To combat the effects of the credit crunch on household finances, here are nine ways you can save nearly £3,700 by shopping around for essential services.
1) Find out your home's carbon footprint.
Before you even start to tackle your home's carbon emissions you need to find out where you can make savings from. There are quite a few online energy savings/carbon footprint calculators around, but the best are on the Energy Saving Trust or the World Wildlife Trust. You will be asked to input information such as how many double glazed windows you have, the age of your house, the kind of appliances you use and the calculators will work out your home's annual carbon emissions and provide you with a list of suggestions on how to reduce them. The Energy Saving Trust reckons that with just a few simple changes the average household can save around £340 a year on energy bills.
2) Before you recycle, reduce and reuse.
Recycling is obviously a great virtue – the less we put in our black bins, the less rubbish is sent to landfill or incinerators, both of which produce massive amounts of carbon emissions. But better even than recycling, is reducing the amount of rubbish we create in the first place. Rather than endlessly recycling plastic washing up cartons, for example, you can now reuse the same one for years and years, if you use a local shop that stocks Ecover products or similar green washing supplies. For a list of local suppliers visit the Ecover website. You don't have to stick to washing up liquid either – if you use refills for household cleaners, laundry detergent, toilet cleaners, you could save several tonnes of plastic from being laboriously recycled in just a few years.
3) Ban the tumble dryer.
Tumble dryers are the most energy-intensive of all the white goods in your home, costing 50 pence per cycle (around £170 a year based on average use) and sending 300 kg of CO2 into the air every year for every machine used. Yet with today's high-speed washing spins, they are unnecessary as with a 1200 or 1400 rpm spin clothes emerge from the washing machine with far less water in them than they used to. Instead, invest around £60 in a ceiling mounted clothes dryer, which takes advantage of the simple scientific fact that warm air rises. Clothes hung on a ceiling dryer in the morning will be dry the next day and the dryer will pay for itself in less than a year. 'Sheila Maid' ceiling dryer, available in a range of sizes from The Domestic Paraphernalia Company.
4) Replace your oldest household appliance.
Technology used in the manufacture of household appliances, from fridges and kettles through to boilers, TVs and washing machines has improved energy efficiency massively over the past ten years. If all your main household appliances are over a decade old, and you replaced them all this year, you could save several hundred pounds a year in reduced energy costs without noticing any change in your lifestyle. Condensing boiler technology, can reduce average gas bills by around 30 per cent; new fridges use around £40 less electricity a year than ten-year old ones, modern LCD TVs use less energy while on and, crucially, much less energy when left on standby and new washing machines use far less water (40 litres a cycle compared to 100 litres on older models) as well as less electricity.
5) Grow your own.
Whether your garden is half an acre or you only have two sunny windowsills, try and grow at least some of the food you eat this year. Food miles, excess packaging, taste and cost are all brilliant reasons to get green fingers. To give you an example, 10kg of own-grown tomatoes require just three kilojoules of energy to produce whereas supermarket-bought British ones consume 40 kilojoules (including packaging, greenhouse heating and transport requirements); 10kg of Spanish tomatoes require 115kj. If gardening seems new and scary then start off with a 'Rocket Garden.' These are ready-germinated mini-plants that arrive carefully packed in straw from an organic farm in Cornwall, ready for you to plant in a window box, patio tub or vegetable patch. Success with beans, peas, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, strawberries and courgettes is virtually guaranteed. Once you've got the grow-your-own bug and your garden is small, find out about your local allotment plots and self-sufficiency is around the corner.
6) When any tungsten light bulb goes, replace it with an energy efficient ('ee') one.
There's now no excuse for having any tungsten bulbs in your home. These tiny little energy guzzlers are now perfectly replaceable with either compact fluorescent ones (cfls) or light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Once considered a no-no for their dim, cold light, energy efficient lights have come a long way since ugly 1970s strip lighting. Bulb glass in warmer tones of cream or peach have made a huge difference, and lampshade manufacturers now make a range of warm-coloured shades that hide the light source. They don't have to be expensive either – remember those Chinese paper lanterns – several manufacturers are doing new twists on this traditional theme and many are under £10.00. It's well worth it: every ee light bulb you install will save you on average £7 of electricity a year, meaning even a modest size house with around 20 light bulbs (count them – there are more than you think) could save £140 a year. What's more, cfls last about three times as long as tungsten ones, and LEDs last a whopping ten times longer.
7) Only use rechargeable batteries.
Batteries are notoriously hard to recycle and contain dangerous chemicals that can leach into ground water if sent to landfill. Aim to make your batteries rechargeable, a far cheaper option than constantly replacing them. As well as charging from the mains, you can also use the latest generation of solar battery chargers, such as 'Power Monkey' that can charge ordinary AA batteries, in addition to phones and iPods, or the new 'Power Gorilla' that can charge a laptop. Check them out on the Power Traveller website.
8) Turn your beef and mutton fat into fat balls.
You don't even have to scrape the fat from your sausages or Sunday roast into the bin. Instead, keep any fat that is solid at room temperature in the fridge until you have a reasonable quantity, then mix with muesli, bread crumbs and bacon rind and leave on bird tables or hang in string bags for the birds.
9) Install a wood burning stove.
With soaring energy bills and the need to reduce emissions from homes, it makes sense to have a source of heat in the home which isn't dependent on fossil fuels. Wood burners are easy to use and cleaner than open fires. They also add a beautiful focal point to any living room and you don't even need a chimney. If you get one with a cooking ring or back boiler you will also have a source of heat, hot water and hot food during power cuts. Take a look at Stoves Online.
10) Make your kids wind their own iPods.
If your kids are typical then a considerable amount of your electricity bill is going to recharge their gadgets. It's time they started appreciating just quite how much power an iPod or mp3 player needs. It will help them prepare for their future, when carbon rationing may well be on the cards. From as little as £6.00 from online gadget and eco stores.
11) Make your driveway permeable.
Increased urban flash flooding in recent years has been blamed not only on more extreme rainfall events, but the widespread paving-over of front gardens to form driveways. Instead of slowly seeping into the ground, rainwater flows straight into the storm drain system, which, in several recent cases of flooding, quickly becomes overwhelmed. In London alone, an area equivalent to 22 Hyde Parks has been tarmacked over to make way for off road parking in recent years, according to research by the London Assembly. There are a variety of ways to make your driveway permeable, including gravel, 'grasscrete' – recycled heavy duty plastic grids through which grass grows - and 'permeable paving' designed in a way to give minute drainage channels between each paver through which rainwater can seep. Front driveways with a more natural look and careful layered planting which also slows water down, will also be far more attractive than a solid expanse of tarmac or concrete.
12) Lag the loft.
The simplest and cheapest way to reduce your heating bills is to add an extra foot of insulation to the loft. A £150 layout for the typical loft could well pay for itself in one year. There will probably also be grants available which will further reduce payback time. Check the Energy Saving Trust website for details:
related information
- how to install renewable technology in your home
- how to add environmental value to your home
- guide to energy saving
- guide to recycling waste
- how to reduce your carbon footprint
- nine anti-credit crunch resolutions for 2009
related links
- Find energy saving grants or calculate your carbon footprint on the Energy Saving Trust website
- Calculate your carbon footprint on the World Wildlife Trust website
- Ecover
- The Domestic Paraphernalia Company
- Rocket Garden
- Power Traveller
- Stoves Online
