PowerSwitch

Hi,

I own a small business that operates from an office in Central London. We have just moved into a new office, and I was wanting to know the best way to:

- Get a pro-renewables electricity supply
- Effectively and efficiently recycle waste.

Can anyone give me any pointers?

Electricity: for a grid supplier, you can't beat Ecotricity. I've been with them about a year, and haven't had any problems. They match the price of your local supplier, and they ensure that every unit you consume from the grid is matched by a unit of electricity from renewable sources.

Waste recycling: Find out as much as you can about what your local authority offers in the way of recycling. For other stuff you'll probably need to deal with it on a case-by-case basis. Buy recycled stationery. Use Save A Cup if you use disposable plastic cups (or better still, use ordinary reusable cups). Various charities accept printer cartridges for recycling (e.g. Oxfam, ActionAid and the World Land Trust). Letsrecycle.com has more info on what you can recycle.

caspian wrote:Electricity: for a grid supplier, you can't beat Ecotricity. I've been with them about a year, and haven't had any problems. They match the price of your local supplier, and they ensure that every unit you consume from the grid is matched by a unit of electricity from renewable sources.

Waste recycling: Find out as much as you can about what your local authority offers in the way of recycling. For other stuff you'll probably need to deal with it on a case-by-case basis. Buy recycled stationery. Use Save A Cup if you use disposable plastic cups (or better still, use ordinary reusable cups). Various charities accept printer cartridges for recycling (e.g. Oxfam, ActionAid and the World Land Trust). Letsrecycle.com has more info on what you can recycle.

Thanks very much for the info. Amazingly, Hackney council do not offer any free recycling services for businesses, so we will have to look into a cheap private company. Ho well...

With the recycling issue, The actions you should take are in this order:-

Reduce, a reduction of consumption means less waste, and therefore less to recycle.

Reuse, reusing waste is always better than recycling, it requiresno additional energy input.

Upcycle, Can the waste be turned into a more valuable produce, for example newspaper waste can be turned int insulation

Recycle, for example aluminium and copper are excellent materials to recycle.

Downcycle, Concrete into hardcore, glass into sand.

Recover, Efficient energy from waste systems exist.

Dispose, Land Fill

Well, we got in touch with ecotricity and will be changing to them soon enough. I need to get in touch with a recycling company but that is on the list. Thanks for the help!

I have another query. My company is a software and web development firm. We have a number of servers that live in a data center to provide services to our clients. Now, we are thinking of trying to run the company in a totally carbon-neutral manner, but the servers are a bit of a spanner in the works, as we have no control over where the data center gets its power from, and moving them is a no go (not that there are any data centers in the UK that use renewable energy sources, as far as I am aware).

Would it be possible to go about offsetting the carbon produced by powering the servers by way of carbon credits? Can anyone point me in the direction of ways to go about this?

For carbon offsetting, you could use www.carbonneutral.com - although I am sure that Bill Hook will disagree with this!

I use them myself, and so do a lot of others (including one of my fave musicians Dave Gilmour and his new CD, although probably downloads are more climate-friendly than CDs), but there is a lot of debate as to whether it is a) worth doing, or b) a con of some description.

I myself think that it is better to do something, however debateable the results may be, than to do nothing, which is why I use them.

All fab advice, but for small businesses its important to be energy effecient to look after our environment and our pocket.

I read this article the other day which you might want to take a look at:

http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/rel_ ... 84&hilite=

A thought: if (when) fossil-fueled power stations become more prone to outages through shortages, will those provided with wind-generated electricity stay connected? After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.

No, I thought not.

A good case for 'smart meters' which are controllable by the provider, perhaps?

A good case for 'smart meters' which are controllable by the provider, perhaps?

The control software code might look like this:

IF consumer = NATIONAL POLITICIAN
THEN
power = 100%
ELSE IF consumer = RICH_PERSON
THEN
power = 100%
ELSE IF consumer = MEDIA
THEN
power = 100%
ELSE IF consumer = CENTRAL_GOVT_WORKER
THEN
power = 95%
ELSE IF consumer = LOCAL_GOVT_WORKER
THEN
power = 90%
ELSE IF consumer = LOCAL_POLITICAN
THEN
power = 90%
ELSE IF consumer = FAMILY_OR_FRIEND_OF_POWER_ENGINEEERS
THEN
power = 85%
ELSE IF consumer = HOSPITAL_OR_DOCTOR_OR_POLICE_OR_MILITARY
THEN
power = 85%
ELSE IF consumer = HEAD_OF_MOUTHY_MINORITY_PRESSURE_GROUP
THEN
power = 83%
ELSE IF consumer = VOTER_IN_LABOUR_AREA
THEN
power = 70%
ELSE IF consumer = VOTER_IN_TORY_AREA
THEN
power = 10%
ELSE
power = 20%
END IF

Carbon neutral won't do it - we've got to go carbon negative. Make sure your business takes carbon out of the air and locks it up for ages.

I turn trees into buildings. Dunno if you can make servers out of wood but at least put them on wooden shelves :0

Vortex wrote:

A good case for 'smart meters' which are controllable by the provider, perhaps?

The control software code might look like this:

IF consumer = NATIONAL POLITICIAN
THEN
power = 100%
ELSE IF consumer = RICH_PERSON
THEN
power = 100%
ELSE IF consumer = MEDIA
THEN
power = 100%
ELSE IF consumer = CENTRAL_GOVT_WORKER
THEN
power = 95%
ELSE IF consumer = LOCAL_GOVT_WORKER
THEN
power = 90%
ELSE IF consumer = LOCAL_POLITICAN
THEN
power = 90%
ELSE IF consumer = FAMILY_OR_FRIEND_OF_POWER_ENGINEEERS
THEN
power = 85%
ELSE IF consumer = HOSPITAL_OR_DOCTOR_OR_POLICE_OR_MILITARY
THEN
power = 85%
ELSE IF consumer = HEAD_OF_MOUTHY_MINORITY_PRESSURE_GROUP
THEN
power = 83%
ELSE IF consumer = VOTER_IN_LABOUR_AREA
THEN
power = 70%
ELSE IF consumer = VOTER_IN_TORY_AREA
THEN
power = 10%
ELSE
power = 20%
END IF

Fantastic!! Brought a smile to my face before starting work. There is so much truth in jest.