How to be Super-Thrifty

I just read Kath Kelly's book 'How I Lived a Year on Just a Pound a Day'. Mainly because I was curious to find out just what was allowed to be included in the £1, as I'd heard about it on the radio, and couldn't believe that this was possible. The book turned out to be an entertaining and informative read.

The feat - which started as a bit of a dare - seems to have taken place a couple of years ago, so perhaps Ms Kelly managed to avoid some of the food price rises. Rent wasn't included in the £1, but everything else was.... although some of the survival tactics were a little cheeky, like pinching newspapers out of other people's recycling boxes when they were left out on bin-day, to get the coupons to collect tokens for freebies. Other strategies, such as buying reduced price items in the supermarket and picking wild food were rather more familiar.

The author managed not only to survive - AND put on weight - but also to get in a couple of trips away without cheating, which was all very impressive on such a tiny budget. Internet sites that are of use to anyone wishing to live a more frugal - and green - lifestyle are listed at the back of the book, and include Freecycle, organic farm volunteering, and car-sharing sites.

The only snag is that the book itself has a hefty £6.99 price tag..... this seemed to jar with the spirit of the book - so I borrowed it from the local library for just a 25p reservation fee. Ms Kelly would be proud!

Race with a Difference

A 2-day race to promote good driving habits started this morning, reports the BBC. The winner of the 'MPG Marathon' will be the entrant which gets the most miles per gallon, rather than necessarily arriving first. For a first-hand account of the 2006 race, check out this link. (The Aygo won, with 84pmg. Not bad.)

There are some basic fuel-saving driving tips on the MPG Marathon website. Or, you can read up on some more advanced/radical tips here (spotted on Sigrun's Facebook page a couple of months back - thanks!)

Time Travel: Is Life Without Plastic Possible?

Following on from all those reports about what plastic is doing to sea life (cf David Shukman's reports from Midway island in the Pacific), and how it is absorbing toxins which are then introduced into the foodchain, BBC reporter Chris Jeavans has taken on the challenge to spend the month of August without plastic. (Where she fails, she is collecting the evidence and comparing it against her usual amount of plastic, to see how much it is possible to cut down.) Cutting down plastic when you live a wasteful lifestyle already is probably pretty easy, but cutting it out entirely sounds like no mean feat & I'll be interested to read how she gets on.

Offset your Holiday Carbon and Support Developing Countries

Summer is a time when we use less energy for heating and lighting but more for travel as we go on holiday, and increasingly perhaps more for cooling. Whilst avoiding and reducing the associated carbon emissions in various ways is the best approach, the unavoidable emissions can be cancelled out quickly by investing in zero carbon energy systems. Where such systems are implemented in developing countries there is a double benefit.

A range of companies and organisations now offer offset schemes. The most effective only invest in zero carbon energy systems, not tree planting. The Pure Clean Planet Trust is one of these. It is also attractive because it is a charity, and caps the proportion of offsetting donations it receives which it uses for its own costs. It therefore contrasts with commercial companies whose aim might be to maximise profits.

Pure is just beginning to invest in projects, and the first one is a large local power station in India using unused parts of crops such as coconuts and sugar cane. It supplies almost zero carbon electricity for about 10,000 people in 47 villages.

Average CO2 emissions for cars in the UK in 2006 were 274 grams per mile. A holiday involving say 1,000 miles in total would therefore emit 274 kg of carbon dioxide – probably a bit more if the car was fully loaded. The typical cost of offsetting this mileage is around £5 or less.

More information on Pure can be found at http://www.puretrust.org.uk/. There may be similar carbon offset organisations to Pure.