Julia Hailes MBE

Sustainability Pioneer

Some thoughts – Fish, John Travolta, Home grown, Standby TVs (Apr07)

Eco-hypocrite

I think that having 5 private jets and an airport in your garden really does preclude you from encouraging people to do their bit for the environment. John Travolta’s carbon footprint is apparently around 800 tons a year, which is about 100 times more than the average Brit. But he claims to be concerned about global warming. I know that we’re all eco-hypocrites to some degree but he really does take the biscuit.

Sustainable fish check!

Have you seen that you can now use your mobile phone to find out if the fish you’re about to order comes from sustainable sources. Friend of the Sea (www.friendofthesea.org ) have set up a project which enables consumers to write the name of the fish and send it to 07781489880 by SMS and they will respond to tell you if it’s a ‘Good Choice’, unsustainable or whether there are any conservation concerns!

Home grown curry

ASDA has launched a campaign to grow all of the ingredients needed for a curry in the UK. It’s testing new growing techniques and setting aside land in the hope of producing the UK’s first commercial crops of plants and spices normally only found in much hotter climates. Sounds good but I’d like to know how much energy is being used to heat the greenhouses – probably a lot more than it would take to import the ingredients from wherever they’re grown naturally……

Standby TV equipment

Apparently the investor’s on Dragon’s Den had never been united in their desire to invest in a business or product but they were the other night. And the object of their enthusiasm was a specially designed plug that enables your TV, Video, DVD player to power down to zero energy when in stand by mode, thus saving energy. I’m not sure if it’s the same one but I’ve been sent a weblink to Bye Bye Standby, which is selling something similar. I’ve put myself down on the pre-order waiting list – although I’ve made it very easy to turn off the TV and related systems we still don’t always remember. Apparently these gizmos can be used for computers too. But probably not for Sky boxes because they need to be able to download stuff at night – I’ve asked about this, so if I’ll write about it if I find I’m wrong. Of course it will be even better when these devices are fitted as standard but until then I think it’s worth making the investment (payback time is less than a year).

Halogen light bulbs

Halogen light bulbs are a bit of a bug bear of mine. I think people have far too many of them, they seem to wear out fast, get very hot and worst of all aren’t energy efficient. But following my complaints about this to John Coffey who runs Energy Saving World, they’ve started stocking energy efficient halogen replacements. The bulbs are called GU10s and can be bought from their website. Try them and see what you think – my horror of halogen bulbs means I don’t have any, so I can’t relay my experience. Let me know if you have any feedback.