What do YOU think?

I get a lot of emails from a survey company called What Do You Think in Australia. All of them require me to click on the ad that’s included in the email in order to get a certain number of points. So far I’m not sure that I’ve achieved anything by clicking, although it claims that I’ve got 190 points in my account. But finding out what I can do with these 190 points has proved a bit of a mission. That’s by the by.
Normally these ads are for things I wouldn’t be bothered with. Occasionally they’re fun, as the one that led to an ad for Nike was recently. But today’s ad is actually worth commenting on. It leads to a site called Domain.com (rather an ironic name to have on the Net, don’t you think?), and I’m sure it’s all intended to make you buy your house through them.
But they’ve gone to a lot of trouble to put something useful together. When you click you’re taken to a reasonably long page which shows you around the average modern home. And the question at the top of the page, which was why I was interested in the ad, is What can you do to be green?
The first time I clicked on the ad it was interactive: as I ran the mouse over the photos, it would bring up boxes telling you how you could save energy, in lighting, heating, water and all. My second attempt just now has lost the interactivity, but it’s still an interesting page, and one well worth looking at. For instance, there’s a myth about showers being more economic than baths. I always knew this, but it’s good to have it confirmed with the statement: ‘Typically, showers are the biggest users of water in the home.’ (Obviously the person who wrote the ad copy has a teenager or two in the house!)
By the way this isn’t a paid post for Domain.com. At the moment nobody’s paying me for posting. Boo hoo!
At present I’m working (in my real life) for a large firm where waste seems barely considered. (Rather ironic, in view of the fact that one of the sections of the firm deals with what we do with waste!) Paper is thrown away at a rate of knots, and lately, with the colder weather arriving, the heat pumps have been going full bore in our office. I’d hate to think what the power bill is. And it would be interesting to know how much money could be saved if people were more energy-conscious in the office.