Kitchen

I have decided to start in the kitchen as a place where everyone is able to save power and so help make a difference.

Now lots of University students come straight from A levels or collages and when they arrive at university they don’t have a clue how to cook anything more complex than a pizza. For instance the first night I spent in halls one of my new flat mates spent several hours attempting to cook chicken drumsticks in the oven without success. To give him his dues though it turned out the oven was broken but still it took a while for anyone to realise.

Anyway back to the point, it’s very easy to waste resources in the kitchen whether that be, gas, electricity, water or fo

od because everything has an ecological and environmental cost.

Now all the things I’m about to list might seem simple and extremely obvious but from what I’ve seen it is still unknown for most people.

Let’s start with water, now although it almost appears that water requires no energy to come out the tap this isn’t the case. The water which comes fresh out the taps has been thoroughly processed using different methods depending on its source and the country the processing was done in, and used a lot of energy to make it that far.

The water has had to be removed from the water course and this in its self-causes problems to the aquatic wildlife in the area it was taken from and the terrestrial animals which require the water source. But removing water isn’t the only way humans affect the flow of water across the world, more and more dams are being built to allow companies to cope with the huge demands for fresh clean water which are put upon them. These dams in turn upset both the migration of fish and organisms along waterways and also change the area above it into a static water body flooding vast areas of land, while the area’s below suffer from a lack of water and even with dam’s releasing compensation flows it’s never as rich or abundant in species once the dam is completed.

Right once the water is taken from the source and pumped to the treatment plant which could be miles away, it is then put through a series of treatments such as micro-filters and bacterial cleaning to remove the waste and make it fit for consumption. Some of these processes require vast amounts of power and the plants are run round the clock to fill demands.

So the water is now clean and drinkable but it still has to be piped across the country to your tap ready to be used.

So it’s ideal if you can attempt to preserve as much water as possible.

The ways in which I suggest you do this are as follows

1.       If you are washing up don’t leave the taps running simple fill up a bowl (which usually take 10-15L) and use that. Never use dishwashers as some machines get through 90-100L in a single cycle, and even if you have to refill the washing bowl it’s still overall less water than the dishwasher.

2.       Try to use as little water as possible when cooking things such as veg. This will not only save water but save the power taken to heat the water (which I will talk about in another post) and save time as there is less water to heat.

3.       Try to reuse water in things such as gravy and sauces simple use the water something has boiled in.

4.       Keep a jug of water in the fridge so you don’t have to run the tap for ages to get cold water to drink.

Now I know those four points appear obvious but I still amazed how many people don’t follow them.

I will leave you with a few figures and statistics which will show that the current rate which humans consume water is far from sustainable.

·         Australia in 2009-10 used 4,444 gigalitres (GL) of water in the course of the year and this is with a relatively small population of around 20million.

·         In the UK water usage has increased by 1% every year since 1930 so now every person of the 60+million population uses 150L a day (2012).

·         In USA 2010 water used for domestic reasons was 23,800Mgal/d which is 90092.8 liters a day or 32906395.2l a year.

water usage in USA