Learn About: ZapCarbon mantra

The first part of the journey in zapping Carbon out of your house is to find all those unnecessary sources of energy consumption. In terms of “bang per buck”, these will be the simplest and most cost effective Carbon savings you can ever make.

While they might not have the glitz of say putting up a solar panel, they can be immensely rewarding in Carbon terms. One of the biggest rewards is the way you see energy - and once you see it, you start to do something about it.
    
Unless you are after a green status symbol, do not even think of investing in fancy technology until you have tackled all the unnecessary consumption first.

We have a little ZapCarbon mantra that guides in this:

 

Fine words maybe, but what does it mean in practice ? Well, let's take a look at lighting as an example of it in action:

STEP 1. “Reduce Use”:
Here it’s all about cutting down the time a light is actually on. Lights are frequently left on illuminating completely empty rooms. Often this can count for more than half their usage.

So Reduce Use here means “Switch Off” the 100Watt bulb when leaving the room. 

Result: Energy use instantly halved

STEP 2. “Be Efficient”:  
Once we’ve reduced use as much as possible, it’s a matter of seeing if we can make our necessary usage more efficient. In the case of the light it’s a question of “can we light the room for fewer Watts” ?

Switching to energy-saving bulbs or LEDs would be an ideal solution as they do the job for a fraction of the power. So swap a 100Watt bulb for a 20Watt CFL.

Result: Energy use down by another five times – ie: it's now only a tenth of what it was to start with

STEP 3. “Be Greener”:
This is the final step and it asks the question can we reduce the amount of Carbon from our light use. In this case we would need to see if we can switch to greener electricity.

Alternatively if it’s an outside light you might choose to go for one of the solar powered outdoor LED lights that are coming onto the market and be off-grid and zero Carbon.

Result: We’re now using the minimal amount of energy to achieve the lightest impact on the planet.



Remember, it is VITAL that we do steps 1 & 2 first before going Green.

Otherwise we’ll be powering that 100W bulb that we needlessly leave on all the time with precious Green electricity. We will be using TEN TIMES more energy than we need to light a room - and just wasting 90% of it.