Dilemma - buy new and green(er) or make do?

I'll be surprised if you haven't covered this elsewhere, but I can't find it..........

Is it best to buy a new greener option, say, a refrigerator, with all its environmental impact in the manufacturing, or to plough on with an older and less efficient model?

Or does it depend, and, if so, to what extent, on what product one is considering buying?

jamsam

i saw an advert for eco car insurance, where they guarentee to carbon neutralise your car by up to 20% for free...but i dont need new insurance for at least 6 months..so do i do it or leave it and not waste the paperwork/energy??

Milo

jamsam wrote:

http://www.ecoinsurance.co.uk/ It's on the backs of all the buses around here. And on my "to do" list.

Rosa

We kept our old oil fired central heating boiler going for years rather than junk it and buy new. It was lovingly restored and repaired each time it broke down. Eventually we couldn't get the bits and so bought a new boiler which my OH installed and WOW-------- we have saved a fortune--------especially with the price of oil----- it is so economical

Somewhere on here we went through the whole carbon offset concept recently and I think the general conclusion was that it just allowed people to slave their conscience and carry on doing what they were doing anyway so that wouldn't count as a greener option.

Otherwise I would imagine that it would be a balance based on how inefficient and old (insert item here) is compared to the energy cost of creating a new (insert item here). So, for example, it's not worth replacing a car with a new model as the old one will still be run by someone and the environmental cost of making a new car far exceeds the environmental cost of running a slightly less efficient model. On th other hand for something like a fridge the equation may be significantly different as old fridges can be very expensive to run.

(NB I don't know if those examples are true they just seem likely)

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