The Not New Year

You are really not going to believe this: the solar guys were installing the panels (yay!!) and went to make a cup of tea when I was out. Put my old fashioned style ELECTRIC kettle on the gas stove. Resulting in one embarrassed guy and one very melted kettle!
So we are on the look out for a new kettle! I want to go the eco route, but the question is what to go for?

There are a few ways to lower consumption of energy and water, one of the most obvious is making sure you only boil what you need. There are a series of ‘eco’ kettles on the market right now. Talk about Greenwash – my word! The only thing they have is a water indicator on the side that says ‘one cup’, ”two cups’ etc…

The real thing is  The Eco Kettle: a great gadget. It focuses on making sure that you only boil what you need by having two water chambers – press the button to release one cup at a  time into the water heating chamber. Friends have also told me it boils super fast. I think its a great idea, but we have that one sorted as we are very careful about how much water we put in.

So how else can we reduce our consumption (apart from not melting kettles!)?

I like the idea of a insulated kettle, so it keeps the water hot after boiling for more cups of coffee. The thing is, we are not huge hot-drink-drinkers, so we really wouldn’t use it. Great idea though, although according to Amazon, the only two available have poor feedback ratings. More design work required!

I also like the idea of the Tefal Quick Cup. Rapid boil, and only delivers one cup (does what says on tin). However it has a cartridge system inside that needs replacing. How do we recycle it? Is it another way for a company to get us to buy more things? I understand that something with complex design needs to be protected from limescale (we are in a very hard water area), but I think the solution is to buy a simpler gadget that can cope with the water. This means the Breville Hot Cup gadget is also out of the running.

I found a Philips Kettle with temperature control (HD4686) that has a button that will set the heating temperature of the kettle. It turns out that coffee and herbal tea don’t need 100 degree water to brew, 80 degrees is fine. Now this will make a difference to our power usage.
Keep your fingers crossed that its the right choice – eco decisions can get very complex. Very …. hurts my head ….