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[Closed] Petty environmental crimes - whats yours?

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I'm riding an Ebike this weekend
Turned the heating in the camper upto 24°
I have a hot bath every night at home. Its a deep long cast iron one and I fill it to the overflow.


 
Posted : 26/11/2021 7:02 pm
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I had a dream involving Greta Thunberg


 
Posted : 26/11/2021 7:10 pm
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Almost all of the above except those which cost me money. I am more tight than environmentally clever.


 
Posted : 26/11/2021 7:58 pm
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Cooking veg on the stove top for decades, whilst being in having access to/being in possession of a microwave.

Worse still, tonight I found a (unused) 2 tier microwave steamer that had somehow been hiding the cupboard for years.

Just put three diff veg in it and microwaved for a couple of minutes. Am dancing for joy. Perfectly cooked first time, for a pittance of energy compared to stovetop.


 
Posted : 26/11/2021 8:08 pm
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I'm a serial kettle boiler. Even if Mrs SR or one of our kids says, 'SR, I just boiled the kettle!', I still flick it on again for my own cup of tea or whatever.

I'm sorry. 🙁


 
Posted : 26/11/2021 9:30 pm
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Drove an import Subaru turbo for a while as well as having an mx5.
Have a dog - specifically a greyhound - so double duty there due to extra methane production
Computer is on pretty much all day. Used for about an hour at most.
But I still reckon choosing not to reproduce offsets all that and some.


 
Posted : 26/11/2021 9:37 pm
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Even if Mrs SR or one of our kids says, ‘SR, I just boiled the kettle!’, I still flick it on again for my own cup of tea or whatever

That’s just good sense - tea needs to be brewed at as near to 100c as possible. If the kettle boiled 30 seconds ago you won’t get a decent cup.


 
Posted : 26/11/2021 10:08 pm
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Wife has two horses, but I limit the damage by refusing to have a 4x4 to tow the trailer. I have a large campervan instead which I'm sure is no better, except that it means we only fly once every couple of years.

I also have a woodburner despite being on mains gas, but normally if the burner is on central heating is off (only 4 hours of central heating in October, quite impressed with a home worker)


 
Posted : 26/11/2021 10:21 pm
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Recycling.  We have a mixed recycling collection, and I've never been informed (or bothered to look) about what they actually accept.

I figure that they've got to sort in anyway, they can take out the bits they don't have a recycling stream for, and one day someone will look at the big pile of tetra Paks going to landfill and think "they recycle this in the next borough over, maybe we could send it to them?"

I hate the way domestic waste collection is organised in this country. It's a total cluster f***


 
Posted : 26/11/2021 10:26 pm
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I've just apologised for my fart being an environmental crime in our lounge.


 
Posted : 26/11/2021 11:29 pm
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We always bring a roll of black plastic bin bags when going camping.

They make excellent firelighters.


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 12:17 am
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Built a heated cat house (box), for the blighter that won't come I to the house at night ! It is insulated though.


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 12:22 am
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Driving to ride is probably my worst environmental sin


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 12:33 am
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I eat all of the meats pretty much every day. And go through lots of plastic bags as I use them to wrap wet paint rollers between jobs


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 12:39 am
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Not using our council food waste collection service

I recycle, ride to work 5 days a week, i dont litter, genreally i try to not waste anything but...

I cannot be arsed to deal with rotting food, the council gave us two food waste bins, a small one for in the house and a large one for outside so we can empty the small house one in to it when full but the one in the house sinks after 2 days due to rotting food, both bins get messy and need cleaning once a week

Just easier not to do food recycling


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 7:36 am
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For me it's putting the non recyclable part of containers in the bin. You know the clear plastic film on the top? Drives the wife mad.


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 7:52 am
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3 kids, 1 dog and a Victorian house so off to a good start.

Probably the worst minor is using the tumble drier. But without it the house would be a mouldy cesspit in the winter months.


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 8:46 am
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That’s just good sense – tea needs to be brewed at as near to 100c as possible. If the kettle boiled 30 seconds ago you won’t get a decent cup.

At times I've been doing stuff in the kitchen and fancy a cup of tea, so flick the switch on the kettle. Then get a bit sidetracked putting stuff in the DW, or opening some mail, and then have to push the button down again. Only to get sidetracked again, and have to repeat. 3 or 4 times. I'm then worried - environment vs 4x boiled water and the impact on my tea taste......

But the real crime - like TJ, I love a hot bath. But come in from a muddy MTB ride, who wants a bath in all that slurry? So I have a shower and then a bath.

(in my defence, thanks to lockdown and the lack of distance to my fridge, I can brim the bath with 20% less water that 3 years ago......)


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 9:18 am
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(in my defence, thanks to lockdown and the lack of distance to my fridge, I can brim the bath with 20% less water that 3 years ago……)

LOlz


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 9:27 am
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Right - off to have my bath now in 2 inches of lukewarm water and I have a bit of sackcloth to dry myself on


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 10:04 am
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Victorian house with a wood burner just for style.
One car one van for convenience and two dogs (both from rescue centres).
I'm now going to take the dogs in the van for a walk and hopefully scavenge some blown over wood for the burner (after seasoning obviously, I'm not an animal).


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 10:22 am
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My coffee machine has a ~1.5kg lump of brass that needs about an hour to become thermally stable, necessitating a timer plug and it coming on at 4:30 each morning…

I am consciously not thinking about the emissions from the coffee transport chain or the farmers who still do a lot of the processing steps by hand… 😬

Edit: Also live in a solid brick terrace with a 35 year old Baxi back boiler behind the fire.

https://flic.kr/p/2m3R9nM


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 10:31 am
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I sometimes deactivate the stop/stop on my car because it’s bloody annoying when the engine is cold, it makes the whole car shake.

I used to do this when I was running my own car. Most engine wear happens on a cold start, so my logic was to make sure the engine was properly warm before using stop-start, thus prolonging the life of the engine (hopefully 🤔)

My current small environmental crime is pre heating my current car, when it’s cold, so that I don’t have to scrape the ice off the windows.


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 10:49 am
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Wondering how my dog is so bad for the environment? The additional food over the families must be negligible, she doesn't drive or fly and doesn't seem to care if the heating is on or off in the house as for clothing well she's had 2 leads and two collars in her almost 13 years.


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 11:04 am
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Most engine wear happens on a cold start, so my logic was to make sure the engine was properly warm before using stop-start, thus prolonging the life of the engine (hopefully 🤔)

My Toyota automatically disables stop-start when the engine's cold. One point to keep in mind is that modern engines are designed to warm up much faster than old engines to reduce emissions (which are much higher when the engine's cold).


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 11:09 am
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My stop/start only kicks in once my engine is up to temperature otherwise surely it doesn't save fuel.

My other crime, using cling film when I should be using the many wax cotton food wraps I have


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 11:10 am
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Wondering how my dog is so bad for the environment?

Food, medicines, etc etc.  food is the big one as its meat based.  Every kilo of meat means 10 kilos of plants as fodder

IIRC most western pets have a CO2 footprint bigger than a 3rd world adult

But this is a debate for a serious post!


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 11:12 am
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I love a good jacket potato, an hour plus of the oven being on for one spud seems quite wasteful.


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 12:04 pm
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I have ridiculously long hot showers every day. Just whack up the heat and stand there staring in to space.


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 2:57 pm
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Every kilo of meat means 10 kilos of plants as fodder

Most of the stuff she eats is not meat. The dried food is only a low % meat and I bet it's mostly waste from the human food industry. She gets tripe as a treat when we go out, I expect most of it would just be wasted, now my old grandad is dead I doubt anyone eats it! She gets through one tin of meat a week..


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 5:32 pm
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That’s just good sense – tea needs to be brewed at as near to 100c as possible.

no it doesn’t - but the only reliable benchmark people have for temperature is ‘boiling’ so if you want your tea to taste the same each time you need to make it with the same temperature of water - and the only temperature you can reliably repeat each time is ‘boiling’


 
Posted : 27/11/2021 6:32 pm
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Someone mentioned filling their kettle up to make tea, which I tend to do. That’s mainly because when I make a mug of tea, it’s a proper mug! It’ll take an entire can of soup, with enough space left at the top to allow for some water to be put into the can to rinse out what’s left and top up the mug before I stick it in the microwave.

When I’m at work, I have to fill it up the night before so I can make a smaller mug in the morning, as well as fill my flask with green tea for the day.

I have stopped buying disposable plastic tooth brushes, I can now buy bamboo ones with bio-nylon bristles that can actually be composted! There’s a little shop in town that does all sorts of cleaning stuff that’s environmentally friendly and with refillable containers, which I’m going to investigate as and when things run out.


 
Posted : 28/11/2021 11:43 pm
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Has to be driving long distances to ride/hike relatively short distances.


 
Posted : 30/11/2021 12:03 am
 Olly
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Morning routine for the 1 yr old is get her out of the overnight nappy, change for dry one in time for the morning production. You dont want to be packing an overnight turd into a soaking wet nappy, but it does mean that the morning nappy is used for 2 mins tops. You could almost fish out the little (massive) brown fellah and keep on using it. Almost.

Disposable Nappies.

whats worse is weve got stacks of washable ones. Barely used.


 
Posted : 30/11/2021 9:51 am
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If I'm in the house alone I have been known to have both telly on in the living room, with a radio on in the kitchen. Its normally when I'm constantly moving between the 2 rooms.


 
Posted : 30/11/2021 9:59 am
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Despite moaning about SUVs in that thread last week, I'm considering getting a beat up 4x4 for mud-plugging around Salisbury Plain...

I'm also a terror for leaving (LED) lights on in the house.

Buuut..... I don't have (and hopefully won't ever have) kids, so I'm just a drop in the ocean compared to even the most hairshirt wearing eco-warrior parent 😇


 
Posted : 30/11/2021 10:51 am
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Sometimes I drive the boys to nursery/school instead of riding the bikes which is a 1 mile round trip. When it's not even raining.
But I take the bike in the boot to school so we can ride home (and it looks like we rode in the morning too!)


 
Posted : 21/04/2022 5:17 pm
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I run the tap throughout my tooth brushing session. The rest of my family does not, so I also 'waste' hot water getting their toothpaste accretions off the side of the sink before I fill it to shave.


 
Posted : 21/04/2022 5:22 pm
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I've just put some copper sulphate on the [s]garden[/s] moss.


 
Posted : 21/04/2022 5:39 pm
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Resurrecting old threads with no explanation, poor hamsters!


 
Posted : 21/04/2022 5:41 pm
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Using clingfilm to wrap my sandwiches because I can't be bothered to a) find a lunch box, b) find a compatible lunchbox lid. On the plus side, it does mean I save energy on the cycle home from work not carrying a lunch box, because a) less weight, b) aero gains, so maybe that cancels it all out after all.


 
Posted : 21/04/2022 5:49 pm
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Every day I have a long shower at a temperature that would make Satan cry. I shave my head with cartridge razors. I am a monster


 
Posted : 21/04/2022 6:40 pm
 joat
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I sometimes don't recycle yogurt pots.


 
Posted : 21/04/2022 7:00 pm
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Kitchen roll....we use a metric ton of the stuff each week. And general everyday house hold waste, it seems that when we do the bins each week I have a rubbish wall outside our house, plus full food waste bin and overflowing bottle tub...where as the rest of the street seem to just put out a single bag each and no bottles?? Its like a walk of shame for me on bin day.


 
Posted : 21/04/2022 7:29 pm
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I have plastic grass, and it's wonderful!

It means no mess in my kitchen, bliss! I have a lawn (patch of grass) at the front and I'd challenge you to tell the difference between the two.

I'm a bit OCD about grass, and most things come to think of it.


 
Posted : 21/04/2022 8:32 pm
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