In my experience, up to half of the CO2 or environmental savings, the energy savings and the cost savings you can make come from the way you live in a house, not what technology you install or what you do to improve the fabric of the house. For many people this is not what they want to hear because it means changes in lifestyle rather than the quick fix of a gadget or buying your way out of the problem of climate change and oil resource depletion. But it doesn’t require huge changes and a lot of these adaptations to lifestyle become habit so quickly that you don’t even think about it after a while.
There is so much written about this. All I can do is repeat some ideas and add my experiences. Do have a look at the links in this section for ideas and tips, some simple and cheap, some more complicated and with some extra cost. And for a bit of fun as well as ideas, see this video with the comedienne, Jo Brand:
Heating - boiler - curtains - radiators - hot water
Power - energy saving electricity meter - lights - eating and drinking - kettles - ovens - hob - freezer
Washing - chemicals - eco balls - drying clothes - dishwasher
Waste - storage - food waste
Having control of the temperature in the house can make a difference. By turning your heating down by one degree you can reduce your fuel bill by between 5% and 10%. We generally have our heating on at between 16 and 18 degrees, usually higher in the evenings and sometimes on very cold days a little more - and our house is occupied all through the day. Wearing warmer clothes indoors is easy. Make sure the thermostat is set to a low setting if you are out during the day.
Close curtains at night even in rooms you are not in. If possible, try and line your curtains. This can be done cheaply and easily using old blankets or other warm materials. They can be sewn in or just pinned in depending on the look you want to achieve. Remember to tuck the curtains behind the radiators so as not to lose heat.
Relective panels or kitchen foil behind radiators on outside walls help to reflect the heat back into the room.
Keep the hot water temperature in your cylinder or the combi boiler to 60 degrees. There is a danger of scalding anyway if it is any higher. And make sure your cylinder and pipework are all well-lagged to keep the heat in.
Draughts
The major heat loss in most older houses. Draught excluder is cheap and easy to fit round doors and windows.
Energy saving electricity meter
The first thing to get. It makes you think and involves the whole family. We have probably reduced our electricity consumption by about 25% because of awareness owing to using this gadget.
You just clip it to your electricity intake wire below your meter (very easy) and fiddle around a bit setting it up (good instructions) and then you put the monitor wherever you want in the house and see what electricity you are using. When you turn appliances on or off you can see the monitor change. You can also check the amount used on a daily basis or other periods.
There are several products on the market but I would suggest either the locally made (West Sussex) Eco-eye or the Efergy monitor. You can still get the older version for under £30 on the internet if you shop around but this is being replaced with an elite version which is currently about £10 more.
East Sussex County Council is now loaning these out for free via local libraries and the government plans to install one in every home by 2020 - a bit late!
Lights
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Turn lights off when not in the room. It is a myth that turning fluorescent bulbs on and off uses more energy than leaving them on and, like any other appliance, they should be turned off when not needed.
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Install energy saving bulbs. I do not wish to promote Tesco particularly but they do have a good range of cheap, effective and small energy saving bulbs. The best quality, if more expensive, are Megamann. Some of the other cheaper bulbs are not always of very good quality and light output is much lower than claimed.
Eating and drinking
To save money and save CO2 it would be sensible if we all ate more uncooked food.
Use a microwave oven whenever possible – it is much cheaper and much more efficient than a conventional oven. Four minutes in the microwave creates just 22g of CO2 as opposed to 385g cooking to an equivalent level in an oven. However, I do appreciate that some people are averse to microwave ovens because of claims of what they do to the nutrients in food.
Ovens in general are bad news on the CO2 front. In my experience, using an electric oven can consume about about 10% of your daily energy use if you are a careful electricity user. Gas ovens are not quite so bad. When using the oven, cook several things at once. Also think about whether you could cook the meal on the hob. Or to go the extreme, use a hay box for things like casseroles and soups.
On the hob, use a pressure cooker. Boil any water you need for vegetables in the kettle first because it is much more efficient than boiling water on the hob. Turn off the hob before something has finished cooking because it will stay hot and carry on cooking for some time. We use our woodburning stove which is on permanently in the winter for things that need a long cook.
Kettles are power hungry animals. In our house, the kettle accounts for about a tenth of our daily electricity use.
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if you have a gas hob, it uses less CO2 to boil your water on the hob than to use an electric kettle.
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if you use an electric kettle, get an energy efficient one such as the Eco kettle. It costs a little more than a normal one but having used one for years, I think they are brilliant. Otherwise get a kettle where you can see how much water there is and only fill it to the level you need.
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consider the common Japanese practice of boiling a full kettle of water in the morning and saving any water not immediately required in a vacuum flask. This is likely to save £20 a year in electricity bills.
Freezer
Keep it full, rolled up newspaper if necessary – defrost it at least once a year.
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Having a shower (power showers are the exception unless you keep the flow low) uses less water than a bath. It can be up to 5 times cheaper than a bath and use up to 70% less water.
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Think about whether it really is healthy to shower so much.
Appliances
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Do you need the appliance? Could you do without? We all buy so many gadgets that get used a few times and then get stuck in the back of a cupboard or only used rarely. Choppers and mincers in the kitchen can easily be replaced by mechanical devices (or a knife) and outside is it really necessary to have a leaf blower when you could use a rake or a broom?
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Could you buy what you need second hand or get the old appliance repaired?
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Use A or A+ rated appliances if you replace them. The cost difference is not so high and will pay back in the long run with electricity savings - and of course will save CO2 emissions.
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Turn off appliances at the switch when not in use. I discovered that our microwave used 6W per hour, if it wasn’t switched off at the plug. So over the many years we have had it, I must have used something like 525 kWh which is over a tenth of a year's worth of electricity for the whole house. Strangely our washing machine is the same, though what it is doing on standby I have no idea as it has no digital display. Computers are particularly bad - a useful bit of equipment if you can't be bothered to turn off all the switches is a power down device such as the one at this link.
Mobile phone chargers: the ones I have tested use hardly any electricity at all and other people who have tested agree. I don’t think anyone should worry about them unduly, though maybe some of the latest models may be more power hungry. Battery chargers however are worth turning off once the batteries are charged.
Washing
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Wash clothes at 30 degrees on as quick a wash as possible. Washing machines use a huge amount of energy and water.
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Washing powders are full of chemicals you would not like to spend any time with - and they are expensive. Eco balls are brilliant and last for ages. Eco balls take smells out but if you need to add smell to your wash, put it out on the washing line outside or you can add some eco conditioner or essential oils. Just occasionally I do a hot wash with some washing powder and eco bleach for whites, but most things work fine with eco balls. Alternatively if you feel the need for washing powders, use eco brands. All the supermarkets do their own brands now. I never use conditioners or any of the extra gimmicky things that get promoted to add to your wash and our clothes don’t seem to suffer.
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The biggest problem in most houses is drying clothes and I hope to ensure there is drying space in the house before I finish. I have never had a tumble drier but then I have always have some kind of space outside where I can hang a washing line or an airing cupboard inside.
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Dishwasher – can you do without? We never had one for years (though we do have one now which is a bit daft) and managed perfectly well. Make sure it is full before you use it.
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If at all possible try and wash clothes and dishes at off peak times. This generates less CO2 because power stations have to keep going even when electricity demands fall at night.
Cleaning products are full of extremely nasty chemicals, hence all the warnings on them. It seems crazy to use them and potentially harm your family and your environment. Most of it is just advertising hype designed to make us buy stuff we think we need and make the producers a lot of money. I have reduced my use of these kind of products at home apart from washing up and occasionally cleaning the loo and can see no difference in anyone’s health. In fact to the contrary, the family seems healthier. It is also a lot cheaper not buying them. Eco products such as ecover or the supermarket eco brands work well for those things you can't do without.
As to cleanliness, water and a bit of scrubbing nearly always seem to do the trick. Perhaps a bit of bicarb to reduce smells is useful. Vinegar is great on windows. In cleaning the house I am refurbishing, I had to clean the oven before my tenant moved in. It was vile with layers of encrusted grime and grease. Wire wool and a bit of eco detergent did the trick.
Toilets - I have been trying out magnetic toilet descaler for a year or so now and find they reduce the limescale build up and so the number of times the loo has to be cleaned. Saves putting chemicals down the loos and saves cleaning - I have far better things to do in life than spend it with my head down the loo. These descalers just go in the cistern and seem to work well.
I try and use old rags and cut up clothes for cleaning. One product worth spending the money on is an eco cloth. These amazing cloths last for years and cut through grease and grime leaving sinks and basins sparkling without any chemicals. Old toothbrushes are great for those parts that nothing else can reach.
Hoovering - another power hungry creature. With carpets you need to hoover for sure. Try and get a hoover with a low power rating - there are new ones claimed to be eco hoovers. However, if you don't have carpets you save a lot of electricity and it's supposed to be healthier. We have non-carpeted floors and it's easy to brush them and occasionally swab them down with a bit of water to get the muck off.
Obviously the best solution is not to buy more than you need and to re-use what you can. However, even so it is always amazing how much waste there is.
Local councils mostly have recycling collections but there is always the problem of storage before it is collected. It makes it much easier to have dual or triple waste bins so that paper, food and tins can be sorted as they are used.
Food waste is a particular problem which many people seem unaware of. Food waste that goes to landfill produces methane, a far more harmful gas than carbon dioxide in terms of global warming. Some councils are trying to introduce food waste collections for central composting in special units. However, this still means transporting the stuff around. There is an easy solution to all this, little more difficult than putting the rubbish out each week. HOME COMPOSTING!
“Green Johanna” composters are ideal for not only compostable garden waste but also all the food waste from the kitchen, including meat and fish. They require a small amount of management to get the mixture right so it does not all turn to a sludge, but putting in cardboard waste or garden waste with the food waste in equal quantities works well. Green Johannas have grills at the bottom to keep rats out. I have had one for a year or so and after teething problems of not getting the mixture right, it now works a treat. It never has to be emptied as the stuff inside just goes on and on composting. I actually use it as a waste disposal mechanism but you are supposed to be able to get compost out of it as well – so it’s win win! Our local council offers a fantastic deal whereby you can buy them for about £20. Well worth the money.
Light colours for paint and furnishings require less lighting to see comfortably and means you don’t need to turn the lights on so early.
Use eco paints (see decoration). Conventional paints are stuffed with vile chemicals though they are improving and you can get some in DIY stores that are not too bad.
Buying stuff for the house
If you are concerned about the environment, it is worth thinking about every product you are buying.
First and foremost I think is the question – do I really need to buy this?
Second is - can I get a second-hand one that will do the job? freecycle is a good way to exchange stuff you no longer need. And the local paper or Friday Ad, Exchange and Mart etc are good places to look.
If you need to buy something, there is usually a greener alternative, albeit often with some extra cost which then has to be factored into the choice. For some guidance, because it is so very difficult working out what is worthwhile, see http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/
Of course, there is the other issue of supporting local shops and businesses, which adds another dimension to being an ethical shopper because it is not always possible to find local shops with “green” choices. Supporting local businesses is important to give communities resilence in the face of the coming shortages in oil supplies.
Among the many eco internet shops out there, some that I have used without any problems are:
Ethical superstore
Green and easy
Nigels ecostore
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Eco living