I found a great youtube video sight for a lot DIY projects to help conserve resources. The channel called Green Power Science. It is hosted by a husband and wife team and they have some solution that I have been looking for. I will update in the future if I try any of the projects.

the channel is available at

http://www.youtube.com/user/GREENPOWERSCIENCE

When I was young one of the highlights of the month was the dump run. Growing up in rural town we had no garbage collection services and we had to transport our own rubbish. A trip to the tip also was a time of adventure and destruction. Our local tip was still a dumping ground of old cars, machinery, animal carcasses and everything else that people wanted to get rid of. The competition from other boys of who had the best throwing arm while smashing beer bottle that laid in the one large bit that everything was thrown into.

Even at the time you could see the amount of waste of everyday items that were reusable, old bikes furniture ect. Though there was recycling back then I dont remember any one taking it to seriously except for aluminium cans as there was a cash back.

As it is that time of year when things are starting to warm up every body gets the bug commonly know as spring cleaning. This is one of the fads that over the years I had a remarkable knack of missing. But this year was a little different. Over the time I have a accumulated quite a bit of fitness equipment for my home gym. This includes a power rack, a couple of rowing machines, a roman chair and an assortment of odds and ends. The back room of the house was sufficient for quite a time for this equipment but no longer. I have decided to move all the equipment out to the shed and that is were my problems start.

Over the years my shed has been the place to put everything that was to good to throw out but not good enough to be needed in the house. Old furniture, no longer used sporting equipment and a grave yard of unfinished projects. It had so much junk that I can not remember the last time I actually parked a car in there. With the assitance of a freind and my boy and a hard days work it was a time to take the rubbish to the tip.

When I got out to the now named 'Mugga Lane Resource Management Centre' i was very surprised. It had been a few years since I had been out there and on my last trip it was still just a landfill. Boy how things have changed. The new facilities are excellent. The first building you come to is Aussie Junk building. A drop off point for any goods that could be reused, there was also appeared to be an area to drop off hazardous waste like old paint tins.

The second area is were you dispose of you waste. It is a covered concrete area with well allocated parking. After backing the ute up and starting to unload we were met with an employee on the other side of the wall. They were there to sought out our waste. and on the other side of the area you could see a collection of items that people like my self believed ready for the garbage heap but to them were salvageable for another purpose.

Over all for the $16 it cost to dispose of the waste i believe it is well worth it.

Last night i did not get on the highway until after 9:30pm and thought it would be a good opportunity to see the difference in economy between driving at 80km/h instead of the posted 100km/h. I also set the parameter of not depressing the throttle any further that would be required on flat road when hitting a hill. This led to the Hi Lux slowing down on the hills. my average speed at the end was 70km/h.

As for the results, i was shocked to find my average 8.4LHK. That is down from 12.6 at driving at a constant 100km/h. That was a saving of $5.80 over a round trip. Now I was fortunate last night on the whole drive home to not have any one behind me and Iron Maiden in the stereo to keep me company as the trips was considerably longer.

I really wanted to see how far i could take hyper miling the Hi lux. On Friday using as many as the tips found on ecomodder.com as i could I managed to get my average LHK down to 10.1, this is down from the original reading of 12.6. Over the round trip of 93km this is a saving of 2.3 litters of Petrol and a saving of $3.45.

This does sound great but the average speed on my trip was 93km/h. Most of the trip out to work is sign posted as 100km/h so i will only be able to get this type of economy when it is not busy.

The text time I have plenty of time I will bring my max speed to 80km/h to see what kind of difference this will make.

I had dinner with a good friend of mine last night. He constantly criticizes the fact that I drive the Hi Lux instead of something more fuel efficient. During the evening when the conversation once again came around to cars he explained to me he warms his car up for 5 minutes before driving. Now travel time for my friend to get to work is roughly 10min. So upto 1/3 of the time this car is running it is stationary.

The myth of 'Warming the car up' has long been believed to help limit the wear on a cars engine. The theory behind this is that the cars engine is only put under stress when it is at peak operation temperature. My friend says it helps make his car run better, this might be true and I am not going to doubt him. But I do not believe that it actually helps with saving the engine as the myth implies. If any one has evidence that it does I would be keen to see it. maybe this is one for Mythbusters.

As much as I would love to rely on public transport for work I need to drive. My weapon of choice is a 2005 Toyota Hi Lux, I would like something smaller but I need the tray space.

I was interested in how different driving habits affect fuel consumption, the Hi Lux did not come with a trip computer so i recently purchased a Scangauge II from http://www.scangauge.com/

The gauge is great, it just plugs into the OBD port which in the Hi Lux is just under the steering column. Installation took me all of 5 min. The Scangauge gives you up to date information directly from the on board computer including Liters/100 Kilometers, Revs, cost of trip and a lot more.

Up to date information on the cost of driving is a real incentive to drive more efficiently. Already only having it for a couple of weeks I am spending on average of $2.30 less per round trip to work. Now with that kind of savings it will take me a few months to get back the cost of the gauge but every bit helps.

I found out about the gauge from http://ecomodder.com/

My goal is to limit my impact on my environment and reduce my personal spending to the sames as the Australian Government Newstart Allowance.

I understand that both of these will be very hard to achieve but I will do my best to get as close as possible.

After a quick review of http://www.centrelink.gov.au/ it appears that a single adult with no dependents is eligible to receive $449.30 per fortnight. As we all know, we all have to spend money to make money, I will not take into consideration the cost of work like getting to and from work.