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Showing posts from March, 2019

Can you save money by eating a flexitarian diet?

The 'flexitarian diet' has been suggested as an important way in which humanity can solve the problem of the growing world population and the negative environmental impacts of eating meat and diary products from animals. Meat and other animal products require a lot of land and water, and also produce greenhouse gases (cow farts) that contribute to global warming, and other environmental pollutants (e.g. ammonia from their poos/wees). In comparison, growing plants takes up a lot less space, requires less water, and produces less greenhouse gases. According to the link above about the 'flexitarian diet', 'Worldwide, livestock accounts for between 14.5 and 18% of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.' Wow! Well.. I always did feel a bit guilty about liking baby lambs and pigs but then realising that we're raising them to eat them... So let's eat plants instead! In the 'flexitarian diet' you don't need to cut out meat entirely, but cut it

Can you save money by drying clothes on a washing line?

It's a bit of a faff to hang out your clothes to dry and then bring them in again later, but can it save you some money? The fairerpower.co.uk website has an article on the top five energy using applicances in the home, and the tumble dryer is number two, at least in the UK. They estimate that it likely costs most users about 37 pounds a year to run, assuming 150 uses a year. Another website, www.thegreenage.co.uk , estimates that a load in your dryer could cost between 14p and 49p per load, depending on the energy rating of your dryer, so 150 loads a year would be 21-74 pounds a year. And if you do even more loads than that, for example, if you have children, say 250 loads a year, then that would be 35-123 pounds a year, which is quite a bit of money! So hanging out your clothes to dry could save money (and greenhouse gas emissions). A handy thing to do is to check the forecast to see if it's going to be sunny or windy (both good for drying) in the next few days, and