reduce my environmental footprint

Just been reading this article in the Observer about washing machines and laundry options. It mentions soap nuts which sound quite interesting. I was wondering if anyone has any experience of using these, or indeed Ecoballs?

At the moment I use Ecover washing powder but it is quite expensive and heavy to carry so it would be great to find an alternative. I suppose I’m a little suspicious of these things that say you can re-use them 1,000 times. Can they really work?

in yesterday’s Observer here on exactly this topic, i.e. how to reduce your carbon footprint.

What’s particularly good about this article in my opinion is that they attempt to quantify how much of a difference each step will make in terms of how much it will reduce carbon emissions. So recycling items or only boiling as much water as you need have a relatively small impact, while getting insulation or eco lightbulbs have a much larger impact. I thought eco lightbulbs were on about the same level as recycling, so that was news to me. Just as well the ones I ordered have just arrived! ;)

to get some low energy light bulbs for ages, but all the sites I looked at seemed to sell those very ugly spiral ones, which aren’t suitable for the sort of light fittings I have.

This site has quite a good range, including some spotlights which don’t look like they were made by an extra-terrestrial, so I’ve ordered 12 which should keep me going for a while.

There’s a guide here which covers a few sustainability issues that might be of interest to the team.

I find it’s easy to get overwhelmed by this stuff – the weekly “Is it ok to…” column often comes up with an issue I’ve never thought about (Is it ok to have a digital camera? Why wouldn’t it be?!) but I suppose it’s good to get more informed about these things!

And here is a site about offsetting carbon emissions – think Firedragon was asking about this a while back.