Going Green: food digesture - Part 3

The third update on my plan to reduce our household waste costs and to improve on the amount of material we recycle, so far the layout is as follows:
- Plastic covered box for cans & glass
- Two 80ltr bins for recyclable material (paper, plastic etc)
- One 90ltr bin to stockpile about 4-5 weeks of non-recycle material
- One greencone for food stuffs

So how it works is about once a month I need to do a run to empty the two 80ltr bins and about once every 4-5 weeks I need to empty the 90ltr non-recyle bin which doesn't tend to smell because all foodstuff that cause the smells goes into my greencone :)

Overall this costs me €6 to dispose of all my rubbish which is a good saving over the €25 monthly fee I'd have to pay to a waste pickup company.

So far so good and I'm impressed with how the system works so far, the initial outset for implementing my green waste plan were kinda high though:
- €145.00 for greencone
- €50 for 80ltr bin
- €20 for 90ltr bin
- €20 for plastic box
Total: €235

When compared to what I'd have to pay for a monthly pickup for the same material (12 x €25) €300, so after the first 12 months I'll really feel the savings :)

I hope I've helped to inspire others to try this as well.

Going Green: food digesture - Part 2

You may all remember awhile ago I posted about a food digesture I installed in my garden, well with all the bad weather and due to poor soil drainage the digesture started to fill with water upto 1ft+ deep.

As the greencone stops working when it fills with this much water this is very bad! So I had to do some re-engineering work on it to solve the problem.

First off I've learned the greencone does a very good job and not smelling because when I dug it out it smelled awful but as soon as it was buried again it was fine and even if you stood within 6 inches of it you wouldn't smell a thing once the lid is closed.

So after a days work, lots of gravel and new clay as well as wooden pegs I've come up with this....


I'll keep you all posted on how the new design works out.

[UPDATE]:Photo now included on the greencone.com website.

Going Green: food digesture

So awhile back I posted regarding my recent purchase of a efergy electricity monitor which I'm hoping to use to keep an eye on whats using power and making me conscious of costs. So far so well with this device but since I have a garden in the house which is something I didn't have in my flat I wanted to go more green when it comes to my rubbish.

In the area we have two company's that will collect recycled items (paper, plastic etc) and non-recyclable items such as plastic wrap etc but I've found that while we have little to no non-recyclable items we have so far ended up getting rid of what we have pretty quickly as it starts to smell.

Well the reason for this is of course food and unfortunately with a normal food composters you can't put meat and cook food into it as its not designed for such things, so with this in mind I did abit of re-search and came up with a Green Cone food digesture.

The green cone takes meat, fish, bread, bone etc and uses bacteria and worms to break down the food into water etc so its re-absorbed by the ground around it, I just spent yesterday digging the hole required for it and its all good to go now...its a pretty big hole considering the large black basket MUST be fully buried for the green cone to work.

So here's some photos of before, during and after installation of the cone, I'll keep you all posted on how I get on using it.




All going well it should reduce costs and help the environment..big thanks to eco shop for the fantastic service getting the green cone to me in 24hrs!

Going Green: Energy Monitoring

So myself and the fiancee recently moved into our new house and in a effort to save money in these hard times and help the environment I decided energy saving lightbulbs were the best way forward for the majority of the house.

While initially I would have loved to get solar panels the initial outlay cost was too great so I had to abandon the idea, anyway I looked into other methods to help save money and monitor costs.

One solution was a Efergy Electricity monitor, it cost me about 60e and took about 5min to setup with no wiring etc. I've been using it about a week now and I have to see its interesting to see what everything uses.

for example:
1 60W CFL bulb uses 3 times less power then a 40W standard bulb or I've found the 3 spotlights in our downstairs hallway uses more power then my computer (monitor, computer unit and 4 external drives combined).

Its a cheap and easy way to watch what you use and I'd recommend it to anyone, you'd be surprised what everything uses.