Saturday, 16 January 2010

Saving £4 and landfill

At the start of the year I worked out that I'd have to spend roughly an extra £100 to have green electricity - and I still maintain that it's a price worth paying. But I think it would be more convincing if I could determine other ways of saving money while being ecofriendly as well. And this morning, I found one. Rather than bin the printer cartridge and buy a new one (from Epson at a cost of £10), I took it along to my local Cartridge World (only a few minutes walk away) and, after a couple of minutes wait and friendly service, I had a refilled cartridge and had only paid £6. That's four pounds towards my target!
The Headington Cartridge World can be contact on 01865-764454, and their homepage (http://www.cartridgeworld.co.uk) has a store locator, so anyone can find their local branch.

Tuesday, 5 January 2010

Keeping warm - Window Seal

If you're in the UK right now, you've probably noticed the weather. One of the difficulties with reducing our energy use is that when it gets cold, we want heat - lots of it. I live in a late 1920s semi-detached house; a previous owner put in double-glazing in some windows, but not all of them. And it makes a difference, but it is expensive.

Fortunately, there's a much cheaper way. I bought 'Window seal', which is a thin plastic film a bit like cling-film. You cut a sheet to size, stick double-sided sticky tape around the window, and then put the film over it. All you have to do then is take a hair-dryer to the film - this makes it shrink, so that any wrinkles in it can't be seen.

The cost - £14.00 for 12 square metres; and it comes with double-sided sticky tape. I bought mine from Headington Homeware; Window Seal itself is marketed by OracStar (the box has their postcode - NN4 7HS - but no website.

The key point about this stuff is that it cuts down on draughts, as well as trapping a layer of insulating air between the two surfaces.

Oh, it's really snowing now.