Welcome to our festive blog to help keep you green while enjoying some festive fun. It’s a time to eat, drink and be merry. Now you can have your ‘elf’ a merry little Christmas with a clean conscience!
Should you fake it or go real?
We are referring to Christmas trees of course – is a fake or real tree kinder to our planet? Fake trees can obviously be reused but they are made of plastics and metals, end up as waste in landfill and are often shipped over long distances. Real trees on the other hand are biodegradable, can be chipped and made into mulch and while they are growing they clean the air. The downside is that real trees may also be shipped for miles and are often grown using pesticides and herbicides. Maybe you should consider purchasing an FSC® certified Christmas tree, then you can have the final ‘sleigh’.
Use LED Christmas lights
As much as we don’t support waste to landfill, power-guzzling tree lights are even ‘rude-olf’. LED lights use 90% less electricity than traditional electric Christmas lights and the small price difference is negligible when you consider that LED last years longer and are brighter. With the warm light effects, there seems little argument against LED. Remember that when your Christmas tree is lit, you can switch off other lights in your room. Double bubble.
Too many cooks in the kitchen
What’s cooking this Christmas? Most turkeys take 4-5 hours to cook. Based on an oven using 2400 watts, budget for £1.20 for cooking your bird. It doesn’t sound a lot, but think of that multiplied by 27.2 million households in the UK, let alone globally. Our poor planet must be buckling under the pressure around the festive period. Don’t be a rebel without a Claus, be smart and consider using your microwave where possible. For hob cooking, keep the lids on your pots so your food will cook in less time. As it ‘snow’ happens, your food will also taste much nicer. There is good news though, your fridge uses less energy when stuffed full because your Christmas goodies act as insulation.
Christmas Charades
How many times have you sat down after your meal playing Christmas Charades and the chocolate’s not the only thing that is melting? It can even start to feel ‘Claus-trophobic’. Rather than do a risky striptease in front of family members to cool off, why not turn the thermostat down? Body heat is free and the planet and your bank will love you for it.
Remember to use heavier duvet in the winter – it’s healthier to sleep in a slightly cooler room. Fitting reflectors behind your radiator can reflect back as much as 95% of the heat radiated from your radiators. That’s another bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream you can afford now. Go on … be a Rebel without a Claus.
Buy a battery recharger
Is your remote control likely to get used more over Christmas? How many Christmas gifts are you buying that require batteries? Why not treat the kids to a battery recharger to encourage a green culture in your family from a young age? Better still, purchase gifts that don’t require batteries or opt for energy efficient gifts at the very least. Be careful to select a good quality charger that stops charging when the battery is full and think about the types of batteries you will need to recharge.
Well, it’s snow joke … That’s it from us on the blog front for 2018. We hope you have enjoyed reading them as much as we have enjoyed writing them. We wish you a very Merry Christmas. Enjoy taking your ‘elfies’ and see you in 2019.
The office is open right up until Christmas Eve, so please call us on 01403 886508 for any BEMS or Energy Efficiency related queries.