The Book of Rubbish Ideas

More precious than oil and beer (just).

Hi everybody. Thomas here is say that, well, this is the last time I’ll be here. For those of you who don’t know me (I have tried to keep a low profile), I’m the guy who originally put this blog together for Tracey on behalf of Sawday’s and  have since been the behind the scenes person who does all the administration and moderation that comes with a popular blog such as this one.

Tracey once described herself as the spontaneous/creative one, while I was the borderline obsessive compulsive/creative one. That pretty much sums us up rather nicely since Tracey comes up with the brilliant ideas and daily posts, and I’m the one who fiddles and tweaks with everything to get it all as functional and consistent as possible.

However, today is my last day with Sawday’s so that means today is my last day working on this rather wonderful blog. The good news is that I’m probably no longer needed around here anyway as Tracey has certainly done a marvellous job with developing this blog beyond what I ever envisioned it to be so I am more than happy handing it completely over to her. 

Anyway, while I was hoping to sneak out the backdoor and leave on a whimper rather than a bang, Tracey asked me to do this final post so I thought I might take the opportunity to briefly talk a bit about water conservation.

You see, I’m an Australia and water shortages are a serious concern at the moment in Australia. I can’t remember if in the UK you get charged for your water usage of not, but you certainly do Down Under so these tips have economical benefits as well as environmental ones:

• Put a timer in the shower with you and time your showers. The recommendation in Australia is that you really should be keeping your showers to under 4 minutes. I must admit that I am personally still finding this a challenge!
• Only water the garden at night as this lessens the degree in which your water will evaporate before it gets absorbed by the plants.
• Don’t leave the tap running while shaving, brushing your teeth… Actually, just don’t leave the tap running!
• If you are using a dishwasher, don’t rinse the dishes before you put them in as this is a completely unnecessary doubling up of water usage. If your dishwasher can’t properly wash dishes unless they are rinsed first then you’ve got a dud dishwasher and you should go back to doing it by hand.
• Whenever you run a tap (to wash veggies, to wait for the water to heat up etc) put a bucket underneath to collect the water. You can then use that water on plants.
• Put a bucket in the shower with you and capture some of the water that would otherwise go down the drain. Throw that bucket down the toilet to flush it.
• Don’t wash your car. Seriously - it’s just a car. It simply functions as a device to take you from A to B. Nobody worth knowing cares what it looks like.

For those of you who can invest a bit more time, effort and money:

• Install a water tank to capture rainwater and use that water on your garden, clothes and if possible, sewage. 
• Recycle your grey water. Grey water is the domestic waste water that is produced as a result of dish washing, laundry and bathing, and is different to the waste water from toilets (known as black water). Although you should proceed with caution, if you can collect your grey water separately from your black water then it can be used on the garden, rather than using drinking water. The Australian government and the Better Health Channel have put together some really useful info on recycling grey water.

Well, that’s me done! I’ll be now cycling off into the sunset and retiring this account. However, I will be floating around in another guise as I’m launching a blog of my own in 2009. I’m a film critic, amongst other things, and am slowly putting all my writing online so I’ll certainly pop back once that is done to shamelessly self promote myself then. Perhaps I will even do that piece on environmental cinema that I promised Tracey months ago and never found the time to do…

Take care everybody. It’s been a pleasure and an honour working with Tracey on this blog and I’m looking forward to seeing it continue to go from strength to strength.

Cheers

Thomas