Have you ever heard of Freecycling? It is a throwback to ancient times when people actually cared about eachother and shared. The premise behind Freecycling is of course not to care about people though, but to care about the environment.

Freecycling is a concept that facilitates the meeting of people who are willing to give things away for free instead of throwing them away, only for a similar product to be built again, at the cost of the earth.

Many people have had the experience of having a baby, buying a pram and then giving it away to a friend, sibling or relative. That is Freecycling, except that people participating in this concept give away anything.

Kittens, televisions, bikes, computer parts, food - you can find anything on these sites.

So why is Freecycling better than recycling?
Well first of all, most products cannot be easily recycled in first world countries. We do not bother to pay someone to separate a TV into plastic, glass and metal - it simply isn't economical, so it ends up in a massive pile of rubbish with the rest of the unrecycled garbage.

Also, you have to consider that in the process of recycling something, you need to transport it, clean it, process it, remake it into a product, transport it, sell it. All of these things take energy and for a lot of products, recycling is not yet viable with the technology we have. I am not advocating the ceasing of recycling by any means, but sometimes is isn't effective.

Freecycling means that you don't use ANY energy for someone to get a new product.

No energy used,
no waste
and no unnecessary production of new products.

GLOBAL WARMING: A Mind Mapper's Guide to the Science and Solutions is an ebook written by a recognised Australian global warming activist, Jane Genovese.

In the book, Genovese goes into the many ways that Global Warming affects us and the many ways that people can battle it in their every day lives.

The book is free and can be downloaded and distributed freely.

This method is part of a grander scheme of things in the house. Did you know that one of the greatest users of electricity is water pumping? Unless you live on the side of a mountain, it takes a lot of energy to get the water, treat it, then pump it at high pressure into your house, so you can enjoy it from taps and showers.

So, this post will concern the saving of water AND dishwashing detergent. It is a very simple method:
1) Get an old washing up liquid bottle and make sure it is clean of other chemicals.
2) Fill the water 90 percent to the top.
3) Fill the rest of the bottle with detergent.
4) Cap the bottle and mix gently.

So, why does this work?

Well normally you would fill the sink with water, then squeeze in some liquid, make it bubbly, then wash the dishes and then have to rinse them, using more water again.
So you might have used 15-20ml of pure washing liquid and about 15 litres of water.

The best way to save the detergent and water is to use the mix described above on dry dishes. You don't need to rinse them first because you already have water in the mix and the detergent will already activate and become bubbly and lovely when you squeeze it into the dirty bowl, glass etc. Then scrub up and rinse off. The rinse will require less water than usual also because you have used less detergent.

If you think that this method won't work because you don't use enough soap, you would be mistaken. Most detergent companies these days make their products so strong that you would never have to wash something with force or strength so that you would continue using their product. It is therefore easily dilutable.

You can use this mix for other things by the way - washing the kitchen benches, cleaning windows (did you know that many professional window cleaners simply use dishwashing liquid because it is more effective, doesn't leave streaks and is cheaper?) and washing the toilet.

Frequently Asked Questions:
It is too watery and I have to use too much liquid every time. What to do?
You are probably not putting enough of the concentrated liquid into the water at the beginning. Sometimes it helps with some detergents to use warm water when mixing at the beginning.

I made a caserole/bake and the detergent isn't strong enough to scrub it off.
Soak the dish in water if it is that crusty and try again later. Or use a metal scrubber or paint scraper/knife to scrape off the crusties and try again with the soft sponge.

Living greener:
Uses less water
Uses less 10 times less detergent - better for the environment where your sewage comes out
Creates less rubbish because you are buying less detergent and not throwing away the old bottle

Did you know that around 60 percent of the world's energy is spent on lighting? Not all of this goes towards lighting the house either - some of it, more and more these days, goes towards lighting your computer screen.

It is also true that we spend a lot of time using Google to find things. Combining these ideas prompted people to come up with Blackle - a black background search engine powered by Google.

Check it out below (information from Blackle.com)

How is Blackle saving energy?

Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search.

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.