Eco Girl

Ecosia the green search engine from one of my previous posts is now 2 years old and has launched Treely to celebrate. http://www.treely.org/ Treely is a website that you can use when making purchases online so a small donation is made to Treely which they use to plant trees in Brazil. 

It is simple to use either access a website such as amazon through the treely website or download the add on and a percentage of the price of everything you buy will be donated to Treely and it wont cost you anything. 

I love this idea on the run up to Christmas as I hate shopping so alot of my presents will be brought online.

Eco Girl x 

I don’t know if you have all heard the saying if its yellow let it mellow, if its brown flush it down but the is a bit to much for me and I don’t think my family would be impressed so instead I have gone for the less controversial solution. 

I searched about online to find out how I could lower the amont of water that was used in each toilet flush and there was lots of DIY type websites explaining how to adjust the float in your syston but I decided that was to much hard work. So instead I followed the advice of a water saving website which advised to put a bottle of water in your syston instead. 

I used a normal fizzy drinks bottle, one of the 500ml ones and when the lid is sealed tight and there are no air bubbles in the bottle it sits nicely in the syston and dosen’t seem the affect how anything works. 

I advise letting whoever is in charge of DIY/home maintenance know what you are upto just incase but so far my toilet seems fine!

Some quick maths I did shows how much of a difference it could really make, with each flush I save 500ml of water and lets say I flush the toilet 4 times a day (could be more with the number of cups of tea I drink but I’m keeping the maths simple.) so thats 2L a day. Over a year I save 730L of water, that is amazing, but its not just me saving that much water everyone else in my house is to without even realising it!

Thanks for all the recent likes, reblogs and follows guys, keep up the good work!

Eco Girl x

(Source: gdrc.org)

Normal bulbs may be cheaper to start with but switching to energy saving bulbs can save you between £5 and £10 a year, they also tend to last a lot longer to! The savings you make covers the cost of the bulb in only 6 months and they also now come in many styles.

So switching your bulbs not only lowers your carbon footprint but saves you money. Imagine how much money you could save if you switched all the bulbs in your house, especially now we are getting into the winter and the nights are drawing in. 

Eco Girl x 

(Source: http)

http://ecosia.org/ is the green search engine that works as well as all the other search engines, it has images, maps and web pages but they donate 80% of their profits to WWF for their Amazon rainforest project. 

I love that such a simple change makes such a big difference when everyone does it and Ecosia really seems to be taking of recently. I also love that you can see exactly how much money is being donated because the home page has a constantly updated total, its currently at £330,099.02! WOW

So save Ecosia in your favourites and get searching to save the rainforest! 

Eco Girl!

I know it sounds too good to be true but it might not be! I saw the adverts on the TV and thought it was definitely worth checking out. The website you need is http://www.homesun.com/ and the free solar panel scheme is all over their home page you can’t miss it.

All you have to do is fill in a couple of questions giving your name, address, contact details, house type, if you own the house, if it’s a listed building and then find your house on google maps and your house will be assessed for eligibility. 

Sorry for everyone reading this outside the UK but this is a UK based scheme and for the moment it looks like they are doing people south of Hull but its worth keeping an eye on as it looks like when they have done the south they will be moving north. 

I have registered my house so fingers crossed and I’ll keep you updated! Go give it a go and you might be getting paid for electricity produced by your free solar panels. 

Eco Girl x 

Aside from the everyday actions, I would like to think most people do, such as using the government recycling schemes, switching lights off behind them and trying to drive more economically (normally after I have just filled my tank and a part of me dies inside when I see the price.) the next biggest change I made was changing my electricity and gas provider.  Or maybe a more accurate statement would be I persuaded my mum to change providers. People living at home you can do it, although I am lucky enough to have a very understanding Mother.

After doing a bit of research I discovered Ecotricity on WWF’s website. They are a green energy company that can either give you all green electricity (although it does cost slightly more, their website says £20 more a year) or a mix of their own green electricity, as much as they can produce at the minute, and the rest is ‘topped up’ with normal brown energy.  I know most energy providers have a green energy policy and/or tariffs but most aren’t really that good when compared with my experience of Ecotricity. This is mainly because Ecotricity plough money back into research and increasing the amount of green energy they produce.

Now I know the most important factor for most people will be the cost, will it increase? Well so far for us it hasn’t. We also get our gas from Ecotricity but they do not have a dual fuel deal like some providers but so far the bills have been very similar, not real increase. Although we are in the cheapest time of the year bill wise as we only swapped around Easter time. 

Overall its definitely worth the change it was really easy to do and I can sit here on my laptop feeling good about using energy as I’m increasing the demand for green energy.  

Here is their website, check them out http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/

Thanks for reading, for more like this follow the blog

Eco Girl x 

This is my attempt at a blog so I can track my efforts, and hopefully inspire people to believe that normal people can make a difference to the environment, without resorting to living naked in the jungle. I live in England, that would be ridiculous.

So why do I care, because some people really don’t. Well, I have always been an animal lover and I think developing an interest in the environment goes hand in hand with that. How do you expect to see lions on an African safari if they are extinct, or only kept in zoos, due to global warming or habitat destruction.  Also having been lucky enough to do a small amount of travelling and I would love people to have the option to experience some of the things, see the views and breathe the truly fresh air I have. This is only possible if those natural environments are still around!

I’m not an expert and do not pretend to be, I am just an average person trying to do my bit in my own little, realistic way. I love that some celebrities are getting on board and shining the spotlight on issues (Ian Somerhalder is the love of my life) but we can’t all affect large amounts of people because we have huge fan bases and infinite resources. I just want to get your cogs whirring and maybe save you some time doing research.

Until next time, good night beautiful World!

Eco Girl x