Tag: Carbon Friendly

Ideas that result in a lower household carbon footprint.

8 tips for reducing carbon emissions in 2020

Butcher Facebook feeds
Approximate investment: $0
Payoff period: from the day you start shopping
Emissions reduction: 952.6 kg co2 equivalent per year

Signing up to butcher Facebook feeds is a great way to save money and reduce your emissions.

Butchers often run specials on Facebook that allow you to plan your shopping ahead. I found that using multiple butchers’ feeds allowed me to cut down my meat expense from $44 per week to around $18 per week, a saving of 59%.

Buying meat on special means there is less waste. It also means you gravitate towards the cheaper meats that the butcher can afford to discount. Often these are meats such as pork and chicken, which have a lower carbon footprint.

Let’s assume a two person household consumes 121 kg of meat per year. This equates to around 330g per day. Switching from a diet spread equally across lamb, beef, pork and chicken to one more concentrated on pork and chicken would save 952.6 kg co2 equivalent emissions per year.

To do this, all you have to do is like 3 or 4 local butchers’ Facebook feeds and pin them to the top of your feed, so you can see when specials are announced.

Thermal underwear
Approximate investment: $80
Payoff period: Less than 1 winter month
Emissions reduction: 1,037 kg co2 equivalent across 4 winter months

After four weeks of using butcher Facebook specials, you should be able to afford some thermal underpants for your family for winter.

When Australian journalist Greg Foyster pointed this out, I did a double-take. We spend too much energy concentrating on heating spaces, when we could be insulating our bodies directly for a fraction of the price.

This led to an experiment where providing my family with thermals contributed to cutting down on winter energy consumption by 487 kWh in a single month.

Making stock from meat bones and leftover vegetables
Approximate investment: $0
Payoff period: from the day you start cooking
Emissions reduction: difficult to estimate, around 260 kg co2 equivalent per year

Making home made stock is a great way to stretch your household shopping budget even further and create more meals for less input. It also ties in neatly with winter.

The EAT Lancet diet has been recommended by scientists and involves dramatically cutting down on each individual’s consumption of meat, treating meat as a garnish rather than the centre of a meal. One way to achieve this easily is to use the bones from meat to provide additional nourishment during the week.

The bones from a 1.2kg chicken carcass can easily provide 2kg of stock. This could cover 8 additional servings per week at almost no extra cost.

Build a home compost system
Approximate investment: $50
Payoff period: 6 months (depending on council rates)
Emissions reduction: difficult to estimate

By the end of winter, you should now have over $1000 extra in your back pocket. It’s time to invest some of that in some eco-initiatives that will set you up for further long term savings.

Let’s start with the cheap ones. Setting up a composting system, in our case a worm farm, is an easy way to cut down on waste collection costs.

In Kapiti, waste collection isn’t cheap. A council rubbish bag can cost $4.60 and tends to go up over time.

Home composting allows you to strip your rubbish bag of all compostible matter. A study undertaken by the Feilding Council revealed that around 40% of the contents of rubbish bags were unnecessarily going to landfill.

By cutting down on the annual number of rubbish bags required, a home compost should save you an extra $95.68 per year, assuming you started with going through one rubbish bag per week.

Prices of waste collection will vary depending on the collection costs of your council.

Build a square foot garden
Approximate investment: $130
Payoff period: one growing season
Emissions reduction: difficult to estimate

Once you’ve built up enough home made compost, you can start planning how you are going to use it. One good way is to build a square foot garden.

Square foot gardens are raised beds designed for maximum productivity with little maintenance. Two gardens should be enough to provide vegetables for one adult each day of the growing season.

Finance an ebike
Approximate investment: $3500 cash, but can currently be purchased on 0% interest finance
Payoff period: 1-6 years
Emissions reduction: 643 kg co2 equivalent to 2145 kg co2 equivalent per year

The return on investment you get from an ebike will depend on how often you use it, how far you travel, and whether you can save on parking costs if you work at a city centre.

The most important thing is to choose an ebike that is fit for purpose, and that has quality components that don’t break down or cause functional problems over time. I have found my current Shimano Etoro to be very reliable and I have travelled over 7000 kilometres on it.

If you can save on inner city parking costs using an ebike, it is likely you will pay for the bike in less than a year. The upper end of 6 years’ return is based on travelling 100 km per week for shorter trips. Results will vary depending on how you use it.

Note that by accepting an offer of low interest finance you can sometimes receive an ebike that is cost neutral. This calculation can vary heavily depending on your usage, so double and triple check your calculation before committing to a purchase and always choose reliable equipment. Also note your usage may change over time, which will affect the return from your investment.

Install an HRV system
Approximate investment: Varies, in our case came to $3400 for installation
Payoff period: 5.82 years (Will vary depending on household)
Emissions reduction: Varies, but in our case about 840 kg co2 equivalent per year

Another way to reduce your winter energy consumption is to install an HRV system. This does not need to be an HRV brand system.

HRV systems work by circulating warm air stored in the roof with cooler air stored in the lower building. The result is a more temperate environment for a lower heating or cooling cost. The system functions best at times of year when the discrepancy between roof space temperature and indoor temperature is at its greatest. This is often during the months leading up to and trailing off from winter.

HRV systems are available on finance at low rates of interest and are sometimes worth it, but due to low-ish and fluctuating returns, will not be cash neutral.

The above payoff period calculation assumes that an HRV system will save a household 4.9 kWh per average day and that retail energy prices will increase by 3.2% per annum.

Note that there is also a cost of replacing filters included in the calculation, which will vary depending on the supplier.

Invest in a vehicle with low fuel consumption per hundred kilometres
Approximate investment: $8500
Payoff period: 8.6 years
Emissions reduction: 1043 kg co2 equivalent per year

For some jobs, travel by car is unavoidable. In this situation it is essential to invest in a car that achieves the lowest consumption of fuel per hundred kilometres, relative to what you can afford for the purchase cost.

For this sort of decision, it is sometimes worth looking at the second hand hybrid market. At present, it is possible to buy a hybrid with a 4.0 litres per hundred kilometres consumption rate for less than $10000, although note that second hand cars bought by private sale may sometimes include hidden defects and should be properly inspected prior to purchase. Note also that cars bought by private sale will have to be paid in cash.

The car I own now is a Honda CR-Z that I bought for $8500. Taking into account petrol price inflation, the car will achieve an 11.64% return on investment, better than many high performing stocks on the NZX.

The idea behind all of this is that reducing carbon emissions is a straightforward process that can add thousands in retirement savings per year. Using the above steps and just moving from small and cost-effective challenges to bigger propositions and challenges I’ve increased my savings by over $5,000 per year. I’m constantly on the lookout for new ways to reduce emissions that are also good household investments. So if you know of any please hit me up in the comments section below.

Why we need better bike ways leading into Levin

This a blog on two levels. On one level it’s a bitter personal lamentation about how I can no longer ride my bike into work. On another level, it’s a broader complaint about the way in which Levin is being shut out of the regional growth that is happening in Kapiti as a result of being too disconnected.

Kapiti showed 9.9% economic growth last year – greater than Auckland and Wellington combined. The region is growing more rapidly than any other region in the country. This is a result of a massive transfer of wealth happening as people head up the line, many of whom were originally drawn by low property prices, but who now have settled into functional employment and started new businesses to cater to the slowly changing demographic.

Next step on the Lower North Island growth spurt is Levin, and with plans for the new expressway now confirmed, although still a few years away, my view is that a lot of smart capital will head that way in the next few years and the town will profit and become gentrified. At the present moment, however, a lot of growth and traffic headed into Levin is being stymied by the choke points along the way. 

One of the great points of disconnection is the total absence of a bike track leading into the town from the south. While bike tracks do exist along the Otaki to Levin route, the bridges leading into Levin are simply too much of a hazard to cross, being tight two-lane State Highway 1 lanes with vehicles inclined to travel close to 100 kph despite the changed terrain. 

I’ve tried many times to get across these bridges. I’ve succeeded once, but at great peril to myself, and in a matter that does not bear being repeated. Sadly this means that a daily commute into Levin from Otaki each day for work, which would be easily achievable on an ebike, is not a possibility. 

This is a problem not just for me, but for Levin’s changing demographic. I am already seeing an increased number of people biking in to work from Otaki to south Kapiti each day. It makes sense for the same amount of traffic to head in the other direction. But where the way is not safe, this cannot happen. The question for me is, with the lack of a serious bike lane to provide a safe way for cyclists, what will this mean for people’s change in habits, and in the end for unnecessary carbon emissions?

We need a better bridge between Kapiti and Horowhenua. Hopefully this will come with the new expressway. But that is years away. 

How buying a second hand hybrid can yield a 15% ROI

The bane of my existence has become the bridges in and out of Levin. Having accepted a new and challenging role in the Horowhenua region, I now am forced to relinquish my good habits around cycling to work (which have netted me an 8kg weight loss in the last few months in addition to hundreds of dollars in savings) in exchange for driving the admittedly slightly shorter distance, simply because the bike cannot negotiate the challenging high speed bridges in and out of Levin safely.

This is a big step backward for my plans to reduce my environmental footprint and lower my petrol costs. Not to mention that with my new role, I may be expected to travel great distances each week. But with each change comes the opportunity for positive adjustment.

I basically need to replace my car anyway. There’s no rush, but there has been an unsightly bit of cosmetic damage that would cost almost as much as the car is worth to repair. The main question is what type of car do I aim to get next – a petrol car or a hybrid? My main focus is to drive a car that at levels of high (read: sales career) usage, realistically pays for itself over time. There’s no point buying a car that’s cheaper upfront if the operating cost is over $1000 or more extra per year. If this leads to a reduction in carbon emissions that is all well and good as well. 

The main problem with hybrids has been cost efficiencies. Hybrid cars have often been reviewed negatively in the past, particularly in the US where many of these reviews originate from, simply because the economics do not stack up – the comparatively miniscule savings in fuel does not offset the higher capital cost of the new product. But this is not so much the case in NZ, and in particular is not so much the case in the second hand hybrid market, which is now flooded with apparently reasonable quality vehicles available for even less than $10,000. Part of the reason for this is that New Zealand taxes fuel far more heavily than the US, meaning that many of the reviews you read about hybrids ought to be discounted in the New Zealand context. 

I’ve scoured online sites and found a number of second hand hybrid cars for what I would consider good value – there is even one currently on sale for $2.50 with no reserve, although it has over 170,000 kms to its name. But, more to the point, there are a range of cars in the $6,000 to $8,000 price range, available for immediate purchase. It’s not like there’s just one or two of these options – there are dozens in this price range, each with well under 100,ooo kms to their odometer. Of course, with Trade Me, you’ll almost certainly need to make a trip up the line to get to it. 

I’ve done a spreadsheet which covers the calculations to justify a ROI of over 15% at the price point of $6995. It’s important to note that this calculator assumes continued fuel price inflation of 2.2% per year (around about the 10 year average in NZ). Because I’m replacing my car anyway, all I’m really doing is stripping the operating cost in a way that saves me money and pays for the new investment.

https://www.balancetransfers.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Jazz-vs-Hybrid.xlsx

The next thing to look at is how I can finance it, or if I have to pay cash. That is a question for another article, but one of the benefits of having a profitable business is that I can potentially put a lease through it. 
A car that pays for itself in six years that’s significantly more eco-friendly for a traveller? Hard to say no to. 

Is vegetarianism Pareto efficient?

This occurred to me the other day when I was chowing down on some sausage and black lentil soup.

Sausage and black lentil soup is a variation of the recipe for black lentil soup. In fact, there is only one difference, in that you add sausages to the soup.

The cost of black lentil soup, for two servings, is around $1.40. The cost of sausage and black lentil soup, for two serves, is around $4.90. The difference, of course, is due to the sausages, which add 250% to the cost of the soup.

The carbon emissions will differ depending on the type of meat in the sausage. It’s very likely, however, that the same sort of increase will be reflected in carbon emissions.

Not to mention you don’t have to raise an animal just for the sake of eating it.

Now I’m no vegetarian – not at the moment anyway. But this is driving the point home for me.

Vegetarians have been saying this for years, but I’m only just joining the dots. The question is, how to get this point across to the general public?

Reducing the mass of vehicles on the road might contribute to a climate change win

This little epiphany occurred to me when I was reconsidering some of the past work I had done on ebikes. Ebikes are incredibly eco-efficient when compared to petrol cars and even electric vehicles, not just because they utilise electric power as well as pedal-assist, BUT ALSO because the vehicle itself has a far lower mass than virtually all motor cars. In fact, I calculated in a previous blog article that an electric bike is roughly 21 times more eco-efficient than a Nissan Leaf. 

Currently, most climate change goals focus on switching petrol cars to the electric fleet. An equally valid goal might be to reduce the overall mass of motor vehicles on the road by a certain date. 

But if you think about it, what really does the damage when a car drives is not the fuel type that a vehicle consumes, but the amount of mass of that vehicle. The greater the mass, the more energy required to motor the vehicle. 

Putting incentives in place to get people to switch down from large gas guzzlers to smaller, more eco-efficient vehicles, even if those vehicles still run on petrol, could in some ways be very effective and another way (on top of the switch to renewable energy vehicles) that one could compound the reduction in carbon emissions from more efficient vehicle use. 

Switching to an ebike has reduced my carbon emissions from travel by around 900 kilograms last year. It has also saved me a pretty penny in fuel expenses. 

The point is that there are vectors to reducing carbon emissions through motor vehicle use that are not currently being considered and that ought to be forefront of people’s minds. 

What is the ROI of a rice cooker (solar powered) with calculators

So my solar powered slow cooker diet is going well, with loads and loads of stress free and delicious food experiments under way, utilising great local organic Kapiti produce. I wanted to take a further step in the sustainability direction, so I bought myself a rice cooker to work along with the solar panels.
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Do HRV systems dehumidify a living environment?

We’ve installed the HRV system and it’s actually doing a pretty bang up job of mitigating our heat consumption, so much so that in recent weeks our motel administration block ICP has been a net exporter of renewable energy to the grid. <p><br><!–more–>

I am not happy with HRV, however, because one thing they told me would happen, didn’t happen. When the sales agent called on me, he explained to me that not only did the HRV system circulate warm air from the roof into the living area, but it also made the living area easier to warm by removing moisture from the air. <p><br>

I was interested in this idea and decided to put it to the test. How much moisture did the HRV system remove from the air? And how much would the process lead to the speeding up of heating within the living environment?<p><br>

To test this, I went out and bought a hygrometer before the HRV installation took place. A hygrometer measures the level of humidity. I also did a test during the evening to run the heater until it had caused an increase in the temperature by two degrees, and to time how long it took to do this (around 30 minutes).<p><br>

Prior to the installation, I got a humidity reading of 61. Based on my discussion with the sales rep, I was expecting the humidity to drop to between 30 and 40 post installation. I would then be able to retest the heater experiment in the reduced moisture environment and calculate how much actual time the moisture levels saved us in energy in heating the environment. <p><br>

As it turned out, the HRV system had no impact on moisture levels at all. And why would it? HRV does not dehumidify an environment; it only ventilates it. The moisture readings after the installation were the same as before, except on a couple of readings where they were slightly higher. <p><br>

Because of this, the secondary test was effectively redundant. Because HRV does not dehumidify the living environment, only ventilates it, it logically follows that energy expenditure to heat the environment would be the same prior to installation as post installation. <p><br>

So the sales rep received one very firmly worded email. I do not know whether this is an isolated incident, or a misleading marketing claim that HRV makes regularly, but it’s very disappointing, because that false claim was a core part of our decision to adopt the system. <p><br>

Apart from this infuriating lie, I so far can only recommend the HRV system. It has actually made a substantial difference to our average energy consumption at this time of year, and looks to be a good investment, despite the high-ish filter replacement costs. In particular, it reduces our energy consumption during early evening, which is a peak time where solar is not available, meaning that it has tipped the balance for our motel administration block to become a net exporter of renewable energy to the grid. 

How food co-ops are changing habits around plastic bag use

Given the ‘plastic bag revolution’, one interesting side effect that I’ve noticed around belonging to an organic food co-op is that the process of belonging to the co-op seems automatically to reduce the quantity of plastic bags that I and other co-op members consume on a weekly basis.

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We saved 487 kWh this month

I just did a bill on bill comparison between our June energy consumption for last year versus this year. It turns out that we have successfully reduced our actual energy consumption for our motel manager flat by 487 kWh in just one month this winter.

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