Green Issues and Energy Audits

The green issues of low cost airlines
have been debated b4 and
I agree with the need to make the cost of air travel
more adequately reflect the damage flights cause to the environment.

Meanwhile I'm off to Dublin for dayjob today and
will not be back until Tuesday. So far I am impressed
by Aer Lingus. No only is the cost ridiculously
cheap (although day job is paying, clients prefer
low costs where poss) but also for the first time
I have been able to check in, choose my window
seat and print off boarding pass from the comfort
of home

On a longer term point also dayjob related, I follow at the office
the example set by the former headteacher of a local prep school
attended by our children. Sister Brendan used to say that to give her
the energy to respond to the challenges of heading
up a busy school for young children, she drank about 5 cups
of coffee each morning.
Until recently this meant that I personally used and discarded
some 20 or so plastic cups each week (I re-used some of course but also took
tea in the afternoons) not counting any
additional waste from the occasional foray into say Starbucks.

A 2007 new year's resolution to switch to a china cup has
so far avoided that waste but china cups raise different
green issues:

1. They need to be washed - washing out the cups uses perhaps
a gallon or two of water each week, which the throw away plastic did not.

2. Unlike their throw away plastic cousins, china cups start off cold
and unless heated first, risk yielding a cool coffee rather than a hot one.
Filling the china cup with boiling water first overcomes that problem
but at the expense of the extra energy used.

There is a need for a simple audit to inform people
of the cost of these ordinary changes in the daily rituals of life
so that the worth, or as the case may be, of making a simple change
from the green point of view, is made plain.