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WA$TED: Sample Content from the Wasted Book (Sample 1)

Friday, June 15, 2007

The book is being released in August 2007 and you will be able to purchase it here online at Ecobob. Come back soon or email info@ecobob.com to register your interest.

Following is some sample content from the book. The actual book contains many comprehensive diagrams and photographs which are not shown below.

Sample 1 - Introduction and Rubbish

Introduction

Filming WA$TED! was a journey of discovery for everyone involved. No matter how environmentally aware we considered ourselves before, it soon became clear we all had a lot more to learn. For most of us it was also a journey of no return. Once you’re aware of the impact of your actions, it becomes more difficult to throw your vege scraps in the bin or say yes to that plastic bag. So be warned — if you read on, you may want to make some changes to your current lifestyle. The good news is that these changes are neither too drastic nor will they cost you a fortune. In fact they could save you loads of money.

All the families who were brave enough to volunteer to be on WA$TED! had an interest in making their homes ‘greener’, but like most people they also had an interest in saving some cash. At the beginning of the series, we weren’t sure how much this would be. Perhaps a few dollars here or there. We were amazed by how much the small changes we made to their homes and routines amounted to in cold, hard, cash. Over the year, everyone who took part saved themselves somewhere between $850 and $2200!

In the process, they also learned about the impact their daily actions were having on the planet — an impact that most people, a few students aside, were keen to turn around. They were shocked by the size of their individual household footprints — the amount of land needed to make all the resources they used — and worked hard to shrink that (although some took a little longer to work out how!). Like most of us, they wanted to do their bit to keep this country in good shape for the generations to come. New Zealand is at a crossroads — we can no longer hold our country up as the clean, green paradise we once claimed it to be. We throw out more rubbish per person than the average Brit, we belch out methane gas at a greater rate than any developed nation and we have the fourth highest car-ownership rate in the world. While the government and businesses need to play their part, as consumers and householders we make choices that directly impact on our planet and our future.

These choices don’t have to be extreme — they can just be a matter of buying a local product rather than an imported one or switching to a different electricity supplier. We hope this book will give you the information to make these choices clearer — but it’s up to you to put them into practice. Knowing that long showers are a waste of water and power won’t actually get you out of the shower!

We wish you well in your own journey. No doubt you’ll discover many more ways to do things than we have included here. We would love to hear about them so feel free to email us at contact@wastedtv.co.nz. Good luck!

Home Auditing Guide

This book explains all the ways we used to audit the homes in the series, so you can audit your own home and work out your household footprint.

Eco Calculator

The impact we are having on the planet is often hard to see. To start, we need to look at the resources we are using, and the waste we are creating in our homes in terms of power, water and fuel. If we trace this back to the source, this will always be the land on which we live and the sea that surrounds us.

We developed a unique eco calculator, which measures a household’s resource use and translates that into an actual land size, what we call a ‘household footprint’. With this we can get an idea of the impact our lives are having on the planet and track the effect of the improvements we make.

To use the eco calculator as we did in the TV series, enter your current information before making any changes and then do it again once you have made changes to reduce your impact on the planet. This way you should get an impressive comparison between ‘before’ and ‘after’.

Auditing Process

During the filming we collected loads of information from our 10 families to enter into the calculator, and then tracked their progress. We had no special gadgets or monitoring devices, but devised a way of monitoring our households using good old Kiwi ingenuity.

We took weekly readings of electricity, gas, water and fuel, and trawled through the household’s rubbish. We collected all their shopping receipts, monitored the distance they were travelling each week, talked to them about their weekly habits and checked out the insulation and appliances in their home.

We then exposed the real impact the families were having on the planet by showing them the size of their household footprint, and got to work making changes to their home and habits. Three weeks later we returned to reveal the reduction in their household footprint and the cash savings they will make over a year if they continue living with less waste in their lives.

This process can be used by any household wanting to know what their environmental impact is and how to improve it. By monitoring your progress you become more aware of how what seem like small changes can add up to big results.

To find out more, see the book when it is released in August!

What you have read above is a small sample of what can be found in the WA$TED book.

Click here to view Sample 2 - Power

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