Food for thought?
Did you know that electrical waste also known, as e-waste can be recycled? Find out how you can add e-waste to your paper/food/glass list.
Over consumerism, a dirty habit that is escalating around the globe, is a current effect in the United Kingdom as well. We as humans have the tension not only to spend our money on fancy, new pieces of technology but we also suffice our ego with the purchase of selected pieces being the latest versions of its kind. This effect leads in binning the old computers for example if the purchase is a laptop. The outcome? 50 million tonnes of electrical waste annually, including TV’s, stereos, kitchen appliances and the list goes on and on. These old, broken, no-use electronic gadgets normally referred to as e-waste, are known as non-biodegradable items which means that the best offence is the option of recycling in order to protect the environment and make something that is not useful anymore, useful again. Even if the e-waste are non-fixable then besides helping not harming the environment which significant amount of waste, some form of electronic waste can be used, either if its plastic, metals or even glass.
But it does not stop there, in order to solve this problem for good we need to get more educated and through the knowledge provided ideally change some habits of ours that are going to be extremely helpful. In school and generally when we talk about recycling we all think about newspapers, cans and bottles. This phenomenon also occurs because at our local work or university or town we have those three bins; the green/grey, blue and brown for pet waste and general refuse, food waste and paper respectively. However, anything electronic can be recycled too. There are certain e-waste processors used to safely destruct as well as procedures to be followed, both of which need to be certified, to dispose electronic waste. Hopefully, after reading this, the words unwanted, obsolete and non-working would not be referred to e-waste anymore.
Solar energy panels are not only fancy; they can be more than an extra piece of equipment on our roofs.
Solar energy panels have become an exiting new trend, as an extra weapon against pollution and an alternative way to get green and save electricity. But do we know how it actually works and why it is so innovative? Everyone knows, that the sun provides us solar energy, which is an unlimited resource. Thus, solar panels collect the solar energy delivered by the sun and turn it into DC electricity which then is converted into electricity which is channelled by our utility lines. Yet it does not stop there, the excess power is transferred to the company providing you electricity in the first place which means that everyone has gained from this process. There is also a misconception, that this only works when there is sunlight that is a lie, bearing in mind that this process occurs also on cloudy days.
Obviously another important matter is money. In order for this process to be useful and for your home to be environmentally friendly solar panels need to be installed on the roof. The cost depends on the quality, size and quantity of the solar panel, however an average family in the UK needs to be provided with an estimate of 3kW of electricity. For such phenomenon to occur the solar panels need to cover about 21 square meters of the roof space and an estimate of the cost will be from 4000 pounds reaching a maximum of 6000 pounds. They used to be more expensive in previous years yet the reduction in recent years exceeded the amount of 70%. As mentioned earlier, through this process the beneficial outcome involves earning money through the tariff set by the Government, reaching up to saving half of your electricity bills. My advice? In the long run, such purchase is beneficial not only for your second home and your pocket but also for our first home, earth.
