We’ve all heard the phrase greenwash, used to describe the fake greening of products and services. Well I would like to introduce a new phrase to the enviro-lexicon – Green-off.

No, it’s not a tribute to the Barnsley-born footie brothers Jimmy and Brian, of Leeds and Manchester United fame.

It’s what happens when the public are presented with a hair-brained green scheme that someone hasn’t but enough thinking-gumption into - instead of greening-up, they green-off.

I’ll give you an example. The Honourable Kirsty Allsop, in a bid to save the world, says it should be ‘socially unacceptable’ to leave curtains open at night if lights are on. Kirsty, love the show and the shoes, but…

To be fair, I can see where she’s coming from and I’m sure she’s sincere in her concern for the environment, but that kind of comment just raises a communal ‘Next!’ from the ‘Britain’s Got No Brains’ panel.

What does she mean by ‘socially unacceptable’? Would we shun curtain flashers in the street? Mount undercover drape-twitching patrols? Perhaps even put a brick through persistent offender’s windows (unless they’re triple-glazed of course).

It’s easy to dismiss comments like Kirsty’s, but unfortunately once they’re made they have a habit of persisting in the public’s collective consciousness. What’s more they infect perfectly sound environmental ideas with the ‘green lunacy’ virus. The result?

The next time someone mentions global warming the public ‘green-off’.

Another, on the surface more sensible idea, is Blackle , the search engine that uses a black screen. Blackle was created by Heap Media to “remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy”.

The developers say Blackle saves energy on the premise that a monitor needs more power to display a white screen than a black one. The site boasts, “562,355.266 Watt hours saved” on its search page, but there has been scepticism about the energy savings achieved.

In a bid to check the theory, the wiz kids over at Techlogg, hosted a UFC-style test-off between Google and Blackle on 23 different LCD monitors. The result? The power consumption difference between Google and Blackle on all 23 monitors was as small as you could get – an increase of 100mW (0.1Watts). The conclusion? “Blackle makes next to no difference, on average, with LCD monitors”.

Blackle say, despite this, there is value in their concept because, even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. However, I suspect for many computer users, it simply adds up to green-off.

Now, consider Andy Tomlinson, a gas fitter, heating engineer and part-time inventor, from Wincobank, Sheffield. Andy has come up with a cost-effective design for a temperature-controlled valve that fits onto a combination boiler and only lets water through once it reaches the right temperature – sheer brilliance!

Andy sat down and calculated that if he used just his kitchen sink three times a day all year round, his valve would save 10 cubic metres of water and 52 cubic metres of gas. Using his own domestic hot water system as a laboratory he came up with a prototype that has been working successfully for a year and which he has now patented.

Andy now plans to go into wholesale production of the valve and has already had talks with local manufacturers.

So there you go, a sound, completely thought-through, tried and tested device, to help homeowners cut gas and water bills and make a real contribution to improving the environment – not a whiff of Jimmy and Brian!

Green-off? No, Green-ON, Andy.

Green Hornet.