question. Now that's what I call embarrassing.

Lord of the flies

2006-09-20T09:02:00.000Z

It all began with the bin. It was rather like an episode of the X files, the way the bin began to mutate and multiply. We started the week much as usual with our old familiar green wheelie bin, always identifiable by its smell of old nappies and stale pepperoni pizza, but by Friday it had spawned an entire alien bin species, all over the patio. Giant black plastic bins towering over blue squatting bins, dalek like compost bins dallying with dwarf bins, brightly coloured recycling bins clamouring for attention on the stone flags. Now while I'm fully aware that the plastic packaging on the kids toys could take the next four hundred and fifty years to biodegrade in landfill, and that my own household is personally responsible for a significant chunk of the 25 million tonnes of waste that we ferry to the dump each year, I hadn't realised that recycling it would be so bin intensive.

Carbonlite's campaign to transform our household practices had hardly got off the ground with the bins before the postman arrived with a jiffy bag full of worms, the beginners kit from Wiggly Wigglers to kick start the heap. Just what a girl needs to go with her Weetabix and semi skimmed. Needless to say building a suitable home for the worms was a man's job. The male variety of the Carboncopies jostled to help with the affordable housing scheme on the patio, while I looked on anxiously from the third floor window. Soon I got into the swing of compost creation, as the smart green mini bin by the sink saved me a good few trips to the wheelie bin. It happily swallowed up everything vegetable including the chard mountain in the fridge ( chard being the unwelcome visitor in the organic vegetable box. ) Egg boxes fitted nicely in there too, it was a pleasure to offload all the half masticated jam sandwiches. I even braved the worms in the main bin, closing my eyes and hoping the contents of the mini bin wouldn't end up missing their target and decorating my new pink pumps. I was proud of my efforts in food recycling, and felt it was a substantial start to my new role as planet protector. Admittedly it's a bit of a challenge given that we've only got a small yard with tiny flower beds and no lawn, and the compost bin is a central feature of the garden. I read my leaflet from CAT on the latest cold composting techniques and felt my eco-education was progressing nicely. But I knew my harmonious relationship with the natural world couldn't last.

When the weather warmed up the area by the sink became a hive of activity. Our country kitchen started to resemble a riverside camp in the Scottish Highlands as the midgies arrived in chard-hungry packs and began a sit-in in the mini bin. Then I was ambushed in a lunchtime raid. Expecting the usual placid encounter with a rotten pile of worm infested rubbish, I opened the patio compost bin and was bombed by an SAS midge flying squad. As I squealed and ran, the mini bin went flying into the air and deposited several rotten avocados and a load of swede peel onto the Wendy house roof. I sprinted round the garden as if a swarm of bees were at my tail, much to the amusement of Carbonlite, eating his lunch on the patio, copy of The Ecologist at hand to swat any flying beasties.
"Don't worry about the fruit flies, it means nature is doing her bit. But best not to empty it in the daytime I find," he advised, stabbing a cherry tomato with his fork.
"They vomit on everything and then suck it up again" I wailed. "Anyway how would you know? Have you actually once emptied the bin?"
"I put a load of toilet roll tubes in there yesterday," he said cheerfully. "Don't forget to put the lid back on will you, we don't want the worms to escape." I retreated to the downstairs toilet to empty the washing machine that resides there. Thankfully the room was still a bin free zone. But Carbonlite had other ideas. "I found one of the non disposable nappies rotting in the washing basket." I reassured him there was no way it could rot as I clear the washing basket every day. "We need a nappy bin," he said, delighted at the thought, and a ten minute debate ensued about the toxicity and concentration of babies' wee in a mixed wash. The result was the arrival of yet another bin, this time filled with water; perfect for a baby on the crawl. Now if the water butt doesn't drown her, she can go swimming in diluted urine. I took a recycled supermarket plastic bag full of rubbish out to the wheelie bin. There I found myself once more under attack, this time by mummy and baby fruit flies who had found a new home.

Carbonlite was by my side in a flash. "Ah well, if all the food waste was in the compost bin, then they wouldn't set their sights on that one would they?" Then I knew the answer, to get on the internet and order one last bin, tall, thin and husband-sized. It wasn't easy 'going green' but at last I was engaging with recycling!

In the grip of a morbid fever

2006-04-27T08:53:00.000Z

I've been reading the recent James Lovelock book, The Revenge of Gaia, in which he offers his latest prognosis on the health of planet earth. Lovelock's view of the earth as a living system was seen as radical and hippyish for years but not these days. His deep understanding of climate change is now widely accepted and his metaphor of the earth well developed, accessible and powerful in its ability to explain complex issues in terms a layman can understand.

Lovelock sees himself as the earth's physician, his role to help diagnose what is causing the morbid fever that is taking hold of his patient, and to recommend treatment. But he has some very bad news for the friends and family of mother earth; she's in the grip of a progressive disease with a limited range of outcomes; either she'll die and the disease with her, or she'll live and eliminate the disease or, patient and disease will struggle with each other until they achieve some kind of symbiosis. Of course humankind is the disease and the last outcome is looking extremely unlikely, especially if we continue with business as usual. Like he says, it's pretty grim news for friends and family and I really don’t know whether or how I might begin to explain that to my kids.

Sometimes I think we've been reenacting this global tragedy in our household in the three months we've been doing this experiment. I have the washingqueen down as the patient and arrogantly put myself in the role of physician, trying to advise her on how to be more green and sensitive. Trouble is I think she has me down as the disease, trying to destroy the delicate balance of our household, established through years of living together and deeply embedded in our daily routines. Adjusting this balance takes time and the last few months has had a greater than usual incidence of arguments and flare-ups as the patient has resisted treatment, mistaken it for disease and struck back with terrifying force. But overall, little by little, and I think the washingqueen would agree with me on this, at a household level we have been making gradual progress towards a new balance.

Of course there's lots more we could do but at least we have begun to take more seriously the need to do our bit and to start to do it. I just hope and pray that humankind will have the wit, wisdom and foresight to be able to do something similar at a planetary level. If Lovelock's predictions are true, and they have good currency amongst the scientific communities, then we should all prepare for a big shakeup of our planetary habits - whether we initiate them ourselves or wait for mother earth to take her revenge for causing her fever. And I fear mother earth will be far more vengeful than my sweet washingqueen.

A holiday in your own back yard

2006-03-31T22:59:00.000Z

When I first mentioned the idea of holidaying in our own backyard, the washingqueen was none too impressed. "I'm not spending our Easter break sitting in the garden watching a community of composting worms devour our kitchen waste," she explained politely as she scraped dinner scraps into her new kitchen caddy. Of course she'd misunderstood me; what I meant was we should go local rather than heading off to Europe and running up tonnes of reckless holiday carbon emissions.

It took a couple of weeks for her to come around to the idea, a couple more weeks for us to figure out a plan, and now all that remains is a couple of weeks to execute it. We're lucky to live in an area of outstanding natural beauty and for the next two weeks, we're reducing our emissions at home to zero and heading off to explore the area on our own home made low emission eco tour. We'll be posting details of the tour on our other website so if you want to know more follow this link.

The cabbage patch kid

2006-03-23T00:35:00.000Z

It was two weeks ago last Monday when the house fell forbiddingly silent. It was the day the washingqueen finally got with the project and abandoned the utilities room. The atmosphere was strange that day without the comforting whirr of the spin cycle or the gentle rumble of the tumble dryer. At first I thought it might have been the start of a dirty protest. You know, "I'll save the planet all right, reduce our detergent consumption, save some electricity, reduce our water consumption and see how you like it when you run out of clean clothes." But it was nothing so sinister. No, the washingqueen had organised a visit to Howbarrow organic farm to get some advice on going organic and find out about their box delivery scheme.

She came back all fired up, raving about the merits of organic production and of how it was good for us (healthy fruit and veg grown without pesticides), good for the environment (fewer food miles, more food for insects, healthier soil), and good for the community (supporting local farmers and keeping money in the community). I couldn't find a flaw in her argument so welcomed the announcement that Howbarrow were going to add us to their growing list of customers.

The first box arrived on the doorstep about ten days later and it wasn't just the kids who had difficulty identifying some of the contents. "What are those thin little muddy orange things?" asked our eldest boy. "Oh they're organic carrots," explained the washingqueen. "But why are they muddy?" asked the youngest. And so began the story of how carrots grow under ground and an educational journey which I'm sure will touch us all over the coming weeks and months. The washingqueen and I are already committed to finding recipes for chard and alfafa sprouts, just two items that would not normally find their way into our kitchen but are already sitting on the shelf waiting for a suitable recipe. Your suggestions welcome.

It has to be said that the vegetables that we recognised and cooked were delicious, although I quickly became concerned about the small portion sizes. I queried this with the washinqueen after she transformed a large green cabbage into just four small servings. "Oh," she said, "once you'd peeled off the outer leaves there was hardly anything there."

Later that evening, I emptied the days food waste into our new compost bin and served our growing community of worms a delicious meal of 16 fresh green organic cabbage leaves. I sensitively broached this issue with the washingqueen a little later, applauding her for supporting the worms and querying the amount of leaf peeling necessary in preparing a cabbage. Turns out she'd never prepared a cabbage before but then neither have I. We both agreed we could probably save a few more leaves next time, but I'm not sure the worms will be happy about that.

Getting out of the habit

2006-03-16T22:24:00.000Z

My obsession with our energy consumption, carbon emissions and our household footprint may be good for the planet but it's not so good for my relationship with the washingqueen. Over the past weeks I've become ultra sensitive to all emission creating actions and I have to admit it's pretty irritating; it irritates me so goodness knows what it's like for her.

Now I think we've done quite well over the past six weeks in making some pretty obvious (and probably long overdue) changes to our household arrangements - like switching to a renewable electricity supply, installing energy efficient light-bulbs, getting our doors and windows draught proofed, setting up a cold composting bin for kitchen waste and installing flow restrictors and water hippos to reduce water consumption. It's all moving things in the right direction, reducing our footprint and emissions, but I know it's not going to be enough to keep things moving in the ever downward direction that's required by this experiment in the long term.

So that's why I've started looking at the little things, the small everyday actions we take that waste energy, that are probably insignificant on each occassion but add up over the weeks, months and years to make a big difference to our emissions and footprint. And judging by early reactions, I think it's changing the thousand little habits that's going to be the tougher nut to crack. We're talking about little things that are so deeply habitual that we probably don't even notice we're doing them anymore. Until someone like me starts mentioning it every time you do it.

Little things like leaving the microwave door open after heating something up.... which also leaves a little 40W bulb burning pointlessly for an hour or two. Or boiling a pan of vegetables with the gas on full and no lid on.... superheating the kitchen and turning it into a Turkish bath. Or filling the kettle to the brim to make a cup of tea, then forgetting to make the tea, then boiling it again, making the tea, forgetting to drink it and starting all over again.

Now I'm just as guilty as the washingqueen at doing some of these things but my internal nagging has been quite effective at helping me change my habits, at least some of the time. But the nagging is not working so well with her. Probably something to do with the fact I nag myself quietly while I remind her out loud several times a day. It's probably another habit I've developed which I'm going to need to change. If I don't there'll be little chance of saving our marriage let alone saving the planet. For the sake of my marriage and the planet, let's hope habits can be changed.

Food glorious food.

2006-03-09T21:29:00.000Z

Carbonlite got his knickers in a twist, ranting on about how this was a joint project and all I've done is put up barriers to it. So I resolved to sort out the food part. "Where are you off to so early this morning?" he asked as I loaded the baby into the car. "To the supermarket." I replied. "Don't forget to take some plastic bags." he reminded me. "You don't want more to end up in landfill as a result of your careless consumerism." I went back into the house for my purse and some milk for the baby, and chucked it all into my car, forgetting about the bags.

In the supermarket car park the baby was crying and the three year old demanding a lollipop. I looked in the back of the car for the carriers. Damn. I scrabbled around in the boot and found an old bin bag that smelt of sour milk. It was the best I could do, and I felt quite proud that I was saving the planet before I'd even had my breakfast.

"Shop local," I repeated to myself as I tried to find anything in the produce counter that was from England. "Tomatoes; Spain, Gibraltar. Bananas; Dominican Republic. Don't we grow anything anymore in this country?" Even the organic range had flown halfway round the world to be there. The three year old took advantage of my dithering over the prepackaged sprouts, and hid under the produce section. It took ten minutes of panicked trolley dash around the store, and the 'seeking' involvement of a sixteen year old who had to be interrupted while marking down satsumas (Spain) before the three year old ended his game.

At the checkout, there was a boy scout helping to pack. "It's ok, I've got my own bags....well bag." I said, casually wafting the bin bag around. "You can go for a cup of tea if you like, take a break." The boy looked at me pitifully, then ripped a handful of bags off the bag tree and began stuffing my shopping in them. Not wanting to cause a scene, I stood beside him, transferring things around from bag to bag, taking this surrepticiously out of his and putting it into mine, then trying to jam the extra bags back onto the tree. The smell of rancid milk began to permeate the checkout area. While I paid, the scout began trying to bring some kind of order back to the bag tree. I left without leaving him a tip, the three year old screaming for the promised lollipop that was now at the bottom of the sorry black bag.

At home I lugged the black bag and a couple of stuffed new carrier bags into the hall, then made countless trips for the extra items that I'd shoved into the boot loose. Carbonlite came in and surveyed the scene. "I counted thirty bags the other day. Why the hell have you brought home more." "Its only two." I answered, hurt that he would criticise after I'd gone through so much faffing. "So it's fine that two more bags rot in the ground for a hundred years is it?" I shot him one of my blackest looks before answering, "Your fruit and veg are from Spain, Gibraltar and the Carribean. They contain so many carbon airmiles that I wouldn't bother fretting about the packaging. Next time I'm getting it all delivered." Then I stormed out and went upstairs to sulk.

What a waste

2006-03-09T09:14:00.000Z

The washingqueen thinks I've lost it. She caught me weighing bin bags the other day and then freaked when I put a large bucket by the sink and told her it was for collecting food waste for a worm bin. I don't think my behaviour is unreasonable given the global and local problems of household waste but perhaps two months of trying to think more greenly is starting to show.

According to DEFRA households in England managed to recycle just 23% of their waste in 2004/5. This is a figure to be ashamed of, even though it represents a four fold improvement in our collective performance over just four years. But it is still one of the worst rates in Europe where households in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands manage up to 64%.

But the UK government has big ambitions for us and has set a bold target - to reach 25% by 2005/6. Surely we can do better than that? Recycle Now reckons 60% should be achievable for most UK households.

Anyway I figured if the government has a household waste strategy and targets then why shouldn't we? Hence the weighing in. And the results? In a fortnight our household generated 41kg of waste, 11kg (27%) of which was recycled kerbside (bottles, glass, paper), another 6.5kg (16%) of which we recycled ourselves (cardboard and plastic) by taking to a recycling centre, giving a bottom line of 43% recycled. I felt quite good about that for a while until I put it the other way around i.e 57% not recycled.

So we're going to try and reverse those figures, and my number one target is food waste. Hence the bucket. Our kerbside scheme prohibits food waste, so we're going to compost it. Now that's a bit of a challenge given that we've only got a small, yard like garden with tiny flower beds and no lawn but then that's no different to millions of urban dwellings. And there are people out there promoting interesting solutions for urban composting. So, I've got my leaflet from CAT on the latest cold composting techniques, ordered myself a subsidised compost bin through Recycle Now and organised a starter kit of worms from Wiggly Wigglers to kick start the heap.

The boys are looking forward to a parcel of worms arriving. I'm not sure what the washingqueen will make of it when it arrives addressed to her but I'm not going to let her wriggle out of this one.

Fruit and fibre

2006-03-02T07:37:00.000Z

I became suspicious that carbonlite had sneaked some of his water saving 'hedgehogs' into the upstairs loo without telling me. After accusations were bandied about, it turns out that he'd merely cleaned the toilet. Well that's a first. "You're the most reluctant environmental campaigner I've ever met," said Carbonlite in frustration. He rummaged about in the cleaning cupboard and pulled out a large dirty black bucket, which he put next to the sink. "What's that for?" I asked pleasantly, reluctant to give him any further ammunition. "It's for the food waste. We to put everything in there, then once a week take it out to the worm bin. I assume you don't want the worm bin in the kitchen?" he said. I shuddered before replying, "but we haven't any worms. Or a bin to put them in." I was stopped from any further protestations by great excitement from the hallway.

"There's a dalek on our front doorstep," called the five year old. "Can we go out and see it?" The shadow of the dalek fell across the room as Carbonlite and I shoved each other out of the way to get to the front door. My partner's smile mometarily banished the shadow. "I'd better get out the back and dig up the paving stones," he hummed happily, "anyone coming?" "Is the dalek coming too," the boys shouted, putting their wellies on the wrong feet in all the excitement. Carbonlite noticed the confusion on my face about ripping up the patio. "The worms have to get in and out of the bin. In case the stuff inside ever gets toxic. Then they can escape for a while and come back when it's all calmed down." I didn't answer, I was too busy wondering if I could do the same. "By the way, the worms will be arriving in the post, shouted Carbonlite, as he lugged the bin through the house. "Now I know you're having me on." I replied, getting back to scraping food into the new black bucket.

When I went out later, Carbonlite had found a place for the dalek. "The children can just about squeeze their bikes around it. And we'll put the water butt over here." I had a momentary panic attack about a drowning incident involving our six month old toddler, but put it to the back of my mind and went inside. The dalek was concealed from view by the Wendy House and I knew Carbonlite was joking about the worms. Time to clean up that dirty old bucket.

Dim and dimmer

2006-03-01T20:35:00.000Z

With spring almost in the air, the bulbs in the garden are showing signs of life. The same unfortunately cannot be said for some of those in the house. I've adopted a policy of not replacing any blown bulbs until I can find an energy efficient replacement. Now that's been pretty easy for those standard bayonet fitting bulbs but a nightmare when it comes to the spotlight reflectors, globes, candles and halogen bulbs that inhabit the myriad light fittings left as an energy inefficient legacy by the previous owners of this carbon spewing property. There's a growing pile of these sitting on my desk awaiting further research.

It took me days of research to find a low energy replacement for an innocent little MR16 halogen bulb that blew the other week. I finally managed to locate an LED powered replacement that claimed to be equivalent to a 20W MR16 but consuming only 4W of power. Price £16 compared to about £2 for a normal one. Ouch! But they say they last 50 times longer and save you leccy so you'll be quids in after a couple of years use. I wondered if it would be worth the wait but in the interests of science decided to give it a try.

The results were very dissappointing. Sitting in the living room began to feel like camping with a headtorch to read by. This kind of LED technology is developing fast and a bulb like this would be great with a narrow beam for spot features but there's still a way to go before it can do the work of a 50W halogen flood. So for the moment, it looks like I either stick with my £2 bright and beautiful energy guzzling halogens or rip out all the fittings and install something more efficient instead in my living room, bathroom and toilet.

The more I look at our big old house from a carbon consumption perspective, the more bits of it seem like a carbon guzzling legacy from a time when no-one gave a monkeys about energy efficiency. It doesn't seem to matter what aspect of our emissions we focus on there's only so much we can do quickly and easily before we bump up against problems of infrastructure or legacy installations which limit our options. Taking things further then means tougher decisions involving substantial investments of time, money and effort to make the house more climate friendly. And I'm left wondering are we up for it, can we afford and is it worth it? The thing is to make the kind of cuts the experts say we need to make to avoid catastrophic climate change there is not really a 'can't afford it' option. If that's right then sooner or later we're all going to have to face these tough decisions. It's enough to make denial seem an attractive option.

Tap dancing

2006-02-27T13:12:00.000Z

The Lake District may have a reputation for rain but it's not living up to it this year. It's may be a blessing for visitors but it's a worry for farmers, kayakers and the water companies.

I can only think of two ways I can do my bit to help improve the situation, one involves a hip shake movement in which the waist and ass is twisted loosely and quickly, the other involves water butts, hippos, and tapmagic. Now the washingqueen has hips better suited to the former so I have been concentrating my efforts on more practical matters of water conservation.

Today I have not been rain dancing but tap dancing, installing little adaptors from tapmagic that convert a standard tap to a spray tap, restricting the flow by as much as 50% at low flow volumes so stopping little boys from wasting so much water when they brush their teeth, wash their hands or just leave the tap running to empty the hot water tank.

These things were great; just a few quid each, a minute to install and instant water savings. My action men helped with the installation and loved the result... taps that made water like showers. I thought the washingqueen would flip when she discovered I'd restricted the water flow but no! She loved the soft little showery flow. What a result. It almost had me shaking my hips and twisting my ass to find a change welcomed by the planet, the boys and the washingqueen.

Action man meets bag lady

2006-02-24T10:09:00.000Z

I came across an article in The Independent about how to make money from recycling; another piece trying to encourage green behaviour by stressing the economic benefits. It was a good piece, full of useful ideas for ways to reduce, recycle or reuse (the recyclists' mantra) and save or make money while you're at it. I was busy with other things when I found the article, so skim read it, thought 'hey that's a good idea' several times and made a mental note to look into some of the ideas later.

But then my two boys came to find me, wanting to play, all dressed up in their Action Man costumes. "What can we do Dad?" they chorused, confronting me in combat suits emblazoned with a bright orange ACTION logo. "We've been saving the planet from Dr X and Gangrene but now he's dead."

I wondered for a moment what to do with two unemployed action men with a thirst for saving planets. Then it struck me; bag counting. According to the Independent quoting Recyle More, the average UK citizen uses 134 plastic bags each year. It's another small area where we could cut down; another one where we know we should and for some reason haven't. Don't get me wrong, we're not as evil as Gangrene - we don't collect them and throw them away, but we could do a lot more to reduce and reuse them rather than insulating the utility room and lining the kitchen bin.

As a first step I asked my action men to do a bag audit. "Boys, Dr Gangrene may be dead but he's littered our house with evil plastic bag creatures. I need your help. Your mission? To search high and low; locate them, collect them and count them. Then we will work out how to stop his evil work." It was a good mission. Achieved in just under an hour. Final count: 105 bags.

I guess that means we don't really need any more; we just need to reuse the ones we've got. I think I'll send my action men to tackle washingqueen over our household bag acquisition policy. Watch out for the next exciting installment and find out what happens when action man confronts the bag lady.

Awareness - a vital first step

2006-02-22T20:57:00.000Z

The washingqueen's lack of awareness of our monthly spend on fuel is telling but not surprising. She probably thinks that by now I monitor every kilowatt hour and cubitt of gas consumed in our household and I have to admit I'd probably be up for it if the technology were available to do it quickly and easily. Truth is the only thing I was aware of before beginning this experiment was the amount of our monthly direct debit to our energy suppliers. And sadly this is a pretty crude measure of how much energy we consume and tells us nothing about where we use it, how we could be more efficient or how much CO2 we emit as a result of our consumption.

I think lack of awareness is a really important part of the climate change problem. It's so easy to live your life blissfully unaware of the links between your daily actions and CO2 emissions, and the connections between that and the global climate change problem. It is much easier to think of it as someone else's problem and to leave them to fix it too. Becoming aware of and accepting the fact that you are part of the problem has to be the first step in taking responsibility for your emissions and making changes to reduce them.

But even having made such a commitment, actually making changes seems to require finer and finer levels of awareness, and it's all a bit of a minefield. Getting a grip on your emissions seems to require a PhD in carbon. If you look at your household energy usage you need to appreciate how using a kilowatt hour of electricity can cause greater emissions damage (0.45kg C02) than using a kilowatt hour of gas (0.19kg CO2) - that is unless you are using electricity from a guaranteed renewable source. If you want to go travelling you have to assess the different emissions consequences of travelling by car, bus, train or plane. And if you want to improve the energy efficiency of your home your faced with figuring out whether it's better to install double glazing, insulate the loft or get a more efficient boiler.

We're very used to making judgments on price but it's a bit of an uphill struggle to easily factor carbon emissions calculations into your everyday living without some kind of carbon currency or easy to understand way of rating emissions. Maybe it will be like decimilisation or the introduction of the euro, once we've learnt the ropes it will become second nature but in the meantime I'm pondering the idea of developing carbon emissions stickers for appliances around the house... you know green for low (use as much as you like); amber for caution (this appliance will increase your emissions); and red for danger (turn this on and the planet dies). I wonder if that would help the washingqueen? She's going to be away for a few days so perhaps me and the boys could knock up a scheme for when she comes back. Or should that be if she comes back.

Loo hoggers and non flushers

2006-02-22T10:45:00.000Z

Carbonlite tells me he's bought some loo hoggers, to cut down on the amount of water being lost in flushing. Well in my view he could be wasting his money. The kids never bother to flush. Perhaps the new initiative is for guests. Perhaps we should put up a sign in the toilet and let them know how much water they are saving us.

The cost of a cheese toastie

2006-02-22T10:26:00.000Z

The electricity bill came in the other day. Apparently it does this every month. I don't do finances so it went straight in the large pile of official looking mail with carbonlite's name on. In his new role as global head of house environment, he read it and wept. "Do you know how much electricity we use in this house?" he asked. "Not really" I said breezily, munching cheese on toast, healthily burnt around the edges. "Well, do you want to know?" he countered. "Not really," I replied, sinking my teeth into creamy toasted cheddar. "How much do we spend a month on our gas and electricity bills?" he suddenly cried out of nowhere. "Tell me that? How much? Do you even know?" "Well....I don't know for sure...but I reckon..." I had to put down my toast. I realised I hadn't a clue. Five pounds? fifty pounds? Five hundred pounds? I made a calculated guess. "...I reckon about fifty quid?"

"Forty pounds! Forty pounds a month! We HAVE to do something about that." He went off to check the light switches had been turned off in the boys bedrooms. And I sat there looking at my toast, which now sagged in the middle under the weight of congealed cheese. The truth was I felt rather ashamed. Why don't I know how much our bills cost? Have I been so disconnected from reality and cushioned by suburban life that I'm competely unaware of how much we spend on basic things? I vowed to get more involved in the finances and behind the scenes running of the house in future. Of course, I still pile up the boring mail for carbonlite to open, well he's got to have something to do around the house.

Feeling flush

2006-02-21T22:18:00.000Z

It's hard to keep the momentum going on this ever reducing emissions efficiency drive. One of the problems is that the 'real world' seems to interfere. You know that world where you have to go to work and get the kids to school and do the weekly shop and pay the bills and tidy the house and before you know it the week is over and you haven't given a passing thought to reducing your emissions or saving the planet. Well I guess most people have weeks like that; some poor souls probably have lives like that.

Anyway that was last week, the week in which the only thing I managed to do to move our family eco project on was to make the now weekly note of our gas and electricity consumption. Oh and try and draw a graph of our emerging consumption pattern. I know it's pretty early to see any kind of trend but I was at least hoping that the controversial introduction of a few energy efficient lightbulbs might have made the tiniest of dents in our figures or shown up on my graph. But sadly not. In fact the only trend my graph shows so far is a pattern of pretty much unvarying consumption, a horizontal line creeping slowly across the page week by week. If my little graph were on a heart rate monitor, the prognosis would be extremely bleak.

But I still believe we are alive and able to change things. We just need to get around to it, make time for it, make it a priority. And this is a new week, so what better time to start. Except that it is half term and the kids are demanding a lot of attention.

Still, my eldest boy moved things on today when he came across a little green book on my desk. "What is The Little Book of Living Green?" he asked picking it up and thumbing through it. "Is it to help save the planet?" he continued without pausing for my response. He knows how to make a father feel guilty. He stopped at the page about waterhogs and read it to me out loud, a feat which in itself amazed me as he has only just learnt to read. But it was when he finished he impressed me most. "That sounds a good idea," he said, "shall we get one?" How could I refuse such a call to action?

It took no more than five minutes to look up our water supplier on the internet, find out about their free 'Save a Flush' offer and order the three waterhogs we need to make our toilets a little more efficient. Apparently flushing toilets accounts for about 35% of household water usage; toilets fitted pre-2000 use somewhere between 7.5 and 9 litres per flush and a Save a Flush or waterhog (a device you fit in your cistern to reduce the amount of water it holds) can help reduce this to closer to 6 litres, as is the 21st century way. Now if you have five people in a house and they go a modest four times a day each, then a Save a Flush which saves a litre a time will could save as much as 20 litres of water per day, assuming they remember to flush. Load 10 large bottles of mineral water into your shopping trolley next time you're at the supermarket and you'll appreciate that's a lot of water to flush away, especially in these times of drought.

I must say I'm quite looking forward to the arrival of our waterhogs. But it's not so much the prospect of saving the water that I'm anticipating (although that's got to be a good thing) but I'm looking forward to the smile on my boy's face when the parcel arrives addressed to him and the simple pleasure of doing a little something together to reduce our family footprint.

Small changes, big reactions

2006-02-14T00:10:00.000Z

The washingqueen came back from a night on the town last Friday all fired up about energy efficiency. She was out with a large and lively group of friends celebrating a fourtieth birthday when somehow, between prawn crackers, noodles and chow mein, the subject of energy efficient lightbulbs came up. Perhaps someone bought one of the celebrants a compact flourescent birthday present. Anyway as the wine flowed and the candles burned, the conversation got quite heated and two camps emerged around the banquet table - those for and those against.

It's hard to believe that lightbulbs could be the source of such heat (well, apart from the incandescent variety) but if my reporters account is to be believed then the lightbulb revolution could be to blame for sowing the seeds of discontent in many a marriage. Based on her observations that evening, the washingqueen holds an emerging hypothesis that men love energy efficient lightbulbs more than they love their wives. For that night the men (without exception) argued the case for cool flourescent efficiency while the women protested heatedly about the injustice of men stripping out soft warm incandescent lighting without consultation or compensation.

Now this is no scientific survey, and may or may not be representative of male and female values, behaviour or attitudes to environmental issues, but it certainly rings a little true in our household. To me a light is a light is a light and the more efficient the better. OK, soft warm lights are nice for creating mood but I can live without them. But I'm not sure the washingqueen sees it that way and it sounds like the same may be true for many of her homeloving sisters.

I wonder how many men around the world have innocently changed a lightbulb, doing their bit for the cause, striking a very small blow against climate change, and inadvertently started a war at home. Perhaps the battle to prevent climate change involves struggle at many more levels than I realised; between sacrifice and comfort, efficiency and personal freedom, logic and emotion, and man and wife.

Stop...thief!

2006-02-13T19:10:00.000Z

A thief has ransacked our house, stealing all the light. I kid you not. I arrived home from picking up the kids from school last week and snapped on the light in the hall. No response. Dodgy bulb. I ransacked the kitchen cupboard for a new one. All gone! Where was our massive emergency supply of Asda price Screw in bulbs? I padded back out to the hall where strangely the bulb was now glowing brightly. This repeated itself at bedtime when my son turned on his light for a story. Hardly anything at all, just a smidgeon of orangey yellow straining through the shade. My three year old began to cry. "I told you to eat up your carrots," I lectured, unable to resist turning an energy crisis into an educational moment. After painfully stepping on a bit of lego on the way to the centre of the room, I inspected further. There was a bulb, and it was undoubtedly on, but it was one of those energy saving ones and it was saving extra energy by being only sixty watts strong. Carbonlite became the main suspect. I cornered him by mobile phone on a train and shouted loud enough for the whole carriage to hear.
"You've stolen all the light," you miserable b*****d scrooge."
Even through the phone his grin lit up the living room. "Just cutting the carbs, to protect the environment for our children."
"I'll cut off more than your carbs and you'll never see the children again if you don't hand over the bulbs." But even as I spoke, I knew it was futile. The bulbs would be long gone, probably enjoying a recycling orgy at our local landfill site. I slammed down the phone and decided to substitute caffeine for anger. But as I scanned the rack of kitchen spotlights to check he hadn't pulled a fast one there, I realised one was missing. A quick check revealed he'd done the same with the halogen decorative lights in the living room and the mirror light in the bathroom; no doubt he intends to scour the capital for energy saving replacements.

I sat down to write this posting and anger turned to guilt. Carbonlite is doing his best to conserve energy, the planet is in desperate need of saving, and all the cute polar bears will end up in Tring museum unless we all do our individual bit. But then I found I couldn't see my desk. I am William sodding Shakespeare, trying to create timeless masterpieces by candlight. As I type I realise three things; although so close to Valentines Day this posting is no love sonnet; I definitely should have eaten more carrots; and when carbonlite comes in with his stepladder, I'm going to punch his lights out.

Ban the bulb

2006-02-06T20:42:00.000Z

A box marked fragile arrived in the post this morning. The kids were quick to open it up. 'Oh what are these?' they asked, pulling out six energy saving light bulbs, kindly sent by the man who did our WarmFront assessment. 'New lightbulbs to help us save the planet,' I explained. My eldest boy looked at me a little bemused before scolding me, 'If you want to save the planet you need to turn the lights off Dad.' He's right of course. Turning the lights off will make a bigger difference, but since we're not ready to live in the dark just yet I decided to install the bulbs anyway.

I've never really given bulbs a great deal of thought, except when they blow and I spend hours staring at dozens of different types, fittings and ratings in the hardware store, trying to work out exactly which one I need, and cursing myself for not remembering to bring the blown bulb with me. For some reason our house seems to have been fitted with one of every conceivable type of light fitting which makes bulb shopping a treacherous affair. You could characterise my relationship with bulbs as being occassional and frustrating; until today I considered them as little more than benign utilitarian servants to be changed with an oven glove.

Now that's quite a different view to Dr Matt Prescott of Ban the Bulb who in a recent column for BBC News proposed making incandescent bulbs illegal, on the grounds that these evil bulbs are highly inefficient and given their wide usage, taken together on a global scale, are responsible for millions of tonnes of CO2 emissions. Apparently if everyone in the US replaced just three incandescent bulbs with three energy saving ones, it could reduce emissions by 23million tonnes and put 23 coal fired power stations out of business.

Well I don't think we're going to put anyone out of business by adding six energy saving light bulbs to the three I've had burning dimly for the last six years, but every little counts. And it makes me want to take a closer look at all our light bulbs and see whether energy efficient alternatives can be fitted, and if not whether I can change the fittings so we can rid ourselves of more of our evil incandescent luminaires.

My carbon calculator tells me that just changing these six bulbs will reduce my emissions by 0.35kg CO2 per day or 125kg CO2 per year while shaving about £30 off by power bill. Now that's what I call a win-win. In fact it's enough to make me go climb a chair and scorch my fingers removing those incandescent devils once and for all.

What's more, if that simple action lops 125kg off our household annual CO2 emissions, and last weeks calculations about reduction targets were correct, then we could achieve five months of emissions savings in one evening. Now that's the kind of news the washingqueen will welcome. It might even be enough to persuade her to burn her fingers for me.

Ever reducing emissions

2006-02-03T15:40:00.000Z

Right, so here's the score, at least according to Mayer Hillman, whose book 'How we can save the planet' is a shocking primer on the science, policy debates and current calls to action surrounding climate change.

Apparently, if we are to stablise carbon emissions at what's currently thought to be the maximum safe limit (that's 450ppm atmospheric concentration), a level recently articulated by the Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change conference, and we aim to reduce emissions so that our emissions converge upon those of the developing world by 2030, a timeline proposed by Hillman, then in the UK, individual carbon emissions need to fall from 10.4tCO2 average in 2005 to 2.1tCO2 average by 2050. OK? Got that?

Well if you have, you're following better than me. Putting aside awkward questions about whether we're talking individual emissions or household emissions, whether you count kids or not, what you include in calculating any of the above and whether emissions I produce in the course of my work count as personal or household or not at all, the one thing that is clear is that the necessary trend is sharply downwards, for ever and a day.

Striking a straight line on a piece of graph paper, and following Hillmans proposed trajectory, I reckon to do our bit, if we were good global citizens with average emissions, we would need to reduce our contribution to the problem from 10.1tCO2 at the start of 2006 to 9.8t by the time we next say Happy New Year, although quite how happy the washingqueen would be if we did that remains to be seen.

The bottom line is we need to shed 300kg of emissions per year, which doesn't sound so hard. That's only 25kg per month. Just 25 bags of sugar or a trade size bag of builders sand. Each and every month. For the next 25 years, until our emissions converge with those of the developing world, about the time I'm due to retire. Then, post retirement, things seem to get a little easier; according to Hillman, post 2030 convergence we can ease off and shed just a further 50kg a year for the next 20 years until by the time I'm 86 my emissions will hopefully be just 20% of what they should be today. Now there's a retirement to look forward to.

It all boils down to something like a 3% per year reduction in emissions, if you start from the UK average. And this happens to be the same amount that the environmental pressure groups are lobbying the UK government to commit to as an annual emissions reduction target. So, if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me.

There's just one small thing niggles me though, the fact in our household we seem to be starting from above average emissions, so perhaps we need to be aiming a little higher, to trim a little more? I feel a meeting with the washingqueen coming on to negotiate targets. If you thought the Kyoto negotiations sounded tricky, watch this space.

Under a purple cloud

2006-02-02T23:09:00.000Z

The washingqueen comes at this whole experiment from a different (and welcome) perspective. It's clear, even at this early stage, that there is plenty of potential for us to hold quite different views on just how and how far to reduce our consumption. In some ways I'm sure this reflects the polarities that exist in many families, communities and even amongst nation states when they discuss how real and serious the threat of global warming is, how far we need to go to tackle it, how far we are willing to go, what exactly we should do and when we should do it.

In a household like ours, with three young children, there's no denying the washing needs to be done, meals need cooking, people need to keep warm and the car is a very practical and convenient way to get around. So I think I understand washingqueen's concerns about taking the whole thing too far. But we've not started yet and for the moment I think we need to feel our way with small steps, so she need not worry about an imminent return to handwashing, a ban on tumble drying or the prohibition of hot meals.

But I'm not one for just tinkering at the edges. If we are to commit to carbon rationing, and in a way that requires us to reduce our emissions month on month, then sooner or later, once the low hanging fruit has been harvested, we may have to look at more radical measures.

Advocates for compulsory personal carbon rationing argue it's the only fair way to get people to take responsibility for their own emissions and the only viable way to get the majority of people to actually take action to reduce their personal energy consumption. Hands have to be forced. And I see their point. I mean we're educated people and we think of ourselves as quite green and environmentally aware. We recycle our cans, papers and bottles; we try to limit our car usage and use public transport where we can; we ride bikes, walk to school, turn off lights and wear clothes twice (well I do anyway), but even given all that, it's a shock to find our carbon emissions are above average. If CO2 emissions were visible, our house would be sitting under an embarrassingly large purple cloud while our car would disappear in haze of purple pollution.

The proponents of carbon rationing argue there's only one global solution to emissions that stands the slightest chance of global acceptance, and that's one based upon principles of equity, that everyone has the same right to emit. The argument goes that over time, we need to establish a world order in which all citizens of the planet have the same entitlement to emit carbon, and all nations will have the right to make emissions on the basis of their population. And all in a system in which the level of emissions is scientifically determined to be low enough to head off the prospect of catastrophic climate change. And all this needs to be done like now. Pronto. Like yesterday is not too soon to begin.

The proposed path to emissions equanimity? Contraction and convergence. Best look it up as I'm not sure I can explain it yet. In the washingqueen's terms it means decades of Weightwatchers for us in the West while the developing world can carry on eating cakes and biscuits.

As far as I can make out, practically speaking here in the UK, carbon rationing would mean we'd need to reduce our personal emissions year on year from an average purple megacloud of 10.4tCO2 in 2005 to a small purple hotair balloon of 2.1tCO2 by 2050. That's an 80% reduction in 45 years. So with that in mind I'm going to go away and see if I can calculate what that would mean we'd need to achieve month on month, year on year. I feel the need for CarbonWatchers coming on strong.

Busting at the seams...

2006-02-02T21:09:00.000Z

Collectively my local Weight Watchers group shed eleven stone this week. That's basically an entire woman. Each time I have a baby I return to weight watching, and lose the equivalent weight of a small child. It becomes a part of my life for a while, before I revert back to guzzling pizza. And this time of year the meeting is packed full of women (there are no men) with waistbands fit to burst, desperate to ditch the flesh.

Carbon counting and calorie counting have a lot in common. Both are last ditch attempts to solve problems brought about by overconsumption. In the case of the calorie counters fat is the evil by-product, destroying self esteem, eliminating sex lives and forcing people to wear baggy grey track suit pants. "A minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips," - my favourite catchphrase as I tuck into a large vanilla slice. In my view visible hip flab is the main reason Weight Watchers has so many regular customers. You can see fat. In fact at a slimmers meeting it's hard to see around it if you're sitting at the back. Your friends see and comment on all that extra weight, your bingo wings wave back at you as you stand in the mirror and people avoid sitting next to you on aeroplanes. If you couldn't see fat, you'd stay in with a Chinese takeaway. Who'd bother heading out to a church hall that smelt of urine to hear a lecture on the slimming properties of kelp tablets if their lack of food control wasn't going to show on their thighs? And fat is getting so easy to fight these days now the large corporations have waded in. Every mouthful has a points value, often displayed on the front of the packet.

CO2 on the other hand is the invisible enemy. I can boil the kettle until it explodes; no one will know and few will care. Whereas if my carbon emissions resembled a trouserful of cellulite I'd be down to my local Carbon Watchers meeting like a shot. But it seems I'm not the only one to have had this thought. The guys at www.thinkpurple.info are on a mission to fat bust our carbon count by making carbon 'visible'. Check them out; if word spreads, perhaps next New Year there'll be a mass rush to cut the carbs, without everyone's breath stinking on an Atkins diet.

One foot in the washing basket...

2006-02-02T14:10:00.000Z

At this point I should introduce myself. The washing queen. Never to be found without a magic basket full to the brim of dirty clothes. Ok that's an exaggeration, but I do seem to do a lot of washing, and tumble drying, and in between drink a lot of coffee, all potentially under threat in this new carbon conscious world. You see, I while I do value my environment, and my planet, and welcome energy saving devices, I also value my own time and energy and the last thing I want to be is permanently up my my elbows in washing while the machines stand unloved in the corner. Unlike carbonlite, I have to balance saving the environment with running a house and managing three young kids on a daily basis in a small village in the countryside. While he thinks up grand schemes, I'll be struggling to adapt to the small ones.

I have joined carbonlite's pledge to reduce our carbon footprint, but I haven't jumped in with both feet quite yet. While I'll do my best to help save the environment, I'm also keen to save my sanity, ensure the kids are comfortable...and still get the washing done in time for school.

Our big carbon footprints

2006-02-01T18:50:00.000Z

It's quite the in-thing to work out the size of your carbon footprint. Apparently it's a great conversation starter at eco-dinner parties. I imagine it would be a complete conversation killer with many people I know. Anyway, there's a few places on the web you can get yourself measured up, like the nattily named carbonfootprint, or if that sounds a bit tame you could limber up for a carbon workout at the carbon gym (compliments of the Centre for Alternative Technology). Even big oil companies like BP are in on the act, following in the (carbon) footsteps of the green brigade, enlighteningly encouraging us to consume less of what they are selling.

Now I'm not particularly interested in eco-dinner parties and haven't got any invites anyway, but it's obvious that if we're going to make month on month and year on year reductions in our carbon emissions we need to know both where we're starting from and where we're aiming for. We need to get a handle on our household carbon footprint, establish some sort of baseline and some targets. So, to the carbon calculators.

At first it seems straightforward, but by the time you've estimated your miles of rail, bus, air and car travel, factored in your gas, electricity, oil and other fuel consumption, declared whether your suppliers are green or not, worked out whether you can share any of your emissions with other people and confessed to any carbon offsets you've purchased to ease your conscience, it's pretty apparent that you can probably get any answer you want from your friendly footprint calculator. And since each calculator seems to estimate things in slightly different ways, you get a range of answers anyway.

After an hour of punching figures into the web, all I've managed to conclude is that our household footprint is somewhere between 7,011 and 10,283 kg CO2 based upon our car and household energy consumption. On top of that there are emissions from any rail, air and public transport we use which we need to account for, all of which will probably push the carbonometer up into the red. I'm sure with a little massaging I could adjust the readings, share the emissions with the kids and come up with a more respectable figure to disclose with pride over aperitifs, but that's not the point. I want to take a long hard and realistic look at our household emissions not play games with a carbon calculator.

I'm told the average UK footprint is about 10,500kg per year including travel. So I guess what all this means is we've got pretty big feet. Looks like we've got our work cut out to become more like Mr and Mrs Average. Now there's an aspiration.

Is that a warm front passing through?

2006-02-01T00:47:00.000Z

The man from Warm Front came last week. Warm Front is a UK government funded scheme that offers free advice to eligible householders on how to make their homes more energy efficient. And if you're hard up there's even a chance they can help you get a grant to do things like cavity insulate walls, lag hot water tanks, put insulation in attics, improve your heating systems and put draughtproofing around doors and windows. Well no-one ever said saving the planet was going to be sexy.

Being energy efficient has to be the next best thing to reducing energy consumption. And since we've not begun to figure out exactly how to reduce our consumption, we may as well start with secondary action… trying to make what we do consume go a little further. Being efficient doesn't inspire me much though. It's not a mission that's going to get me out of bed in the morning. But maybe it's more efficient for me to stay in bed with the duvet on and the heating off. Now that sounds more appealing.

Anyway, I got up to meet the man from Warm Front who measured the volume of our house, searched for insulation in our loft, prodded our hot water tank, noted the make and model of our boiler, and finally offered to get someone in to do some draught proofing for us.

"This place is huge," he said logging the results of his survey into the government database on his laptop, "I bet it costs a fortune to heat." He was right there. "These old houses are tricky," he continued, "they don’t meet modern building regulation standards for insulation and it's very expensive to upgrade them. Right now, if your house was rated like a fridge it would probably be rated an E F or G." I shivered at the prospect.

"If you want to insulate these solid stone walls you'll need to do it on the inside, then dry line them and redecorate. It'll take about four inches off each wall and you'll need to reset all your doors and windows too." It didn't sound like much of an option.

"As for your loft, well it's nicely boarded and insulated but with just 50mm of rockwool compared to current new build requirements for 270mm. It's a massive job to lift the boards, remove the ceiling, batten it out to accommodate extra insulation and put it back together. Probably not worth it for the savings you'd make in your lifetime."

It was not all bad news though, apparently our hot water tank was lagged better than most and we were entitled to a free draught proofing service for our leaky doors and windows. Well I guess every little helps.

Before the man from Warm Front left I asked him for a little advice on other ways to become a more energy efficient household. "Make sure you don't leave your TV's on standby," he said unhelpfully. I explained we didn't have a TV. He paused for a moment, a little shocked by my revelation, then continued. "Do you really want to know what I think?" I nodded. "Well, if you're serious about efficiency you should move to a smaller, newer home…. in the future old properties like this will be condemned stock, energy inefficient, undesirable. But if moving is too much I'd just turn the heating off and buy everyone an extra jumper."

And so the Warm Front moved on and left me contemplating the arrival of a cold snap and the purchase of a family pack of woolly jumpers. Along with my duvet and a lie in such changes seem much more practical.

Is switching a switch off?

2006-01-31T09:35:00.000Z

Where to start? My Dad always told me to turn off the lights and save money, well I guess we need to look at switching things off to reduce our emissions. And wouldn't it be great if it saved us money as well. I mean a lot of the media sells the benefits of going green on that basis; save money AND save the planet. I know it's a good way to incentivise people to act but doesn't it also just encourage the kind of rational economic thinking that says I'm only going to save the planet if it saves me money. What if it's going to cost me money, what will I do then?

Anyway, looking at our household energy consumption seemed as good a place as any to begin our emissions reduction project. And after a few hours spent poring over a years worth of utility bills and searching out current meter readings I can announce the results of my household fuel consumption survey. I don't know if they are particularly good or bad, but they're a benchmark, our starting point. Our average annual electricity consumption is 5364 KWh and for gas we eat up 27250KWh (well that does include cooking, heating and hot water). Just typing those figures in I already feel a little guilty (those numbers look so big) and hear excuses in my head justifying our consumption (well, we're a big family, it's a big house and it's winter time).

Anyway, they are the scores on the doors. Now we have to figure out what we spend it on and how to cut it down. In one of his newsletters The Carbon Coach suggests starting your journey to greendom by switching your energy supplier to a green one, one who commits to generate or purchase the energy you consume from renewable sources, ie sources that do not generate carbon emissions - like hydroelectric, wind, solar or wave energy.

So I looked up the options on uswitch where I learned that if I switched from my current supplier to the cheapest available option I could save over £275 a year on my bills. Or I could stay with my current supplier and switch to their green tariff and save £0 except my conscience. Or better still I could switch to the wholly green good energy supplier, pay them an extra £131 per year and know that my energy was 100% green guaranteed. Now there's a dilemma I suspect we will come up against time and time again; that the clean, green option may not be a money saver, in fact it may cost us money. And with a financial disincentive going green feels that little bit harder, especially when you think of what you could do with an extra £275 in your wallet. Still it would probably only lead to further consumption in one form or another so to start with we're going switch to the green tariff with our existing supplier; I'm not ready to pay extra yet. And as for savings, we will be saving something like 1500kg of CO2 emissions annually.

What you never had you'll never miss, or so my mum always told me and I guess that will be true of the £275 savings I am not making. What worries us about the changes we may have to make in pursuit of reducing emissions is that we may end up missing things we do have.

As easy as offsetting?

2006-01-30T19:44:00.000Z

I received a leaflet the other day from one of the big adventure travel companies trying to tempt me onto one of their exotic family adventure holidays. It looked and sounded great. If I'd had the time and money I'd have booked. What's more the literature said I could do in in style, go eco-friendly, low impact and carbon neutral by offsetting the carbon emissions from my long haul flight by by purchasing carbon offsets on the web from climate care.

So I looked them up and it all looks a great idea. With a few clicks I calculated I could ease my conscience for flying a family of five to South Africa for just £108.83. Not bad value for getting rid of 14.51 tonnes of CO2. Clicking a little further I found I could offset an average households car and home fuel emissions of 9.63 tonnes CO2 for a further £60.02, payable on the spot by credit card. In less than five minutes and for less than £200 I could have wiped out my annual carbon debt. Or so it seemed.

If only it were that easy. But it's clearly not the case. I'm sure climate care are a worthy organisation, doing their bit to help save the planet but it seems to me the only thing purchasing an offset is really going to reduce is my bank balance. Handing over my money is not going to make my emissions go away. If anything, it might make it all seem so easy, cheap and guilt free I might be tempted to make a few more. And even if my money is wisely invested in carbon sinks or some other technological wonder for carbon storage (as no doubt some of it would be), surely it's only storing up the problem for another day, when the trees decay and release my emissions back into the atmosphere creating a problem for my kids generation or beyond. Carbon offsetting may ease my concsience a little but it doesn't address the real problem of consumption. At best it just defers it, at worst it encourages us to carry on with business as usual.

So it's no thanks to that safari in South Africa and no thanks to climate care (but carrying on doing your good work). The real work is not offsetting emissions but not making them in the first place.

Excuses, excuses

2006-01-30T19:03:00.000Z

Global warming is in the headlines again but headlines don't change behaviour. And if behaviour does not change then it seems pretty certain that we're doomed, climatically speaking. But is anyone really worried? You know worried enough to really do something about it?

The scientific community seems to have reached some kind of concensus about the need to limit emissions, recommending we should aim to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at 450 parts per million or below. Yet even the governments top advisers seem to see this as unachievable. The BBC quotes Sir David King, speaking on Today, "But no country is going to turn off a power station which is providing much-desired energy for its population to tackle this problem - we have to accept that.... To aim for 450 (ppm) would, I am afraid, seem unfeasible."

So should we give up before we're even started? Perhaps 450ppm is a hard target, difficult, challenging, possibly even impossible, who knows, but should we really not aim for it, make at decent effort at trying to get there or is the future of the planet not really worth bothering about? I don't see why if the stakes are so high we should accept excuses, make excuses, give people an opt out before we even try to do something. Surely if we can increase our emissions in our lifetime we can reduce them too. Why can't progress mean going backwards? It's so easy to make excuses and just as easy to clutch at them as good reasons to do nothing. We do it everyday but it's got to stop. We're all in denial and it'll be the death of us. It's increasingly obvious where doing nothing or aiming low is going to lead. And it's not where I want to go... for me or my family. What about you?

Is the grass greener?

2006-01-30T17:34:00.000Z

With government proposals for carbon rationing a radical but serious policy option, requiring year on year reductions in individual carbon emissions, we are planning our own family experiment to understand more about the reality of our own carbon footprint and see just what we can do to make month on month reductions in the emissions we are responsible for.

On this mission, our goal is to see if the grass is greener when you live a low carbon lifestyle and discover first hand the problems and difficulties of going carbon-lite in a carbon addicted society.

We intend to share the results of our experiment locally and globally through:
1) This regular blog, journalling the reality of making changes and how it affects family life.
2) Columns in local/regional newspapers summarising progress and highlighting issues.
3) Phone-in or interview appearances on Local or Community Radio to discuss how it is going.
4) Making written contributions, letters or columns in local/parish newsletters.
5) Establishing a community action group to discuss green issues, share tips and ideas, get support and encourage action.
6) Developing radio drama, performance and literary works based upon our experience and research.

Our experiment will involve:
a) Auditing current carbon emissions from all household energy and tranport use
b) Setting monthly targets for emissions reduction in line with likely government targets
c) Monitoring and reporting on household energy and transport usage
d) Educating ourselves and our children and changing family habits and behaviour to reduce carbon emissions
e) Researching and trying to implement other ways to reduce carbon footprints
f) Researching local and national government advice and programmes to support energy efficiency, carbon reduction and low emissions lifestyles
g) Speaking with experts about energy efficiency and green alternatives for energy, transport and living
h)Working to engage others in doing the same