Save money on car tax

Did you know that if you buy a new car or a car that was registered on or after the first of March, 2001, then the amount of tax you pay is less for cars with lower carbon dioxide emissions. For instance, if you drive a petrol car that is deemed to produce less than 100g CO₂ / km then you would pay only £65 a year. If it produced over 185g CO₂ / km then you would pay £165 a year. To see the full picture of GVED (Graduated Vehicle Excise Duty), have a look at this table on the DVLA site.

If your car was registered on or after the first of March, 2001, you can find out what Vehicle Excise Duty you will have to pay by visiting this website. If you're considering buying a new car, don't forget to check this site first!

If you're buying a second hand car that was registered before the first of March, 2001, only engine size is considered. Basically, if you buy a car with an engine size of 1549cc or less then you could save £60 a year - click here for more info.

caldini

Use a sink plunger

We've had a problem with the bath. The water hasn't been draining away freely. We've removed all the nasty hair and gunk that was blocking the plug hole - a horrible job - but after having a shower we're still left standing in a couple of inches of water.

There's a number of options open to us. First up is Mr Muscle Sink & Plughole Unblocker.

Powerful gel clears blockages effortlessly. Clears blocked and slow running sinks, plugholes and pipes effectively. Sinks through standing water straight to the blockage. Kills germs and deodorises.

Yeah, and it's also a bunch of nasty chemicals that you're dumping straight into the water system. You have to wear protective gloves and exercise extreme caution when using the product. At £3.04 this seems an expensive use-once system that I won't be trying.

Next up is Harpic Power Jet Sink Unblocker. This is a big aerosol can that you place over the plug hole and upon pressing down a three second jet of liquid is supposed to clear the blockage. Trust me, it doesn't work. I've tried it before. It costs £3.98 and you can only use it once and once is not enough. There's no mention of what's in the liquid either.

Unimpressed with the choice of items at the supermarket I decided to visit my local DIY shop. There on the shelves for just £2.16 was a low-cost re-usable option - the humble, but most effective, rubber sink plunger. Within minutes and using a good bit of elbow grease, the blockage was removed. If it happens again I can reuse the plunger.

Some tips for using a sink plunger - make sure there's some water in the bath when plunging as this helps make a better seal. Hold a damp cloth over the overflow hole to form a complete seal. For really stubborn blockages, you can push the plunger down and then pull completely off very quicly. This sucks the gunk out of the drain - not for the weak of stomach!

I've also seen people resorting to stuffing wire coat hangers down their drains. This seems to be a waste of a good wire coat hanger. There are also tools available that you use in the same way, known as drain augers, or snakes.

For more tips on unblocking a sink, see this article from the Dummies site.

caldini

Recycle plastic cups

I have just started a new job. All around the office there are recycling bins for paper, aluminium cans and even plastic bottles. This is a good thing! However, dotted all around the office are various coffee machines giving out free hot drinks in plastic cups.

There seems to be no recycling bins for these cups, even though there's a big "mobius loop" embossed on the side of the cup.


Luckily, Save a Cup are here to help. This company has helped recycle over a billion hard walled polystyrene cups since its inception. They provide special collection bins that allow the cups to be stacked and waste liquid to be collected. The cups are collected and stored in clear plastic bags. When six clear bags or more have been filled, Save a Cup will come and collect the cups for recycling.

I'm going to find out who to contact at my place of work and let them know about the Save a Cup website and try and persuade them to join the scheme. Why not do the same at your workplace?

caldini

Do all your ironing at once

It's a Sunday. It's probable that you've cleaned all your clothes ready for a new week at work tomorrow. Perhaps you've cleaned all your shirts using Ecover or some other fancy product. But have you ironed them? Or do you hate ironing so much that you leave it to last minute, ironing your shirt in the morning after breakfast?

Well, you could try those no-iron shirts with gimicky names like techno cotton. I have tried this myself but I'm not convinced with the output. I like a nice clean crease down my sleeves.

Instead, get all your ironing done today. That way you won't be wasting energy reheating the iron every morning. It will also give you chance for a few extra minutes lie-in in the morning! Speed things up by ironing while watching MTV or listening to the radio.

Alternatively, you could persuade your place of work to adopt a casual dress code, at least on a Friday, or even once a month for charity (you pay £1 to dress down or £2 if you don't). Nobody needs to iron jeans, t-shirts or jumpers.

Make life a bit easier too - dry clothes on the washing line if possible, or if using a clothes maid, hang the clothes out neatly to avoid creasing.

Got any other tips for energy efficient washing? Please leave a comment!

caldini

Hand dryers v paper towels

Life is full of choices. We have to make lots of decisions every day. Some decisions may have a huge impact on the direction of our lives, whereas others may be rather inconsequential. Some of these decisions may be just a matter of convenience, and the consequence of these actions may be minute. However, if we make a decision about something we do every day or more the consequence of these actions may be very great indeed.

OK, this post isn't really that deep. It's about a choice I have every day but still haven't come up with a satisfactory decision. In the toilets at work, should I use the paper towels to try my hands or the electric hand dryer?

The hand dryer is using electricity that has probably been created in a coal or oil fired power station. This will have belched out our carbon dioxide, a major contributor to global warming - the biggest threat to our planet. Along with that are pollutants such as sulphur dioxide which causes acid rain. The hand dryer is very inefficient and lots of heated air will have escaped into the building, which will probably be cooled down again by the air conditioning unit.

The paper towels on the other hand have been made from recycled paper. A no-brainer I thought. Go for the hand towels. But wait a minute. The paper had to be recycled in a factory that uses electricity. What happened to the chemicals used in the recycling process - were they washed into the sea? And then there's the transportation from the factory to my office - no doubt in a big diesel fuelled lorry that also contributes to global warming and acid rain. After the hand towel has been used it goes into a plastic bin bag that is transported somewhere else - hopefully the recycling plant but probably a landfill site somewhere.

So which of the above has least impact on the environment? Who knows? It would take a lot of serious scientific calculation to work out and differing usage could affect the results, i.e. do you use one or two paer towels; do you shake your hands thouroughly before using the dryer etc. Perhaps I should just give my hands a good shake and wipe them on my trousers.

caldini

Only boil what you need

One of the pledges I made for World Environment Day was to boil only the water that I need. I'm not a regular tea or coffee drinker, and the only time I use the kettle is to boil water for cooking pasta, rice or noodles, and on the odd occasion to fill up the washing up bowl if the tank is out of hot water (more on that coming up in a later post). As far as I can tell, heating the water in the kettle is more efficient than heating it in a pan on the stove as it takes less time and more of the heat seems to be used for heating the water (rather than it all being lost up the sides of the pan). If anyone can prove me wrong, please let me know.

With a little experimentation, I've found that I only need 0.8 litres for pasta and 0.6 litres for noodles, according to the graduations on the kettle. Normally I would fill the kettle right to the top and would have to boil a whole litre of water. Not only is this a waste of water but a waste of electricity too.

I've also found an efficient way of cooking rice from Delia Smiths 1998 book, How to Cook - Book One. In her ten rules for cooking perfect rice she recommends using twice the volume of water to the volume of rice, always keep the lid on throughout cooking and turn down the heat to its lowest setting. Not only is it more efficient but it also results in superior fluffy rice! Delicious!

Have a read of this interesting article about efficient kettle design, and don't forget to choose wisely if you're in need of a new kettle.

Finally, if you filter water before putting it in the kettle, don't use water from the fridge. Keep the filter jug by the kettle - room temperature water will take less energy to boil than water from the fridge or even the cold water tap.

caldini