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SAVE IT!

© Linda Little

No animal ever plugs in a tool and uses the power of electricity to make the job easier. Animals use their own strength and cunning instead. If we wish to be as environmentally sound as the animals are, we will need to look at our own uses of electricity and set priorities. It is not just a matter of switching things off.

So what do I do?

Let's start in the kitchen, shall we? How many of your kitchen implements are powered by electricity? Nowadays you can get anything from electric carving knives to electric bread makers, electric whisks to electric mixers, electric coffee pots to electric crockpots for slow cooking, electric kettles, electric chip friers, electric microwave ovens, coffee bean grinders, teasmades......the list goes on and on.

I am not advocating going back to the days of drudgery in which a week's washing took a whole day to do. Some electrical tools make a great difference in terms of time and energy.....others do not....yet others could be simply replaced by a mechanical tool. Take a whisk. A simple egg whisk and a rapid wrist action can fluff eggs in no time, a mechanical whisk with a handle can do this with less effort, a fully-fledged mixer is overkill for a task like this. It is not, however, inappropriate if you bake cakes every week or regularly make bread. Look at the electrical tools that you have and try and thin these out a bit.

How much electricity does it need?

The next most important thing to ask is how much electricity these tools use. A crockpot or slow cooker can be left on all day and uses about the same amount of electricity as a single light bulb. This means that you can put together the ingredients for a stew in the morning and return from work to find it piping hot and ready. The same is not true for an iron. If you are in the habit of leaving this on for periods of time as you do other chores, you will soon notice the difference in your electricity bill. It is therefore important to know which items use a lot of electricity.

Leaving things on

And now we come to leaving things on. A television left on standby uses nearly as much electricity as one left on. A computer left with a screen saver running does use as much electricity as one on which you are working, so set up your power saving mode properly. Computers should not be left idle for long periods of time should generally be switched off.

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