Energy Saving Week 19 – 25th October

The Energy Saving Trust’s Energy Saving Week takes place 19 – 25th October.

Last year the theme was about time. The purpose was to show that being green doesn’t need to take too much time or require too much effort.

This year’s theme is about waste where the Energy Saving Trust will be helping people to avoid wasting their time, energy and money! Anything that helps us all save energy, reduce our carbon footprint and live a more green life gets the thumbs up from us!

If you think you”re too busy to make energy saving changes or they will be expensive, here are some ideas from last year’s campaign that won’t break the bank or your time bank!

Laundry

Over the last few years, 72% of householders have reduced the temperatures they do their laundry. This saves energy in the home, reduces costs and don’t take any longer to do than washing at higher temperatures!

Next time you wash a load of laundry, why not try it at 30 degrees?

Washing at 30 degrees instead of 40 means you can save up to 40% of the energy used on each load!

Washing dishes

if you wash by hand, use a washing up bowl! The average washing up bowl holds about 8 litres of water.

Washing up under a running tap uses 9 litres every minute.

Keep your cool

Fill a bottle with water and keep it in your fridge; that way you don’t have to wait for the water to run cold.

Take a shower

Showers only use about one third of the water of a bath but don’t lose track of time! Set a timer for 3 minutes and see how far you get with your shower!

Energy saving light bulbs

If you replace all the light bulbs in your home with energy efficient ones, you could save £50 on your lighting costs and around 170kg of CO2. Over the lifetime of a bulb you could save over £600 and over 3 tonnes of CO2

Switch to LEDs and the savinsgs will be even higher.

Turn off the lights

When you leave a room, remember to turn all the lights out. Just one 100watt bulb left on for half an hour produces enough CO2 to fill a party balloon.

Turn down the heat

If you’ve got thermostat controlled radiators, turn them down when you leave the room. Heat as you go to be more efficient.

Reflect heat

Fix a radiator panel behind each radiator. This reflects heat back into the room rather than into the wall which means your radiators work more efficiently for you.

Exclude draughts

Take a moment to fit draft excluder strips around your door, windows and letterbox. That could save you £25 a year. In addition you could turn your thermostat down one degree without even noticing and save around 10% on your heating bill!

Get a water butt

Collect rain water in a water butt and use it on your plants and to wash the car.

Compost

Set up a compost heap. By composting all your kitchen waste you can reduce your amount of carbon emissions as you would by boiling your kettle all year.

You’ll need a mix of dry materials such as cardboard and wet materials such as fruit and vegetable peelings.

You can see from this list that saving energy is easy, fast and it costs next to nothing. Yet the savings to you and the environment are huge!