Going Green Podcast, Video blog and Daily News

  The Great British Recycle-Off: Are You Doing It Right or Just Guessing? ( Because wishful recycling isn’t helping anyone… ) Let’s face it: recycling in Britain is like navigating the rules of cricket — everyone claims to understand it, but no two councils play quite the same game. You might think you're doing your eco-duty . You’ve got the bins, you’ve got the conscience, and you’ve rinsed your yogurt pot like it's going on display. But — and here's the kicker — you might still be doing it wrong . 🗑️ A Tale of Three Bins (and One Confused Homeowner) In our area, we have a three-bin system , and let me tell you, it’s like a reality show for waste: Food Waste Bin – All the peelings, leftovers, and things the fridge evolved into a new life form. Collected weekly. Loved by composting worms everywhere. Garden Waste Bin – Reserved for clippings, weeds, hedge trimmings, and lawn confetti. Not for chicken carcasses, despite the chicken’s former fondness for gra...

  Going Green: How My Heat Pump Became the Warm-Hearted Hero of Our Home ( Spoiler: It’s not just warm — it’s clever too. ) We used to rely on fire, gas, and the occasional desperate kettle-on-the-feet moment to warm the house. But now? Our warmth comes from thin air. Literally. Let me introduce the unsung champion of our eco-home : the air source heat pump . It hums quietly in the background, extracting heat from the outside air like some sort of eco-magician. And when paired with a chunky battery and a roof full of solar panels , it becomes a full-blown renewable romance. ☀️ The Sun’s Out, the Battery’s In We’ve installed 26 solar panels across three roof arrays , soaking up sunlight like a lizard on holiday. But sunshine is only half the story — the real magic is what we do with it. Enter our 50kWh battery system — a beast of a power pack that stores all that solar goodness and dishes it out as needed. It powers everything: the lights, the oven, the computers, and yes —...

  Insulation – Because Heating the Garden Is Not a Sport There’s a noble British tradition of standing in your lounge wrapped in a woolly jumper, next to a blazing radiator , while muttering, “Still a bit nippy, isn’t it?” That’s not because we love hypothermia —it’s because many of us are accidentally heating the garden. And as delightful as our roses are, they don’t need central heating. So, what’s the deal with insulation? Let me be blunt: insulation is like that friend who always remembers to bring a coat and snacks. It keeps the warmth where it belongs— inside the house —and makes your heating system feel like it’s finally being listened to. At our house, we’ve gone full eco-fortress. Cavity wall insulation? Check. Loft insulation deep enough to lose a cat in? Check. Triple glazing? Oh yes. We’ve even insulated under the floorboards (though retrieving the screwdriver from between the joists took longer than expected. RIP, screwdriver.) Where does your heat go? Let’s pl...

This week Ofgem made a statement about how the UK could potentially run out of gas. Creating a shortage, and that in a emergency there could be a rolling power cut if the UK due to lack gas supplies had to turn off gas turbines that produce electricity, if we get a cold and server winter. The last time this happened was in the 1973 when the Gas supplies switched off for hours due to gas rationing and Electricity rationing was done as well. How did we get here, Russia stopped the gas flowing to Europe and so Europe has been buying up all the Norwegian gas. Meaning less supply. Additionally France's Nuclear power stations are offline due to maintenance, so there is less electricity in Europe so France has been buying (and burning) gas to meet its consumption, meaning less supply. The UK has Approximately 7 days of Gas Stored up, but The government has been urged to set a target to slash household energy demand by 20% through Covid-style measures increasing how much gas the UK has...

  The world’s nations agreed at the UN’s Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow last November to “accelerate efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal”. Certain counties watered down the desired wording to this.  New mining projects are being planned in China, India, Australia, Russia and  South Africa . The same countries that wanted the wording changed.  Coal is the most polluting of all the fossil fuels. Almost half the 1,000 companies assessed  in a recent report are still developing new coal assets, and just 27 companies have announced coal exit dates consistent with international climate targets.  The report found 476GW of new coal-fired power capacity is still in the pipeline worldwide. This is equivalent to hundreds of new power stations being built.  China  is responsible for 60% of all the planned new capacity.  The US, which has the world’s third-largest number of coal plants, has not set a national end date for its coal power, and d...

I t takes more than five times the electricity to heat a home with hydrogen than with a heat pump.  Hydrogen has higher energy systems costs than heat pumps or solar energy because its production requires a lot of electricity. These were the basic findings of a report published in Joule this week.    Low-carbon and zero-carbon hydrogen has been promoted by gas and heating industry representatives as a key solution to replace especially fossil gas in the distribution grid.  It has received significant media attention over the last 2–3 years and featured in some of the many national hydrogen strategies launched recently.  An important question is whether the available evidence supports a case for heating homes with hydrogen. The report    analysed 32 independent studies – those that weren’t carried out by or on behalf of the energy industry – and found no evidence supporting widespread hydrogen use for heating.  The critical issue is the ineffi...

  A Turkish football club has found a way to cut its energy costs and make money from electricity while going green. The roof of the stadium they use is covered in solar panels. They  produce up to  4.2 megawatts from 10,404 panels on the roof of the Ali Sami Yen Spor Kompleksi Stadium in  Istanbul .  The  solar energy  produced from the panels provides between 63 to 65 per cent of the stadium’s electricity use, with the rest coming from the municipal electricity provider. The excess energy is sold to homes in the local area.  Galatasaray football club set a world record in March for the amount of megawatts produced by the stadium’s solar panels, earning it a place in the Guinness World Records.  The club thought it would take a few years for them to start seeing any savings after the  solar panel  system was installed on the 52,000 plus capacity stadium. But the increased price of energy, along with an official inflation rate ...