Anthony Ward
Amy Lawson
Jon Cousins
Lokabandhu
Marke Pawson
Rachel Clyne
Trisha O’Carroll
Patrick Whitefield
and Adrian Hopper

Our aim is to provide a very practical and personal and public demonstration that individuals really can reduce their carbon emissions and can learn and have fun in the process.

All the CRAGs members have pledged to calculate their emissions from the past year, monitor them over the coming year, and take steps to reduce them by at least 5%. In the process we expect to learn a lot about how to do it, and how it feels when trying to do it…

Some of our results and adventures will be posted here as and when we’re able.

Thanks for reading this. Comments and suggestions welcome – and do come back to find out how we’re getting on!

I have purchased an “Efergy” (a real time energy reader) with the idea of hiring it out to people who would like to know what energy is used when and by what whithin the home or office.

The reader can be used anywhere in the home. it gives accurate electricity costs, carbon footprint readings.

Portable display means you can be anywhere in your home or office to recieve readings. Easy set up.

The cost will be £3.00 per week with a £10.00 deposit (deposit fully refunded on return of efergy in good working order).

At the moment it will be on hire for one week at a time, know when your’e using the most energy.

After 6 months we recommend that you hire the efergy again to see if you have reduced your energy use, your carbon and your costs.

Kind Regards

Amy

Regards

Amy

What I have been doing is thinking about it all, realising how complex my life is and how hard it is to be aware of the consequences of all the stuff I’ve been up to…  Travel for instance, though that’s relatively easy – I keep a diary anyway and have been converting last year’s entries into a ‘travel diary’ summarising all the journeys I’ve made.  From that it should be an easy step to calculating their carbon emissions.  But food…?  Where to start!

What I realise is that our society makes it incredibly easy to be aware of the financial costs of things, but not at all of their environmental costs.  If a flights costs £50 it feels cheap – I can stay happily blind to the fact it produces two tons of CO2 because that’s just not visible the way £50 is.  If an apple costs 30p I buy it, not noticing it comes from South Africa rather than Somerset…  I wish our system allowed for environmental consumptions to be felt ‘in the pocket’ as quickly and easily as we feel our money coming and going.  I want to develop an ‘environmental literacy’, even an environmental fluency, so I just know, sort of naturally, what things cost in environmental terms – in as much detail as possible.  That’s the main reason I joined the CRAG group, really.

On the carbon reduction side – a bit of good news. I said to my landlady, “how about getting green electricity?”  She loves making raw food juices and I thought it was a shame to be making such good food with such crap fossil fuel electricity.  I didn’t know what she’d say, I just asked her.  And she just said “Yes!” immediately.  As though she’d been waiting for someone to ask her.  I said, it might cost 10% more…  She said, “I don’t care – just tell me what to do…!”.   So that’s a result, I just need to get hold of the right papers and get them signed.  And today I heard EDF (her present supplier) are planning to build 4 new nuclear reactors in the UK…  So let’s do it ASAP I’m thinking.

Lokabandhu