Bottled Water:

In Britain there’s an awful lot of effort put into making tap water drinkable and then we flush most of it down the loo – about a third of household water is used like this. I particularly dislike bottled water that’s been imported from some remote spot – Fiji Water or Iceberg, for example. Glass bottles are even worse than plastic ones because they’re heavier, so the transport impacts are greater.

Halogen lights:

They’re like an invasion – halogen lights have swept into people’s houses like a energy hungry plague. They get dangerously hot, so you have to be careful about fire risk and many of them seem to blow very quickly. But once you’ve bought a light, which will only take halogen bulbs there’s not much you can do about it – you’re trapped….

Street lighting:

Don’t you think that there are far too many street lights in Britain? And many are that horrible eye-aching orange that blocks out the night sky. They also use a huge amount of energy – they have to be pretty powerful to send their ghastly luminescence into the outer atmosphere. Someone suggested to me that street lighting might actually increase crime because the burglars and car thieves can see what they’re doing. Do you think they’d be out and about so much if they had to use a torch?

Patio heaters:

I was sitting in an open air café the other day. I wondered why my head was getting rather hot – after a while it felt like burning. When I looked up I realised that they had 6 double patio heaters in the overhead canopy and they were all blazing. But it was sunny outside and they weren’t needed. I had nearly finished my meal before I managed to get them switched off. Restaurants are one thing – I even went to an organic one the other day and they had patio heaters in the garden – but people with patio heaters at home have even less excuse. If it’s too cold to be outside, stay indoors, or wear a jumper…

Tinfoil:

There’s a lady in my tennis club who arrived with a plate of supermarket sandwiches, which she’d newly wrapped in volumes of tinfoil. I managed not to make any comment until the end of the meal when she went to get a new batch of tinfoil to wrap the left over sandwiches in. “Why don’t you re-use the foil you brought in the first place”, I exclaimed. Tinfoil or aluminium foil takes a lot of energy to make and bauxite the raw material is often found in rainforest areas, so you could be contributing to their destruction. If you must use it, buy recycled foil – www.naturalcollection.com . When I next saw the tinfoil culprit she admitted that the last time she’d used it she’d cut her finger – we both agreed that it served her right!

Car air conditioning:

I don’t think I was very popular with taxi drivers in Hong Kong. The weather outside was hot and steamy, so I wasn’t wearing much. Then I’d get into a cab and it felt like I’d climbed into a freezer. So I opened the windows and asked them to turn the air conditioning off. Bliss. Lovely warm air wafting in. I think there’s even less excuse having car air conditioning in the UK with our climate. It’s also noisy, makes the car use more fuel and worst of all the cooling gases used have a big global warming impact (the HFCs used are 1400 times more powerful as greenhouse gases than CO2) and a high leakage rate (between one-quarter and one-third a year).

Disposable Cameras:

I’ve heard a number of people say that they think it’s alright to use a disposable camera because it’s recyclable. I don’t agree. I think it’s wasteful. You can buy cheap digital cameras and use them again and again, so why get ones that only have one life. And don’t imagine that recycling means there’s no environmental impact – it may reduce it.

Fake fires:

They may look warm but the reality is that fake fires produce very little heat compared to the amount of energy they use. Gas log fires are generally even worse than coal ones because they have a higher flame and so use more gas.

Cut flowers:

It may not seem very romantic but I’m not a great fan of cut flowers unless they’ve been locally grown outside – preferably straight from someone’s garden. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. The cut flower industry imports from all over the world by plane – or produces hot-house flowers in energy-intensive greenhouses. Either way it’s a carbon-intensive business. And it’s hardly a necessity. What I really dislike is seeing offices, hotels, apartment blocks and flats which clearly have regular deliveries of cut flowers. Surely they could be more imaginative and have dried flowers, silk ones or even a beautiful sculpture or painting…

Dryers:

I haven’t yet managed to wean my mother away from her drier – even in the summer months – but I going to keep trying. Even in a small flat there’s space for one of those expandable racks. And if you have a garden and can hang your washing on the line, the delicious spring freshness of your laundry is a real treat. Dryers use a lot of energy and should be avoided wherever possible.

Single sided paper:

I really dislike receiving documents that are only printed on one side. Double-sided printing halves the amount of paper used, so it really makes sense. The worst is getting a 2 page letter with only a couple of lines on the second page and a whole new sheet of paper. Anything like that, which I don’t need to keep, I re-use in my printer. Pristine new sheets of paper are used only when absolutely necessary and although I don’t have a double-sided facility on my printer (it’s quite a basic machine), I do use both sides by printing odd pages first and even ones second…..

Gold & diamonds:

I have to admit that I do have a gold wedding ring and a gold tooth but I’d rather I hadn’t – or at the very least I could say they were made from recycled gold. I’ve discovered that the gold to make one wedding ring will have resulted in 20 tonnes of rocks and debris being discarded. And gold mining is one of the dirtiest businesses around using lots of highly toxic materials and causing horrendous pollution. I’m afraid diamonds are no better – in fact they may be even worse. Apart from producing lots of waste mining diamonds is a hugely water intensive, which has led to serious wildlife impacts as wetland areas dry up.

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