The Melting Iceberg

Cut-back on CO2 emissions

World leaders have the duty to set the world on a new course in the fight against climate change at the Copenhagen Conference later this year- but climate change is a challenge for all of us. 50% of green house gas emissions are produced by private households. We all have to act now to save out planet!

The following tips have been collected by our PES trainees:

1.Turn down the heat. Reducing the temperature by just 1°C can cut 5-10% off your family's energy bill and avoid up to 300kg of CO2 emissions per household and year.
2. Move your fridge and freezer - placing them in the sun or next to the cooker or boiler consumes makes them use more energy
3. Defrost old fridges and freezers regularly. Even better is to replace them with newer models, which all have automatic defrost cycles and are generally up to two times more energy-efficient than their predecessors.
4. Avoid putting hot or warm food in the fridge. You save energy by letting it cool down first before placing it in the fridge.
5. Use energy-saving light bulbs: just one can reduce your lighting costs by up to €60 and avoid 400kg of CO2 emissions over the lifetime of the bulb - and they last up to 10 times longer than ordinary light bulbs.
6. Do not leave appliances on standby - use the "on/off" function on the machine itself. A TV set that's switched on for 3 hours a day and in standby mode during the remaining 21 hours uses about 40% of its energy in standby mode.
7. Unplug your mobile charger when you're not using it. Even when it is not connected to the phone, it is still draining electricity.
8. Boil less water. If all Europeans boiled just the water they needed, thus avoiding 1 liter of unnecessarily boiled water per day, the energy saved could power one third of Europe's streetlights.
9. Cover your pots while cooking. Doing so can save a lot of the energy needed for preparing the dish. Even better are pressure cookers and steamers: they can save around 70%!
10. Turn off your tap. If you turn off the tap while brushing your teeth, you can save several liters of water.
11. Reuse your shopping bag. When shopping, it saves energy and waste to use a reusable bag instead of accepting a disposable one in each shop.
12. Choose products that come with little packaging and buy refills when you can - you will also cut down on waste production and energy use!
13. Try one of the following ways to get to work: cycling, walking, car-pooling, taking public transport. On average, for each liter of fuel burnt in a car engine, more than 2.5kg of CO2 is released.
14. Try to avoid short car journeys because fuel consumption and CO2 emissions are disproportionately higher when the engine is still cold.
15. Make sure you have correct tyre pressure: if the pressure is down by 0.5 bars, your car uses 2.5% more fuel to overcome the resistance and thus releases 2.5% more CO2.
16. Try to travel by train! One person travelling by car alone produces three times more CO2 emissions per kilometer than if this person were travelling by train.
17. Explore alternatives to flying. Flying is the world's fastest growing source of CO2 emissions. If you fly, then consider 'offsetting' your carbon emissions.
18. Consume locally produced, seasonal food - it's better for the environment because produce grown in artificial ecosystems or greenhouses requires a tremendous amount of energy for temperatures to be maintained. And transporting goods by plane from one side of the world to the other generates about 1,700 times more CO2 emissions than transporting them by truck over 50km.
19. Eat your veg! Producing meat is both CO2 and methane-intensive and requires large amounts of water. In fact, ruminant animals such as cattle, sheep and goats are large producers of methane due to the way that their digestive systems process food.
20. Plant a tree. One tree of average size absorbs about 6kg of CO2 per year, so over 40 years it soaks up about 250kg of CO2.
21. Before you print a document or an e-mail, consider whether you really need to print it. A European citizen uses around 20kg of paper per month!