It costs 6p to mow the lawn

This weekend I cut the grass with an electric Flymo.

It took 20 minutes and the flymo has a 1500W engine, so I reckon that I

• used 0.5 KWh of energy
• created 250g of CO2
• spent about 6p.

All in all, a good deal for me. I could have used an old fashioned manual mower and saved 6p, but I thought about it and I didn't want to. So what's my point? Well, I suppose the first is just that consuming energy * is not wrong, in fact it's very helpful. We're lucky that it's so easy to get your hands on some when you need it, even for everyday things. The enemy is waste, not usage, so although we do like the novelty of things like the No Impact Project, we're not really in the same camp.

I suppose the second point is just it should be easier to understand what you use. The math on this really isn't so hard. I'll post the methodology one day soon so everyone can have a go.

* OK physicists, don't all start yelping - I do know that I didn't really consume the energy, I just converted into other things, like noise and heat and grass clippings, which I suppose embody the kinetic energy required to get the blades of grass off the lawn and into the collector. But you can't say that kind of thing on a blog or it slows you down.