Frugal Programs on TV

No Waste Like Home Thursday BBC2 8.30 PM 18th August 2005.

Penney Poyzer introudces this interesting and quite unusual program!

Description:

British households generate £25 billion of waste every year, of which £20 billion is wasted food. Shocked? In this informative series, household sustainability expert Penney Poyzer guides extravagantly wasteful families (the Tibbetts are the first) through ways of saving energy and money. There are some fairly obvious tips, such as turning down the central heating and washing your clothes at 40°C - they don't get any cleaner in a hotter wash. And there are moments when it's like watching one of those wartime public service announcements lecturing you to turn the lights out. Still, the Tibbetts save £400 in a fortnight. Impressed?

We're planning on watching this program - it looks like an interesting program for frugal living fans! The program looks at reducing energy consumption, recycling, detoxing the kitchen and bathroom

Penney Poyzer has an ecohome and this site tours it!

Enjoy this series in book form too - buy No Waste Like Home by Penny Poyzer from play.com - free delivery

Flushing your money down the loo? Throwing your future in the bin? Pouring your happiness down the drain?

Every year we spend£400 million on food and generate 29 million tons of household waste. What¿s more worrying is that our homes are so full of toxins they're making us sick. TVs, computers, cleaning and beauty products are emitting waste that we don't know about, waste that's potentially killing us.

No Waste Like Home is the revelatory book that will change your outlook. No nonsense, no unrealistic green speak - just simple lifestyle plans that could save you up to £4000 a year. Quiz yourself to find your environmental make-up, add up your health and wealth miles and learn the ins and outs of how to reduce, reuse and recycle. Packed with mind-blowing facts and practical targets, No Waste Like Home is about a lot more than taking your bottles to the bank. Inside there are hundreds of quick and easy ways to improve your home, car, shopping bills and health. The ultimate 'make a difference' subject is about to hit you and your home.

The Tibbetts - have the heating up really high and she does 20 odd washes a week at 60 and 95'c. 17 bags of refuse sorted can be reused, recycled and only 3 bags worth need be thrown. Revoltingly she makes them a meal from the food they throw away. (Not entirely sure it was straight out the bin.)
11x the national average gas use, 3 x the refuse.

(They said they didn't get gas bills - because of some mix up but they've spent £10,000 worth of gas. Now that's frugal living! Although I imagine they will get charged for it at some point!)

She's getting them chickens too! They'll eat food waste. See our chickens page
Also a food scraper waste bin for worms to eat the meaty scraps you shouldn't put on the compost bin cos it'll attract vermim.

Also jumpsuits for the kids outside - rather than hundreds of clothes changes - although the kids continue to change clothes inside as much as they like.

Local shopping at greengrocers and farmers markets.

Penny visits a housing development which is ecofriendly. Photovoltaic panels give energy, Solar thermal heats water. Well insultated and a latent heat exchange system which keeps the heat in (meaning radiators are only on for an hour a day in winter!) Sadly this is a specially built house although you can cavity wall insulate and loft insulate you won't be as well insulated as this sort of house.

Bendall-Jones Family - Was this the family with the babies? She showed them how many nappies they threw away in 6 months and switched them to washables. She got them a wormery and took them to a water treatment plant. She gave them targets for cutting gas use but they didn't meet this - needing to further insulate the floor of their conservatory.

Baby-O - sell washable nappies - you've been wondering where to buy them from... look under bath and bed on this site. They've got them in three sizes S (6-12lb)M (12-17lb)L (17-25lb)

Thursday 8th September

Documentary

No Waste Like Home

8:30pm - 9:00pm

BBC2 North West




VIDEO Plus+: 1021
Subtitled, Widescreen



Eco-expert Penney Poyzer shows environmentally-unfriendly and wasteful households how to become more efficient, encouraging them to recycle and stop wasting water, gas and electricity. The Cunninghams' gas and electricity bills are double what they should be and the heating stays on all day, so Penney is determined to show them how to cut down the spending as well as bring a little green thinking into their lives.

5/8 - Was two blokes in a city centre flat who used loads of water and threw away clothes that'd be worn for a few times.
They cut down really well/

6/8

Eco-expert Penney Poyzer shows environmentally-unfriendly and wasteful households how to become more efficient, encouraging them to recycle and stop wasting water, gas and electricity. Penney visits a group of students in London who are contributing to the country's landfill problem, producing an average of 14 sacks of rubbish a week, nothing of which is recycled. Can Penney teach them the errors of their ways?

I quite enjoyed this episode - Penny made a big impact on the students and they've definately changed their ways massively reducing the amount of rubbish they throw away.
The side features - allotments and growing veg are tantalising leaving you wanting to know more.
Penny mentioned Earthships - houses made from tyres and we've put some links on a page about earthships for you to find out more

7/8 - Penney visits the Henshalls, a family of five that are literally flushing away much of the water they pay for. Their total water consumption every week is approx. 6,000 litres, which is the recommended amount of drinking water for one person over 8 years.