Home

Climate Change

500kg 

CO₂ used in leaving a 100 watt incandescent bulb on for a year ^[3]

Even when you buy energy-saving light bulbs, there is nothing better for saving energy than switching them off when not in use. 

How?

This one is super-duper easy:
Not in the room? Lights off.
Daylight? Lights off.

You can also go the extra mile and insert sensor or timer lights to avoid leaving lights on in areas like porches and stairwells.

That’s pretty much all there is too it.

 

Want to do this action? Head over to our list of Doers to find someone to pledge for.

 ^[1] Energy Saving Trust

 ^[2] BBC

 ^[3] Mike Berners-Lee (2010) The Carbon Footprint of Everything, Profile Books Ltd.
 

How?

Bulb jargon busting:

1. Filament bulbs: the old ones. They've been kicking about for over 100 years, and it’s time to move on…
2. Halogen bulbs: mildly more efficient than filament bulbs,
3. CFLs: Compact Fluorescent Lamps – the twizzley twisty energy saving ones.  They’ve massively improved over the last few years, and are the bulb of choice for most standard light fittings. But it’s hard to find ones for spotlights and the likes.
4. LEDs: Welcome to the future. Super efficient and available in all sorts of specialist styles for all your fancy lighting needs. They are also available in a range of tones (not just dentist surgery white) and there are dimmable varieties too.

Where to buy them:

You can find CFLs in most high street shops or department stores, but LED’s are harder to come by. The Ethical Superstore has a great stock.

So no more excuses, join the latest trend and help energy wastage to end.

Want to do this action? Head over to our list of Doers to find someone to pledge for.

This DoAction was created by Natalie Scarfe. Want to create one yourself?
Email

[1] http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Energy-Saving-Trust/Our-calculations

How?

If you’ve already got a thermostat installed, turning it down couldn’t be simpler.

But you could save even more energy by upgrading your thermostat. Modern heating controls let you heat just the rooms you want; decide how warm you want each room to be, and control when the heating turns on and off. It’s especially worth thinking about if your controls are over 12 years old – thermostats are much more accurate these days.

If you don’t have a thermostat in your home, installing one is simple. The Energy Saving Trust has lots of information about different types of thermostats and provides impartial advice on how to heat your home efficiently.

 

Want to do this action? Head over to our list of Doers to find someone to pledge for.

[1] http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/In-your-home/Heating-and-hot-water/Thermostats-and-controls

 

And a little bit richer

Your loft insulation could pay for itself within a couple years and will continue to save you energy for more than forty years.

The Energy Saving Trust estimates that insulating your loft will cost between £50 and £350 and save you about £175 a year on your energy bills. If you are just topping up existing insulation the savings will be less but since the UK's major energy suppliers increased their fuel prices by up to 18% in 2011 the pay-back period could get shorter.

How?

There are two routes to getting your loft well insulated: You can do it yourself or you can get a specialist installer to do it for you.

DIY:

Installing your own loft insulation can be done in a day, no matter how experienced or otherwise you are at DIY.

It is important to go for an approved material, one that has been properly tested to ensure it is safe to use in your loft. Look out for Energy Savings Trust recommended products.

Thinkinsulation.com has some useful tips and a video on DIY loft insulation. 

Bring in the professionals:

There are a lot of professional energy efficiency advisers and installers for you to choose from, go to the National Insulation Association website to find a registered installer in your area 

Funding:

And before you make any decisions, why not have a quick word with your energy supplier or local authority to find out what deals are available locally. The energy companies have carbon emission targets they have to meet and as a result they may be subsidising or even giving away loft insulation.

Support:

Make My Home Green gives detailed and impartial advice on ways to make money-saving green improvements to your home – including loft insulation. And better still they have been nice enough to give DoNation users a 15% discount on their Advanced Home Energy Report service so mention discount code 'Do Make My Home Green' when you give them a call.

Want to do this action? Head over to our list of Doers to find someone to pledge for.

Got other tips or great resources to share? Please email them over to us at

 

Money

By improving the energy efficiency of your computer you would save energy and as much as £17 from your electricity bill each year², right now.  Shockingly, a third of business computers in the UK are left switched on overnight, costing British businesses more than £300m a year in extra electricity bills⁴.

PC health

Regularly leaving your PC on when not in use does not help the life-span of the computer. In fact, by managing the power settings more efficiently, you’ll prolong its battery life significantly.

How?

It’s really very easy. Follow the simple instructions given below:

Mac users:

1. Go to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Energy Saver

2. Set the sleep timings to low (we recommend 2 mins for display, 10 mins for sleep)

3. Check the boxes next to ‘put the hard disks to sleep when possible’ and the display brightness options. 

4. If using a laptop, make sure you adjust settings for both power and battery states.

Windows users:

Microsoft offer some handy instructions for Windows 7, Vista, and Windows XP users.

Peripherals and the WiFi sensor also drain energy from your computer, so disconnect or turn them off when not in use.

Want to do this action? Head over to our list of Doers to find someone to pledge for.

Got other tips or great resources to share? Please email them over to us at

1 - greenyour.com

2 - www.1e.com - Report on energy saving with computing software

3 - Berners-Lee, M (2010) How Bad are Bananas?

4 - The Register.co.uk

Resource conservation

You can’t make something out of nothing. Each time a new product is made, we need to extract fresh resources from the earth – through mining, quarrying, or tree felling.  Unless, of course, it’s made from magical recycled materials, like fleeces out of plastic bottles or insulation from old newspapers.

Climate change

Greenhouse gases are emitted from every stage of the lifecycle of your household goods, from extracting, refining, transporting and processing the raw materials, right through to landfilling the finished product. In fact, landfills themselves produce about three per cent of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions². That’s a big chunk that we can cut out pretty easily.

Landfills

It’s funny to think of landfill sites as a precious resource, but they’re filling up so quickly that we could soon struggle to find space to bury our ever-growing mountains of waste. Councils warn that unless we start recycling more of our waste, Britain might run out of landfill space by 2018¹.

How?

RecycleNow is perfect for working out what recycling your council collects. It has a handy post-code search tool and will provide you with all the waste-sorting info you could ever dream of.

With plastics, check out the little number hidden on the base, inside a small triangle. It tells you the quality grade (1-8) of the plastic, which determines whether or not it can be recycled in your area.

Want to do this action? Head over to our list of Doers to find someone to pledge for.

Got other tips or great resources to share? Please email them over to us at

1 - lga.gov.uk

2 - Environment agency.gov.uk - Landfill Mitigation

How?

Well, this one is pretty self-explanatory.  Turn the dial down to 30°C.

The washing powder

Modern detergents are designed to work perfectly at 30°C, so unless you’ve been rolling around in the mud or have been eating like a complete mucky-pup, then your clothes should emerge as fresh and clean as ever. 

The Ethical Superstore are a pretty friendly bunch who have some great offers on all sorts of household goods - including some nice eco friendly washing powder, helping to keep clothes cleaner at a lower temperature. 

The washing machine

Perhaps you have a pretty old washing machine that doesn’t have a 30°C setting?  If that’s the case then it’s probably time to upgrade to an AAA rated machine.

There are a few other laundry-related good deeds you can do while you’re at it:

• Always wait until you have a full load
• Use eco-friendly detergent (think of the fishies!)
• Hang your laundry to dry naturally
• Go crazy, join these hippies...

 

 

Want to do this action? Head over to our list of Doers to find someone to pledge for.

Got other tips or great resources to share? Please email them over to us at 

3/4

of the energy used in the normal load of laundry goes into drying the clothes, not cleaning them.

Climate Change

We humans have been happily allowing our clothes to dry in the fresh air for around 10,000 years, but over the last 20 odd years the tumble craze has taken hold, with the average household heating and spinning their clothes three times a week, summer, winter, spring and autumn.  That adds 5.164 million tonnes CO₂ to our national emissions each year – more than is emitted by running a million homes for a whole year²!

Clothes care

Tumbling can shrink clothes and wear them out faster, shortening the lifespan of your favourite tees. Love your clothes, treat them gently.

How?  

No explanation needed… hang your clothes. Inside or out – it depends on the weather and how much space you have.

Need a clothes horse or some nifty-space saving radiator racks?  Pop down to your local DIY or pound shop.

Want to do this action? Head over to our list of Doers to find someone to pledge for.

Got other tips or great resources to share? Please email them over to us at

 

_{1 - Berners-Lee, M. (2010). How Bad are Bananas?}

2 - Act on CO₂