Saving the Planet … or is it ?

I believe the tv was a special Philips model which was on a special type of standby so it was “on” immediately …the greens jumped on this as typical of all tv’s

Posted by Mike Hurley 14/09/2021 09:50:53

Back in late 50's I remember my mother having a strange contraption
called a 'shopping bag'. This was reused thousands of times with no
waste whatsoever ( made from some kind of material / canvas or
similar), Now isn't that a clever idea?

If you want to save the planet i suppose recycling and re-using
is the way forward.

Is that the 'last one' ?

I have been getting my shopping online from Waitrose for a while now and always opted for bags (the cheap white ones). When I had packed the shopping away they always went over the fence to my next door neighbour who used them to fill with all his home grown vegetables which then went to all his customers. I guess we are going to have to come up with another scheme now. I abhor plastic in the ocean but there is no excuse for letting it get that far. Nothing should be 'thrown away' but entrained in the waste stream where it can be either recycled or disposed of in a proper manner. Banning all plastics is a bit knee jerk to me.

regards Martin

The latest silliness I have noted was the idea that there are going to be 2 periods in the day when you will not be allowed to charge an electric vehicle to avoid overloading the grid. One in the morning and one in the afternoon total about 7 hours.

Then when everyone has electrically powered heat pumps will they start dictating that they will also have to be switched off at peak demand times as well?

The other stupid thing is the disparity in the cost of a kWh of gas power and that of electric power. Electricity costs about 10 times as much as gas per kWh so if we have a gas hob and an electric kettle and want to save a bit of money we should ditch the electric kettle and use the gas hob to boil water for tea or coffee because even though it is less efficient and uses more kWh overall and is bad for the environment as a result it is a lot cheaper. The same is true for heat pumps. A heat pump system with a COP in the expected range may use half the kWh of a gas fired system but since the cost is ten times higher per kWh for electricity this means that the heat pump running cost will be 5 times higher than a gas fired boiler. These figures do not encourage people to change to a heat pump system so they will do everything they can to keep a gas fired system until the prices nudge people to go for heat pumps.

Martin C

We took up the offer of free Waitrose shopping bags over 10 years ago and are still using them. They are made from woven green nylon by the look of them and very durable.

On the topic of EV’s, wouldn’t many be charged at night at a lower tarif? At least for the 60% of motorists that have their own drive. Obviously if you’re out and about and need a charge that’s different.

Centralisation and economy of scale are often paradoxically wasteful. By simple example I tried buying bulk 25L disinfectants and found staff just chucked the stuff about and it was cheaper overall to go back to small containers.
Many will remember the days of local primary and junior schools where parents could walk kiddie there until they were old enough to take a bus into town for secondary education and an economy functional with only one parent working avoids all the travel to child care. We had the grocer van weekly around the village and the milk round and paper round, so it was only necessary for a once weekly trip for other essentials, which could be carried in a couple of string bags.
One car was a luxury and many found that unnecessary compared to now - 2 and 3 car families because it’s so essential you keep a spare. And because of traffic and parking fees in town everyone goes to a shopping centre and gets enticed with all sorts of unnecessary and tempting extras as well as the media showing takeaway coffee and bottled water on every show - the most nonsensical rip-offs to date.

This is because some economist has promoted GDP as a measure of a country's wealth and economic activity. If we each sold and bought 3 empty bottles from each other every day we could be the wealthiest nation..

pgk

There is a lot of grossly inaccurate guff about standby power consumption of various devises on the internet.

"On 6 January 2010 the European Commission (EC) Regulation No 1275/2008 came into force. The regulations mandate that from 6 January 2010 "off mode" and standby power for electrical and electronic household and office equipment shall not exceed 1W, "standby plus" power (providing information or status display in addition to possible reactivation function) shall not exceed 2W. Equipment must where appropriate provide off mode and/or standby mode when the equipment is connected to the mains power source. These figures were halved on 6 January 2013."

It may be only 1 watt, but I bet there’s a lot more than 100 mil televisions alone on standby at the moment Perhaps a lot more. Just work that out.

That's what teh 'smart meter' is for.

One of the growing problems is mains sockets with built in USB, phone chargers not in use, loads fo 'smart' home control light bulbs etc. Then there is the 'get our internet gas heating thermostat so you can switch the heating on before you get home' problem.
Oh the assholes were blocking the M25 again today to increase petrol wastage in the tailback.

.

Sorry but that’s irrelevant to my observation of the 2010 poster

MichaelG.

And then we hear on the news today half a dozen rich 'oiks' will swan round the world 'in space' for no other reason than , 'they' can.

Mindless, meaningless extravagance , which is how we got to this state.

.

… and now people are getting hurt: **LINK**

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/m25-climate-change-protesters-junction-23-police-arrested-b955371.html

Unbelievable idiocy by the ‘protesters’

MichaelG.

All the government propaganda has radicalised some young people

Hardly surprising

In a relatively cool climate like the UK for a lot of the year the heat from things on standby contributes towards the heating of the house. It is possible that people are switching central heating on a day or two later because of this slight increase in the background temperature in their houses. This one day delay would swamp a year's use of standby for most UK properties.

One of the examples of not looking at the whole picture before coming out with new restrictions was the limiting of the power of vacuum cleaners. Due to lower power they need to be used longer so the overall effect is probably not what was intended.

Martin C

One of the examples of not looking at the whole picture before coming out with new restrictions was the limiting of the power of vacuum cleaners. Due to lower power they need to be used longer so the overall effect is probably not what was intended.

Not sure that is a good example.

The reason that particular change was introduced was due to the way vacuum cleaners were marketed, using the " a more powerful motor = more suction" reasoning. In reality, powerful motors were used to mask inefficient designs, so the "more powerful motor" rarely gave better performance over a better designed, lower power unit. But the "bigger is better" argument won out in the shops.

The limiting of vacuum cleaner power lead to more efficient designs & vacuum cleaners are mostly more efficient than before using less power, so the overall effect is probably just what was intended. I doubt many went out & changed an old unit just for the sake of getting a more efficient new one, but with natural wastage the current population of older inefficient cleaners will eventually be replaced.

Nigel B.

There was talk of the EU banning high power electric kettles. As it takes the same amount of energy to boil a pint of water whether you have a 250 watt or 750 watt heater this seems a pretty pointless exercise to me. In fact a low power element will take longer and have more heat loss. Some times these politicians just don't think things through.

I notice ,today , we have had to use the OCGT units , these are little more than 25% efficient.

Desperate times and it is still only summer.

After a 30 years of working in energy efficiency, I'm now firmly of the view that regulations made by our politicians are the thing that make a difference. Without regulations we would still be buying tungsten lightbulbs, G rated fridges, non condensing boilers, less efficient cars, consumer electronics with high standby power and new homes wouldn't be insulated.

Most manufacturers, if left unregulated, will design products that are cheap and inefficient. Most consumers will continue to buy the cheap inefficient products, which is why most manufacturers don't care about efficiency. Regulations drive the manufacturers to innovate so that high efficiency becomes standard and affordable.

I agree Stephen. People will gripe for a while and then things become second nature. Sometimes that does not work quite as efficiently as intended; as mentioned I think quite a few people still treat the new multiple use carrier bags like their old single use ancestors, which rather defies the point.

The real innovation will be the day we learn to generate electricity from grizzled and grumpy forum cynicism. We will be able to shut off the national grid.

Edited By Jon Lawes on 16/09/2021 11:32:23