SWITCH off and tune out for a week without telly – you will help save the planet and find time for tasks you've put off
LIKE the Rubik's Cube, it's a puzzle I've never been able to solve. Why did TV executives give the green light to the 1980s kids' show Why Don't You? Let's remind ourselves of the programme's title track: "Why don't you just switch off your televisio
n set and go and do something less boring instead?" A TV show that's anti-TV? What madness. But the time has now arrived to follow through on Why Don't You's key message. I am readying myself to throw away the remote control in honour of International TV Turnoff Week (www.whitedot.org), which runs from April 20 to 26.
It isn't actually an energy-saving initiative – that's just a side-effect. Instead, it's a life philosophy. The campaign poses the question: "Have you ever gone away on holiday without television?" Yes. To a cottage on the west coast, where it rained all week, the midges were ferocious and I'd have given anything for just one episode of CSI to relieve the monotony. According to the campaign, though, that is not the correct answer. Instead, it suggests: "Maybe you discovered some things you were missing: time with your family, time to think. Did you perhaps become more involved with the things you yourself could do, instead of the things people on TV pretend to do?"
The people behind TV Turnoff Week have their work cut out: a 2005 report showed that the third most common activity carried out in Britain (after sleeping and working) was watching TV, videos and DVDs or listening to music. It might be escapism, but we seem to like it.
Despite the challenge faced by TV Turnoff Week, I'll actually be joining in. I once gave up TV for a week as a journalistic assignment, and I have never achieved so much since. The house was transformed from midden into show-home. The long-awaited fitness campaign got under way. I even caught up with old friends. It was a revelation. An exhausting one, which clearly couldn't last, but an interesting experiment all the same.
In ecological terms, turning off the TV wins you lots of green stars, as TV-watching accounts for 8% of the UK's domestic electricity use. I was genuinely shocked to read some of the statistics in the Energy Saving Trust's recent green/life balance research: it seems that almost half of Brits still leave the TV on or on standby overnight. Now I realise that some people with fancy digital subscriptions have to do this for technical reasons, but what about everyone else?
Maybe some fun facts can help change this. This energy use costs £44 million a year – enough to pay the annual electricity bills of 78,000 households. This slothfulness generates as much carbon dioxide as driving round the world 19,000 times. Even if you can't bear to switch off the television during your waking life, it's not too much to ask for everyone to hit the 'off' button at bedtime. If all the environmental and money-saving arguments don't wash, then surely the fire-hazard one will.
If you are buying a new TV, look for the Energy Saving Recommended logo – there's a guide to which sets qualify available through the Energy Saving Trust (www.energysavingtrust.org.uk). Hint: giant plasma screens tend not to meet the criteria.
You could even justify your viewing habit by watching shows like Grow Your Own Drugs, It's Not Easy Being Green or Grand Designs as part of your eco-living research. On second thoughts, let's not justify anything. I know I should be out doing something less boring instead, but I recycle, I plant trees, I've installed low-energy lightbulbs and now I'm going to enjoy a nice cup of tea and an episode of Antiques Roadshow.
5 minutes to save the worldREMEMBER that in the UK you can drink the tap water. Our mains supply is rigorously tested and regulated, and we pay for it via our council tax bills – and it tastes just fine. Drinking tap water saves on packaging (the bottled water industry uses around 2.7 million tonnes of plastic every year), not to mention the fossil fuels implicated in transporting all those bottles.
Healthy planetMAKE the kids green from head to toe with some funky sneakers. These reduce, reuse and recycle shoes are hand-painted using watercolour pencils and paint. Sneakers, from £52.95, at
www.zazzle.co.uk