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piggybreeder
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Posted: 27 January 2008 12:13 pm | 1st Post |
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What are you doing? to be green.
With the world today going green I was wondering how you were doing your bit.
Shopping
We live out in the country just outside of our local village, shopping is a 24 mile round trip so we order most of our groceries on line to be delivered by the supermarket. We coincide this with our neighgbours delivery so that the van only has to come out once a month to our area and op for a no carrier bag delivery. any bags we do get are re-used untill they virtually fall apart. If shops have paperbags we opt to have them instead of the plastic ones.
Heating
We only have open coal fires in our house , we also live near a wood and we grow our own trees, so were posiible I obtain wood from the trees in the area, only cutting them to a certain point so that I know they will grow back the following year ( coppiceing) we also use pallet wood to make kindling sticks that are used to start the fire, its amazeing how many pallets there are just lying around that businesses want to get rid of. Any papers that are left at work I bring home shred them and make them into fire blocks with our block press that I bought from e-bay. We are planinng to install radiators that will run off the back boiler from the main fire in the living room.
clothing
Most of our clothing that we use outside around the holding comes from charity shops , and and any of the items that we have bought for best and we no longer want go to the charity shops for someone else to buy.
Waste.
Any food waste from the house goes to the animals, vegetables go to the pigs and chickens, meat to the dog and cat,
We have a septic tank so our own waste goes into this and not into the main sewage system were it could pollute the rivers.
Plastics, tins,cardboard etc is seperated and sent to recycling centers,
garden waste and livestock waste is composted and goes backl onto the land.
lots more but it would make this posting tooooo long but im sure as this topic progresses we'll add more.
http://www.bramblescroft.com
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Perfectponies
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Posted: 27 January 2008 09:02 pm | 2nd Post |
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Wow !!!
We try & do our bit too. Shopping similar as 22 mile round trip so order online and have delivered - without carrier bags. All cardboard, plastics, tins and bottles separated and recycled. We also have a log maker (off ebay) which we do use but i have to confess i find it a bit slow going making them so a lot of papers go along with the recycling - ( i will make a real effort to use it more) Stamps go to the cancer shop and the green lids off the milk bottles go to a friend who' s dad collects them for a charity. All old clothes to charity shop and anythink i think i can sell goes on ebay. All food scraps (except meat) go to the chickens and peelings etc get boiled up for them...if they cant eat it, it can normally go in compost bin. Waste from chickens and horses gets dug into garden where our veggies grow. We have no dishwasher ( well apart from me !!) and no tumbledrier. Our heating is from a solid fuel fire in the kitchen ( which has a rug in front of it bought from the charity shop) with radiators run off that and our water is heated from it too. We also have a coal fire in the lounge... coal is delivered by coalman who delivers to the whole village together so only one trip there. 
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contadino
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Posted: 28 January 2008 05:23 am | 3rd Post |
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We're 'off-grid' for water and sewerage. We grow 90% of our own food - we still buy flour from the mill in town, and milk (for cheesemaking) from the local masseria. We're going to try growing grain this year and acquisition of goats for milk is scheduled for 2009.
We recycle everything on-site - i.e. we reuse winebottles, jars etc.. each year.
All our land is uncertified organic - we use no chemicals at all. The wife uses potions of bicarb, lemon, vinegar, olive oil, etc... for household cleaning. Soap, washing powder, etc are all homemade.
All our heating and hot water comes from the woodburner and the solar panel. The wood is prunings from our olive trees, so is self-sustaining.
Our car is a 750cc Fiat Panda which I very rarely drive beyond our local town (5km away). The wife flies back to the UK once a year to visit friends & family, but otherwise there are no airmiles. I probably use more petrol in my garden tools than the car over the course of the year.
Electricity consumption is a tricky one. I'm in the process of calculating whether a wind turbine will pay for itself, but our usage is so low that it may not be worth it yet. Our bills for the last 2 years have totalled less than EUR 300, and when I last checked each unit is at least 3 times the price that we were paying in the UK.
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