Ooh I did one of those online ‘how green are you’ things a while ago, and apparently I iz well green.

An ting.

Don’t drive/own a car
Cycle everywhere possible
Don’t eat crap pre-processed food much
Recycle paper, glass and metal, will now be recycling raw food waste
Buy s/h bike stuff rather than new
Don’t buy much at all in the way of new stuffs, consumer goods etc
Grow some of me own fruit and veg well a few tomatoes!
Use energy saving bulbs wherever possible
Turn lights off, only boil enough water to make a cup of tea etc

Small, so my clothing uses less material, and so do my bikes.

Don’t have kids so not produced any more planet-rapers (yet).

Yadda yadda yadda. Prolly one of the most environmentally friendly people on here.

Most of this friendliness is as a result of being skint though. 😆

If I was rich I’d be proper environmentally unfriendly. I’d make Clarkson look like a tree-hugger…

I only eat free range swan now. That farmed stuff was a bit chewy.

I found that I was throwing out a huge amount of children’s clothing that hadn’t worn out, I find it much cheaper and easier to exchange the children for others of a similar size.

Pretty bad.

I’m taking mass transit rather than the car next week for my holliday.

It was going to be Wales, but now it’s a flight to Malaga 🙂

That calculator’s bollocks. 1.99? does not in any way take into account I use those DIY tools (why is that even relevant? Do they mean power tools? A saw? A paintbrush?) to make stuffs from recycled wood and that. And loads of other things, like I don’t have to have my heater on full blast cos the building is warmed by everyone in it, so we share heat. Heater does not in any way need to be on in the evening at all, hardly. And 14-17 is ‘comfortable’? For who, a penguin? Ok if you’re moving about a lot, but if you’re sitting reading or something, you’d need loads of extra layers which equals more materials used for clothing. I’m fit and healthy and have low blood pressure. If I set my thermostat below 18, I’d become ill. I’d certainly need a lot more food to provide energy to keep me warm. They jolly well have not thought of that, have they?

As much as I agree with the need to recycle, re-use, reduce etc, that ‘calculator’ is not anywhere near an accurate means of testing how environmentally friendly someone actually is. It’s just sensationalising the issues, without really offering practical real world solutions.

And what about the leccy used to power the servers it’s run from, eh? EH?

WWF= hypocrites.

1.96 – i think the DIY tools shafted my score 🙁

2.27 on the calculator , to be fair though that new planet Kepler 22b has been discovered in the Goldilocks zone and it’s bigger than earth so everything should be OK.

We Don’t eat meat, do recycle, minimise car use , ration ourselves to one international air flight(return) per two years, shop local and organic use the car a couple of times a week.

Boycott every company i can think of a reason to boycott.

Blown i thing by getting a dryer this year to deal with crankbrats laundry which includes reusable nappies.

shop local and organic use the car a couple of times a week.

Presumably organic is whole lot worse on a “number of planets needed” scale?

Still a bit confused as what the numbers tell us, can someone explain what it means to a numpty like me please.

& I dont consider myself to be that green tbh, but I do come from a farming backgroung, where ‘To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves’ was ingrained into me from an early age 😉

😆 at all of us being shafted by DIY tools! Is there some levaraging there that we’re missing – an assumption that if you spend money on DIY tools you’re doing lots of home improvement?

I’m not sure I’d like to claim to be lots better than my figure, but some of the things mentioned by edu/elf do apply – eg I do far less than 2 hours a week in a car, have a very old car etc.

Still a bit confused as what the numbers tell us, can someone explain what it means to a numpty like me please.

It means that in order to sustain your current lifestyle and consumption, you’d need 1.99 Planet Earths (or whatever your score was).

As I said, it’s bollocks anyway. Cos if everyone else reduced their consumption to my level, then there’d be more to go around so I’d in fact need less planets.

Thanks Elf, the penny has dropped now, ta.

Drill, sander, jig saw, angle grinder, oxy-acetylene… . Try making a solar water heater without.

“Presumably organic is whole lot worse on a “number of planets needed” scale?”
I once ruined Xmas dinner with this as a topic with my brother .
Probably not, would be my answer yes pesticides and fertilizers may increase yield but they need chemical factories to manufacture and mines to extract the ingredients plus a distribution chain to supply them.
The difference in yield ain’t that great and the earth produces enough to feed the current population.
we just have a really unbalanced distribution system that means fat westerners have too much to eat and waste as much as they consume and those in the third world don’t have enough, even though they could live well of the western worlds waste.

All facts and implied figures above are made up.

my carbon footprint is very small but quite intense

After walking walking down my local high street just, it did make me wonder what environmental impact Christmas has?

1.67 = smug, no?

I don’t know much about the organic/non-organic debate as such, but I do know that in the West, almost all food waste comes after consumption (there is very little waste in the production cycle itself), but in developing countries the waste is almost all in the production cycle, with almost no waste after consumption.

From that I deduce that organic is bad, and non-organic is good. M’kay?

Drill, sander, jig saw, angle grinder, oxy-acetylene… . Try making a solar water heater without.

Once I can get a couple of days in my man cave I’ll be trying to do just that. I might need a drill but I plan on not using all that other stuff!

…that ‘calculator’ is not anywhere near an accurate means of testing how environmentally friendly someone actually is. It’s just sensationalising the issues, without really offering practical real world solutions.

As I said, it’s indicative, rather than comprehensive. If you want comprehensive you’re going to be spending a lot longer filling in far more detailed questionnaires. This one’s pretty good: http://www.reap-petite.com/

As far as real world solutions go, I’d say the tips at the end are pretty good suggestions of how to reduce your impact (but then, I would, wouldn’t I?)

And what about the leccy used to power the servers it’s run from, eh? EH?

We did a huge job of looking around the web hosting market and found a company that offers the lowest energy per server in the UK. It’s all virtualised too, so don’t have a dedicated machine spending its life averaging 2% utilisation. Nice try though.

WWF= hypocrites.

I realise I’m getting dangerously close to feeding a troll but how, exactly?

5.4 on the calculator. I go on holidays to nice places far away which is by far the worst thing I do – 20+ flights a year, most of which are 5+ hours

WWF= hypocrites

I realise I’m getting dangerously close to feeding a troll but how, exactly?

Cos you say it’s a sport, but we all know it’s just staged theatrics.

1.67, Green as…..

It all sort of ignores the fact we’re all on the internet using vast amounts of electricity to power and cool data centres for no other reason than to post on an internet forum.

In our last house I planted 2 trees.
I’m only small so don’t eat much.

It all sort of ignores the fact we’re all on the internet using vast amounts of electricity to power and cool data centres for no other reason than to post on an internet forum.

Ahh… but those data centres would be running and the internet would still be here even if I logged out.

So by being here I’ve actually lowered the per-user carbon footprint. 😆

Ahh… but those data centres would be running and the internet would still be here even if I logged out.

and if you don’t take a long haul flight, that plane would still have taken off, so you’re also helping the per-user cost by taking the flight.

why can’t we just move to a bigger planet then?

Or kill half of the people that live on this one?

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best you know

I recycle, use the bike for short journeys, have LED light bulbs and don’t use a tumble-drier. Having said that, today I flew an empty Airbus from Belfast to Liverpool, taking 20 minutes and burning two tonnes of fuel in the process.

Not sure where in the pool of fire and brimstone that puts me, but I’m guessing pretty deep.

It all sort of ignores the fact we’re all on the internet using vast amounts of electricity to power and cool data centres for no other reason than to post on an internet forum.

We could build the data centres in the far North (where it is always cold) next to a hydro electric scheme that is currently exporting loads of excess power. Like what Google are doing.

How could I harness the heat from our compost heaps?

Use it to keep hedgehogs warm?

Then eat the hedgehogs.

10.17 tons of carbon dioxide each on that site Ade.

2.1 on that calculator thing, and that’s without even trying. The whole global warming thing isn’t really an issue i’m concerned about. If I cared I’d probably half that quite easily.

Or kill half of the people that live on this one?

I believe that is the current de facto trajectory.

I plant a few thousand trees each year and ‘sequester’ carbon into building products and renewable fuels.

best not talk about my fires

I spend most days crying in a darkened room whilst I **** into a sock, so yeah pretty green I think.