Environment made easy
We’re not into preaching but it’s really pretty easy to do your small bit for the environment. You don’t have to be seriously committed to make a difference. The ideas we list below are painless to follow and don’t involve major changes.
- Don’t let the tap run while you brush your teeth/shave/wash the dishes. You could be wasting 9 litres of water every minute.
- Put a brick in the loo. Or rather, put a water-filled plastic bottle in the cistern to reduce the amount of water used in each flush. This will save 2- 3 litres of water per flush. (You can remove it if you need more flushing power!)
- Drink from a proper cup or mug instead of using disposable ones. Polystyrene cups take hundreds of years to degrade and paper ones cause deforestation. So take a mug into work. Things taste better drunk out of proper mugs, anyway.
- Recycle. It’s getting easier – most local authorities will collect special bags for paper and other recyclable material, to be separated and recycled. Just phone your local authority and see what sort of scheme they run.. it’s only a phone call.
- Buy organic. As well as being much healthier for you, organic foods will have been grown without wreaking havoc on the environment with pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilisers.
- Turn off lights, computers, TV’s. Even on standby mode, computers and TV’s can use up to 70% of the electricity they would use if on. So switch them off properly!
- Kettle – fill only with what you need. Heating more water than you need uses lots of extra energy – and it takes twice as long too, so you waste time.
- Chemicals used in cleaning products. Use eco-friendly washing powder and cleaning products or you could even make your own.
- Buy some re-usable “bags for life” at the supermarket. All you have to do is to get into the habit of putting them back into your car when you’ve unloaded your shopping and remember to take them in to the store with you the next time.
- Shower instead of bath – at least sometimes. A 5-minute shower every day instead of a bath will save around 400 litres of water a week (and it will save on electricity too).
- Keep a lid on it – when cooking, put a lid on the saucepan: lots of energy is wasted if you don’t.
- Eat less meat. It’s healthier, more environmentally-friendly and cheaper!
- Check your car tyres’ pressure once a month. Millions of gallons of petrol are wasted every single day - because underinflated tyres use up to 10% more petrol. Properly inflated tyres are also safer.
- Buy compact fluorescent light bulbs – they last 8 times as long and use a fraction of the energy.
- Use your washing machine environmentally – put it on for full loads only wherever possible and save energy. Reducing the temperature from 60 to 40 could also save 40% of energy per cycle.
- Clean the back of your fridge – ok it’s not entirely painless but dusty coils can increase the energy consumption of your fridge by up to 30%.
For more information, try:
Friends of the Earth
Greenpeace
Environment Agency
European Environment Agency