Ryan Oliver

Ryan Oliver

Ryan, 30, from Pontnewydd in Cwmbran is an internal audit officer with the Aneurin Bevan Health Board. He really wants to challenge himself this year and sees the Way To Go campaign as the perfect starting point.

“I feel that we all have a responsibility to be more aware of our individual actions and the impact that they can have on climate change. I’m also eager to see the different that my actions will have on my energy bills.”


Home Insulation and Saving Water

This month, the challenge was to save energy in the home. I had lots of ideas on this front, but the most effective seemed to be the most simple. For example, I turn off lights and electrical equipment when they are not being used. In addition, most of our light bulbs are low energy bulbs, so when they are being used, I know they use as little energy as possible.

On a larger scale, the loft has been fully insulated. It was insulated already, but I hadn't realised how thick it must be to meet current standards. The outside of our house has also been insulated, like putting an extra coat around your house. Known commonly as ‘external wall insulation’ we had a layer of insulation added to the outside walls which was then covered with a render and spa stones. The work was carried out a year ago and as well as improving the look of the house, it has made a huge difference to keeping warmth within the home. Both of these measures will  reduce energy use which is beneficial both to our finances and to the environment. We also have a new energy efficient boiler, a big investment but one that pays off quickly.

So to sum up, a mixture of building amendments and human invention seems the key to reducing energy use. Whilst some of these are expensive, some cost nothing, and in the long run, they will all save you energy and money.

#BikeIt


This month’s challenge was about substituting the car for a bike or my feet on short journeys. I had some success with this challenge. I took my bike to the local shops and to the town centre a couple of times. These were both short journeys of around one mile, ideal for the bike. I quite enjoyed the ride, and enjoyed the freedom of leaving my bike almost anywhere I liked. 

My enthusiasm was hit a bit by the rain, which wasn’t there when I left, which made me rather under dressed for the occasion. However, I would encourage anyone to try the bike or walking on short journeys. As well as the environmental aspects, it can have a big impact on your health and fitness as an added bonus. It avoids problems with traffic or parking in busy areas and also cuts down on your fuel bills.

Washing at 30º

This month’s challenge was about washing clothes at 30 degrees, and avoiding half loads.

Although it may not seem like a big energy user, the washing machine and tumble dryer must rank towards the top of home appliances. So what can we do to reduce costs and energy use?

Having a fairly new washing machine is a good start. These are far more economical to run than older machines, and have features such as ‘eco time’ to reduce the time of a cycle. We are benefitting from this feature at the moment.

Avoiding half loads is something we always do. This seems a common sense action and is fairly easy to adopt.

We wash some of our general loads at 30 degrees, which will certainly have saved a bit. Other loads such as bedding were done at higher temperatures, but any saving is a good thing.

We do sometimes use the tumble dryer, but very rarely. When it’s dry outside, why not hang the washing out rather than using the dryer?

Overall, compared to commuting to work via public transport, I would rank this as one of the easier challenges to pull off. However this does not mean that it has no impact. I think that a lot of energy and money can be saved by such actions. 

                                   Car Sharing

This month’s challenge was about car sharing. I can see a lot of value in this, not only for the environment. If more people shared a car on their commute to work, there would be fewer cars on the road, and less traffic for everyone.

I found this a particular challenge, as I travel to meetings during working hours, so I need access to a car during the day. Also as I live only a couple of miles from work, finding a car share partner was a little difficult. However I managed my own form of car sharing a few times, usually by dropping a colleague to the train station on my way home from work, which cut out a taxi journey for her. I also car shared with colleagues when we travelled to meetings together. Whilst I certainly didn’t crack car sharing every day on my commute to work, I made a few small changes to reduce my impact on the environment.

I’m still carrying on some of the previous challenges. In particular boiling just enough water when making tea or coffee, and saving tap and rainwater for use on the garden have been a real success. Whilst I’d like to do well in every challenge, some are more achievable than others for me.

#TicketToRide

Although this month’s challenge was about using public transport on long journeys, I haven’t really taken any long journeys this month. So I went with the spirit of the challenge, and tried taking the bus on my 2-mile commute to work.

My first trial was on a sunny Tuesday. I walked to the nearest bus stop in time for the 0730 into town. I used Traveline Cymru the night before to get the journey times. This is an excellent website.

The Stagecoach bus arrived on time, and was modern and clean inside. We headed into the town centre, where I changed to a Newport Bus heading to my place of work.

We gave away lots of tickets!

The change was almost perfectly timed, I hadn’t waited for two minutes between buses. The second bus was equally on time, clean and modern. It dropped me right outside my work, so after a short walk up the drive, I was in the office. All of my journeys were much the same.

In total it took me twenty minutes door-to-door, just like Traveline Cymru said. Using the car takes around ten minutes, so the bus proved a longer journey. However the extra time wasn’t much of a problem, the main problem with this challenge was the extra cost. To buy individual tickets on the bus each day can cost over £5 which is more than what I would have spent in the car on petrol. If you invest in a season ticket for a week or a month then cost can come down and you don’t have to take into account the wear and tear on your car, the tax or insurance.

On the plus side, I can see the health benefits of using public transport. The short walks to and from the bus stops certainly got the heart going, and even though the journey took longer, by leaving earlier I arrived in work ten minutes sooner than normal.

Overall a positive experience, but one which poses more questions than it provides answers. How does someone who has put lots of money into a car for work, family or other reasons take public transport, when the cost of each journey is so much more?

A difficult one, but I continue with last month’s challenge by boiling ‘just enough’ when making tea or coffee, and we have also started to save tap and rain water for use in the garden, investing in some water butts along the way.

Just Enough

My second challenge as part of the Way To Go team is all about saving energy when boiling the kettle. It surprised me to learn that the kettle is a very high user of energy. For this reason we can save a lot of energy, and money, by boiling only the water we need when using the kettle. In fact the Energy Saving Trust says that if everyone in the UK did this, we could save enough electricity in a year to power the UK’s street lights for two months.

Not being a drinker of tea or coffee made this a slightly difficult challenge for me. However I make tea or coffee for my office colleagues most days, so I applied the challenge to this. I quickly came to judge roughly how much water would be needed for one, two or three cups. From there it was easy to boil only what I needed. Of course the added benefit of this is that a half full kettle boils much quicker than a full one. 

I found this a very easy change to adopt. Given that kettles are high energy users, this simple change will have a big impact. I would encourage anyone to give this challenge a go, whether at home or in work. It will save you time, electricity and money.

Get It On!

My first challenge as a Way to Go team member was about ‘getting it on’. By this we mean putting on a jumper to reduce the amount that the heating is on. Although it’s just common sense to add an extra layer before turning the heating on, it’s all too easy to forget.  For me turning down the heating is a win-win situation: we save money, and reduce our impact on the environment.

I took the challenge for the first time in early March, on a day when I was working from home. Normally when working from home I would have the heating on from time to time, as the days have been pretty cold in Cwmbran lately.  Although the heating was on for an hour in the morning, I didn’t have it on until the late afternoon. I didn’t feel cold underneath my jumper either.

I would encourage anyone to challenge themselves, and see how small changes can make a big difference to energy use.