Reduce your household waste

We moan about the government not doing enough to tackle climate change, but we as individuals contribute around 40% to the UKs total greenhouse gas emissions, so if we make some small changes around the home and to how we travel, we can reduce our carbon footprint along with our energy bills.

Small changes, when combined, often make the biggest difference. For example, don’t leave TVs, stereos and computers on standby. This contributes around 800,000 tonnes of CO2 to the environment each year – equivalent to 1.4 million long-haul flights.

Light up your home using energy saving light bulbs. They last 12 times longer than the regular variety so you could save around £100 during the lifetime of each bulb.

Washing machines and dishwashers use a huge amount of electricity and water for that matter. If you do your washing at 30 degrees instead of 40, you will use 40% less energy. Make the most of any outside space and dry your clothes outdoors. Wash up by hand whenever possible and if you really want to use the dishwasher, use the energy-efficient setting.

Contributing 60% to all of our individual CO2 emissions, boilers are the single biggest offenders. Thankfully there are a few easy ways that you can make your boiler and central heating system more environmentally friendly.

Number one, install and energy efficient boiler. These eco-friendly additions to your home could save chop £170 a year off your heating bills and the environment will get 875g less of CO2.

British Gas can help you make the switch this summer. It has removed some of the costs involved so you could save over £850 if you upgrade from your old boiler to an energy efficient one by 25 July. Along with £400 off a new boiler, you’ll get free HomeCare for one year in case anything breaks, and free radiator heating and controls installation.

Make sure your boiler gives you as much control as possible and add a full set of heating controls so you only use the heating when you need it. These controls mean you can only have the heating on in the rooms you are using, at a level that is just about right and on a timer so that it’s not on when you are out of the house. By controlling your heat usage you could reduce your annual outgoings by a further £100 and stop over one million tonnes of CO2 clogging up the atmosphere.

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