Personally, the Net Zero obsession and push for EVs has made me quite apprehensive for many reasons based on practicalities for our old home and inability to perform off road charging.
Expressed this to a friend with a strong physics/semiconductor design background recently and it seems as though current EVs powered by lithium batteries with a liquid electrolyte may be a stepping stone with solid electrolyte batteries being a game changer and not that far away.
Taken possession of a new Ercol snuggler settee . It is a little taller than my previous Erco; which means less strain when getting out of it .
What to with the previous Ercol ? Frame is in good condition , covers are tatty and cushions knackered.
Approached the charity shop that takes furniture , no response . Approached the community action furniture recyclers “Has it got the fire retardant label ?”
Anyway the new settee arrived and the old one went, I told the delivery people this tale of profligacy , they unzipped the covers and showed me a second fire retardant label inside the cushions,
If you are wondering why I just didn’t replace the cushions , it was £1950 for new cushions and £1650 for the smaller but taller settee
I cleared a couple of things from storage a few weeks ago, including empty boxes/packaging for electrical items I determined I’d never be likely to sell or send back for repair in the future.
Got rid of at least 4 relatively expensive (at the time) kids’ car seats I’d held onto for years - some were in near pristine condition, others quite dusty - of course it became apparent no one would ever have wanted them, but all some needed would have been a wash of existing covers or new covers if available with the underlyng undamaged frames intact. People are advised not to use secondhand in case they have been installed in a car that has been involved in an accident.
Took them to the ‘recycling centre’ and was told that they could not be recycled and to stick them in the domestic refuse skip.
How many thousands of tonnes of such items must be buried or incinerated annually?
Maybe a bit of nostalgia made me hold onto them, but it was probably more a case of initial expense and hoping they could be repurposed. Ultimately decided to view them as clothes that had been outgrown, no longer of use to us.
We got rid of the car seats our grandchildren used as soon as they became surplus to need, by offering them free in the local neighbourhood online group. I think in each case they were gone within 24 hours.
I found a new home for an outdated but still fully working flatscreen tv that way too. As it was during Covid, I dropped it off into the lady’s front garden (and put a new battery in the remote in case she didn’t have one available).
Freecycle is brilliant for things like this. Lots of things that I could have been dumped were picked up and put to some use. I even had a single buckled (thanks Surrey CC) Mini alloy wheel, complete with tyre that had been hanging around in my garage too long. The chap who collected it was going to melt it down to make ornaments.
Our PHEV is also working out very well Gazza. We can get 60-70 kms on all electric and that’s well more than we drive in a day. I have charging schedules set with the car App to avoid the expensive charge times, so we charge from 20% to 85% overnight for 40 cents. We only charge every other night.
So most of our driving is free, fuel-wise, and we have the efficient little gas engine any time it’s required.
I put fuel stabiliser in the gas tank.
