"Martin" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 12:18:41 -0000, "Rupert \(W.Yorkshire\)"
wrote:


"Martin" wrote in message
. ..
On 25 Jan 2007 03:34:49 -0800, "La Puce" wrote:


If our attitude is to save money, many of us are saving money for the
long run, not for a quick fix. I have never expected anything to be
cheap. I have had this argument with my husband many times when he
finds something cheap and thinks it's a bargain. I hate bargains. I
know that it will break and that we will have no other choice but to
throw away.

Lidl and Aldi electrical goods have a three year guarantee and seem to
be
the
same quality as more expensive stuff.
In a Consumer test the two best ABMs were EUR220 and EUR 30.
Price doesn't necessarily mean quality.

Those of us who have lived in NL too long are constantly looking for
bargains
and finding them. We rarely, if ever pay, the RRP. Almost everything we
own was
a bargain including our 20 year old Sony TV , which was cheap because it
had a
small blemish on the screen, but came with a full guarantee. We took it
back to
the Sony importer who exchanged it for one without any defects. Most of
our
white goods are "last years models". Who cares about the current
fashion,
when
they last 20 years? BCC rules!
--

Martin

If you believe saving energy is important then I can assure you that brand
new white goods (Fridges/freezers/washers etc) are considerably more
efficient than 10 year old models.

I don't believe in throwing away things to save small amounts of energy.
The
things thrown away took a lot of energy to make. I don't leave the TV,
VCR, etc.
on standby 24 hours a day. In fact the VCR has been off since it finally
died
some years ago. As long as I am surrounded by green houses burning vast
amounts
of gas to grow tasteless vegetables, and flowers, that can be produced
naturally
elsewhere, I think I have the right to use a ten year old washing machine;
and
older deep freezes that are stuffed full with home grown vegetables. The
deep
freezes are so well insulated that the pumps rarely run.
--

Martin


LOL. You do have the right, as we all do. Long may it last

Following up to "Rupert \(W.Yorkshire\)" :


Surely we need to make a comparison of the environmental cost and not a
financial cost. The two things should not be mixed up.


Of course. They can be related however.
--
Tim C.

Following up to "Rupert \(W.Yorkshire\)" :

We must take into account the anti depressant drug manufacture energy cost
for all the overworked and then redundant fridge production workers.


LOL!
--
Tim C.

Following up to "La Puce" :

... still won't re-heat spinash. Now what is this with the Dutch and
the re-cooking of spinash?! Is it really poisonnous?

Same with Germans and Austrians not reheating anything with mushrooms in
it.
--
Tim C.

Martin wrote:
Most Japanese produced goods in the 1970s were vastly superior in technical
quality to European equivalents and they didn't break.

We must have then been dreaming for 20 years as customers came through
our shop doors returning broken goods not bought in our shops and not
the labels we sell (Radiola, Philips, Brawn etc). I must again be
dreaming that we couldn't help because we simply couldn't source the
spare parts. We must have been dreaming when people just left their
broken crap with us and bought another product in our shop.

You would do better to read consumer tests and forget about using price as a
guide line.

I'm surrounded by blokes who just love reading consumer test stuff.
It's indeed not a passion of mine and I prefer leaving this to them.
Price to me, along with energy efficiency rating is everything. If an
item has been tested and rated and passed as a good product but cost
much more than another model which is perhaps pink with cow design on
it, I'll go for the expensive tested one.

http://www.eufic.org/page/en/faqid/u...eheat-spinach/
"I heard it is unhealthy to reheat spinach. Is this true?

How amazing. But this has never been scientifically proven, nor
medically proven. Test shows this Martin. I have asked you that
question precisely because you are relying upon a web page and a
question from an agony aunt column with an answer carrying perhaps a
lot of big words but which has never been scientifically nor medically
proved.

I will therefore beleive that when I need a new frige, I'll go for the
best energy efficiently rated one, the most expensive one and if I'm
lucky it might even be pink. )

"Sacha" wrote after
"Tim C." wrote:
Following up to "'Mike'"
Don't you think I have tried? Only to be told by the shop assistant,
"We
have to do that and we have to put the receipt inside the bag to prove
you
have purchased it and you have not shop lifted it"

I've done it often in the UK, no problem whatsoever.

So have I, but it is not the norm. The norm is as I have stated.

"your mileage might vary", as they say.

Actually, all you have to do is say "I don't want the bag, thank you" and
take the receipt which is proof of purchase, not the bag. Anyone could
have
bags stashed in their pockets if that's all you needed to show you'd
actually paid for goods. My pet peeve is that cling wrap stuff around
bananas and avocados, which already come with their own nature-given
wrapping! Why, in heaven's name do 'they' DO that?!


I often wondered why supermarkets use so much packaging until I recently saw
a well dressed middle aged lady picking up produce, inspecting it, and then
throwing it back, and I do mean throwing. The broccoli head exploded as it
hit the others in the box and goodness knows what the avocado was like when
she finished with it. I've also seen a number of people throwing produce
into their trolleys lately and then compounding it by throwing heavy stuff
on top, they seem incapable of placing anything gently, just too damn lazy
perhaps or conned into thinking they have a busy and demanding life.

--
Regards
Bob H
17mls W. of London.UK

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:21:44 +0000, Sacha
wrote and included this (or some of
this):

and cucumbers.

Oh YES! Why can I buy them naked in a greengrocer's but not in a
supermarket?

I think there is a sound reason for shrink-wrapping cucumbers.

I grow a lot of cucs and find that if I pick them today, they are limp
tomorrow, whether kept on the worktop or in the frig. I think it's
a dehydration thing.

I now cut cucumbers when they are fully ripe and cling-film them
immediately. Kept at frig temperature they stay crisp and fresh for
days. Just bring them out for a couple of hours to warm to RT before
use.


--
®óñ© © ²°¹°-°³



--
®óñ© © ²°¹°-°³

On 25/1/07 15:17, in article ,
"®óñ© © ²°¹°-°³" wrote:

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:21:44 +0000, Sacha
wrote and included this (or some of
this):

and cucumbers.

Oh YES! Why can I buy them naked in a greengrocer's but not in a
supermarket?

I think there is a sound reason for shrink-wrapping cucumbers.

I grow a lot of cucs and find that if I pick them today, they are limp
tomorrow, whether kept on the worktop or in the frig. I think it's
a dehydration thing.

I now cut cucumbers when they are fully ripe and cling-film them
immediately. Kept at frig temperature they stay crisp and fresh for
days. Just bring them out for a couple of hours to warm to RT before
use.

But the ones I buy at the greengrocer are just fine, unwrapped and
unashamed! And if I leave them in the fridge in their plastic coats, they
seem to turn to mush faster.
--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
http://www.discoverdartmoor.co.uk/
(remove weeds from address)

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 15:25:10 +0000, Sacha
wrote and included this (or some of
this):

I now cut cucumbers when they are fully ripe and cling-film them
immediately. Kept at frig temperature they stay crisp and fresh for
days. Just bring them out for a couple of hours to warm to RT before
use.

But the ones I buy at the greengrocer are just fine, unwrapped and
unashamed! And if I leave them in the fridge in their plastic coats, they
seem to turn to mush faster.

Well, I expect that both of our separate experiences are valid.
I know my home-grown ones last days longer if wrapped. I grow
probably 250 cucumbers a year and have tried unwrapped and wrapped
often enough to know what works for me.

Mind you, we've bought a couple of cucumbers lately, don't know where
they were grown (or when) and they were inedible.
Cucumbers are for eating from Wimbledon to Autumn Bank Holiday
not flown in from Brazil or Zimbabwe.

--
®óñ© © ²°¹°-°³




--
®óñ© © ²°¹°-°³

On 25/1/07 15:36, in article ,
"®óñ© © ²°¹°-°³" wrote:

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 15:25:10 +0000, Sacha
wrote and included this (or some of
this):

I now cut cucumbers when they are fully ripe and cling-film them
immediately. Kept at frig temperature they stay crisp and fresh for
days. Just bring them out for a couple of hours to warm to RT before
use.

But the ones I buy at the greengrocer are just fine, unwrapped and
unashamed! And if I leave them in the fridge in their plastic coats, they
seem to turn to mush faster.

Well, I expect that both of our separate experiences are valid.
I know my home-grown ones last days longer if wrapped. I grow
probably 250 cucumbers a year and have tried unwrapped and wrapped
often enough to know what works for me.

Mind you, we've bought a couple of cucumbers lately, don't know where
they were grown (or when) and they were inedible.
Cucumbers are for eating from Wimbledon to Autumn Bank Holiday
not flown in from Brazil or Zimbabwe.

If you grow your own, there is absolutely no comparison. I hope we can find
room for a few more this year. It's like eating something you've never
encountered before.

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
http://www.discoverdartmoor.co.uk/
(remove weeds from address)

On 25 Jan, 15:40, Martin wrote:
Have you ever flown over Zuid Holland at night and seen the light
coming off all
those green houses or been in one and watched the heating balance being achieved
by frequently automatically opening and shutting large windows in the top of the
greenhouses?

When I went to Berlin about 10 years ago, we saw them indeed. I have
since saw lots of articles and photos about it. I once asked someone in
this forum not to buy her daffodils from Sainsbury's ;o)

On 25 Jan, 15:52, Martin wrote:
It is from a Eufic FAQ in
"EU Platform for Action on Diet, Physical Activity and Health"
EUFIC is an active participant of the European Platform for Action committed to
helping fight one of the most serious health challenges facing the EU today:

I know, the website looked pretty professional g

Who reheats Spinach anyway?

The whole of Europe apparently, except the Dutch ;o)

On Jan 25, 11:34 am, "La Puce" wrote:
All our white goods, until
last year, were hired -

why was renting household electrical goods any more ecological than
buying them?
Renting makes bugger all difference to environmental impact from how
they were manufactured,used or disposed of

you are a bit bit late to feel all sensitive about anyone mentioning
your workplace on here after all your comments to others in earlier
threads about your workplace take a look and see if you can count how
many times you mentioned urbed and your job in it and their jobs which
you were involved in (as a pen giver outer) as I said, u have too much
time and idle hands...............and idle mouth.................and....

Tim C. writes
Following up to K :

"Rupert (W.Yorkshire)" writes


If you believe saving energy is important then I can assure you that brand
new white goods (Fridges/freezers/washers etc) are considerably more
efficient than 10 year old models.

If you're starting from a position of needing a new fridge, yes.

How do the calculations go when it's a choice of
a) using the old one another 5-10 years, compared with
b) manufacture a new one 5-10 years earlier than otherwise, and dispose
of the old one 5-10 years earlier



From New Scientist Print Edition 12 May 1990

"To a householder, the power used to cool food may seem modest: after all,
even a large fridge-freezer costs only about 12 pence a day to run. But
there are more than 30 million fridges, freezers and fridge-freezers in
British homes, which between them consume more than GBP 1 billion worth of
electricity in a year. The average demand on the national grid, measured at
consumers' meters, is at least 2000 megawatts, the equivalent of the
continuous output of two large power stations. If these two power stations
generate electricity from coal, Britain's fridges and freezers are
responsible for emitting about 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year
into the atmosphere...."

and...

"...Going one better, Britain could replace its existing stock of 30
million fridges, freezers and fridge-freezers with state-of-the-art
appliances and run the lot on just 200 megawatts. This means that we would
not need about 1800 megawatts of power and that we could therefore avoid
building about GBP 5 billion worth of power stations and infrastructure."


What the cost of disposal of the old fridges would be is anybody's guess.

I'm not convinced that argument has taken in the costs of manufacture
either.


--
Kay

Bob Hobden writes
I often wondered why supermarkets use so much packaging until I
recently saw a well dressed middle aged lady picking up produce,
inspecting it, and then throwing it back, and I do mean throwing. The
broccoli head exploded as it hit the others in the box and goodness
knows what the avocado was like when she finished with it. I've also
seen a number of people throwing produce into their trolleys lately and
compounding it by throwing heavy stuff on top, they seem incapable of
placing anything gently, just too damn lazy perhaps or conned into
thinking they have a busy and demanding life.

Both our local supermarkets compound the problem by placing their fruit
and veg near the entrance, so either you are constantly rearranging your
load to keep them at the top, or you pick up the heavies first and then
struggle against the flow to get back to the veg.
--
Kay