www.everythingsgonegreen.co.uk

What’s that? T-Cycle? Sounds like an amalgam of T-shirt and Recycle. And you’d be right!

We spotted T-Cycle this morning; they’re a little company that sell recycled t-shirts with fresh new designs on them and all their designs are bicycle themed.

T-Cycle are well into promoting greener modes of transport, pushing the bike agenda (sorry about the cheap pun there - Ed) and making the fashion industry far more ethical and environmentally-friendly than it has been in our modern, consumerist society.

So have a look at their designs and grab yourself a green, eco-friendly biking t-shirt. And when you’ve finally worn out your beloved threads in a few years time maybe you could freecycle them?

Whilst many PCs have energy-saving modes there’s clearly room for improvement in these days of high energy prices and greater green awareness. That’s where Edison comes in.

Edison is a handy program from software vendor Verdiem that monitors and controls your home PC’s energy consumption. You can set the energy-saving modes for when you work from your PC and for non-work times, so if you work on your laptop from 9:30am to 5:30pm, just program these times into Edison.

By default Edison turns off the display, powers down the hard-drive and suspends the computer after 15 minutes in work mode, allowing you to work without power-management interruptions. Non-work mode turns off the display and powers down your PC’s hard-drive after 5 minutes and suspends the computer after 10 minutes, although this is all configurable from Edison’s power management panel.

Edison also shows you how much CO₂ and money you’re saving by powering down although, for us Brits, this feature is in U.S. dollars. And at $0.089 per kWh I’m not sure whether Americans get a better rate than us, although you can set the rate. (Use xe.com to convert dollars to your local currency)

Arguably driving in itself is not a green activity, especially when you don’t have an economical or an environmentally-friendly car. And let’s be frank, how many of us greenies actually have a green mobile let alone the world’s public at large?

Let’s take me, for example, the main man behind Everything’sGoneGreen. I, for my sins, own a Subaru. No, not an Impreza with a big-bore exhaust and a body kit covered in stickers but an old Subaru Legacy which is certainly just as capable. It’s fast and “quick off the line”, it’s a turbo, it’s got permanent four wheel drive (yes, it’s technically a 4×4) and it sticks to the road like sh*t to blanket. Those are boy-racer credentials in anyone’s book.

But I love mountain-biking and walking and, when I get the chance, I will go to inaccessible places in my car with bikes in the boot. It’s an estate/station wagon so it can carry 5 people comfortably with all their luggage. It gets regularly serviced and is well-maintained; it just had a puncture repaired and has two new tyres and the oil is topped up. I even brought the vehicle from a farmer who lived in Glastonbury and you can’t get more green than that.

That’s not bad for a 14 year old car with 134,000 miles on the clock. And yes, that’s me justifying my ownership of such a “beast” and still hypocritically running a website showing people how to go green. Am I bad for admitting all this?

Ideally I’d love a Tesla Roadster, but that’s not entirely practical with a wife and kid. A Toyota Prius would be nice but they’re still ugly and I’m sure Toyota can do better than that. Even a Smart four-four would be cool with that 3-cylinder diesel engine but they’re still a little on the small side.

And more, much than this… I really do not have the money to fork out on a new green car.

So, what to do, Mr Subaru-driving, green-preaching hypocrite?

Well, I walk and ride my bike locally whenever I can and, check this, when I struggle normally to get 280 miles out of a tank of petrol… I drove like a granny on my way to and from a wedding at the weekend. I broke the 300 mile barrier on the way there and drove the whole distance back, over 350 miles, on a tank of petrol. That’s a whopping 75 miles more on a tank than I’ve ever done before and a fuel efficiency increase of around 25%. I got the same mileage out of a 2.0 turbo, 4×4 Subaru as my friend gets out of his 1.4 Citroen.

So tread lightly on that gas pedal; you’ll save fuel and save money and drive a little greener too