How many men does it take to change a light bulb?

EFoE member Deborah King has the answer

How many members of Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace would it take to change their light bulbs before CO2 emissions reduced significantly?

Tony Yates, my partner for over 25 years, used to work at Friends of the Earth. Admittedly in the IT department, so he wasn’t dressing up like a chicken or pulling out crops, but it’s the passionate commitment to principles that matters. Yeah, right.

Having moved house recently, it is only when eco auditor Donnachadh McCarthy, is due to visit that we change the light bulbs to energy efficient ones in time for the audit. I also rang Three Valleys Water Company to get the water meter put in. They’d sent a notice in legalese saying that as we were new occupiers they had a right to install a meter, but when I rang to talk about the letter they asked if we wanted one, as though we had a choice about water metering. ‘Do you want a water meter?’

The audit starts with Donnachadh introducing himself and asking some basic questions about the house. We’d invited Virginia Fassnidge from Friends of the Earth and Mike Shadbolt, an eco friendly landscape architect, to come along too. Then we had a tour of each room and the garden, with questions about lifestyle, appliances and our intended future uses for the rooms.

The audit was followed up with a 44 point list of recommendations and the advice was tailored to our home. We found that the web links Donnachadh had provided were ones we would not have found without a lot of research, there was also level of understanding and expertise which isn't just gleaned from reading lots of eco advice.

Best of all, it prompted my partner to do quite a lot of DIY by virtue of having an auditor come round and say if you do x,y,z you will stop wasting energy/money.

Donnachadh McCarthy eco auditor can be contacted on www.3acorns.co.uk or on

020-7703 8748.