Solar PV - thoughts and experience anyone?

Erm, that sounds like baloney to me. Supermarket bags are made from HDPE (high density polyethylene) which has myriad other uses, from carpets to underground pipes to car bumpers to plastic timber. In turn, HDPE is made from catalysed ethylene, one of the most basic hydrocarbon building blocks that's used for making myriad other compounds. Any refinery flaring off ethylene is literally burning money

Which is fine until you see a dead turtle that has a stomach full of plastic bags - that looked just like jellyfish when they had ceased to be useful to us.

You can also add to that list that paper bags are heavier and occupy more volume (flat packed) than plastic bags and hence have a greater environmental impact during transportation.

For me it's never been an issue of the carbon footprint with plastic versus paper bags (esp as paper bags are liable to be less prone to sustained reuse); paper is not the alternative. The biggest issue for me with plastic bags as Nick has said is the other environmental impact: marine life being the biggest.

The question is not plastic vs paper or even textile. The biggest issue is reuse and eventual disposal of whatever. With an insufficient reuse culture, a tendency to litter and thereby taking items out of a controlled disposal chain, insufficient recycling mentality, and even the controlled disposal mechanisms being inadequate (am I the only one who would like to see an increase in incineration and waste to heat rather than landfill ?) then nudges like the carrier bag tax are a very good thing. But I expect the peak effect to wear off pretty quickly and an increase in the tax being required/implemented.

Of course! Nature's been making edible bags for millenia, let's find a way of putting crisps in potato skins - or does oldgrumpy wear them on his feet?

OK; but isn't wind power eco friendly if not cooped up on a longboat friendly?

A bit late coming to this one

We had a 4kw system (with immersion diverter/iboost) fitted in June 2015. Cost of install then was £5.8k. Over the last two 12 month periods have averaged 4200kw. We are not fully south facing, probably more SSE.

Hard to quantify savings, but approx. £20 per month off the electricity bill. During the summer months, we have relied solely on the iboost for our hot water to the point where we have turned off the gas boiler between late April and Sept. There are just the two of us, so only a couple of showers per day really…. Most washing up done in the dishwasher… which runs during the day.

System installed by Fenland Solar. Very happy with the install as they went a long way to getting cables hidden under floors etc.

With fuel inflation less than it was, anticipated ROI has changed a bit. If the capital cost of £5.8k had been stuck in Santander compounding at 3% it would take a good many years for the solar investment to return the initial capital and surpass the bank returns….. and the risk is all yours

Hoping for a repeat of the summer of ’76

K