The average home wastes around 25% of the total energy used in it. If you add that up over every house in the UK, that’s a considerably large amount of valuable energy being wasted. Often, just changing a few small things in your daily routine will help reduce the amount of energy you are wasting, and consequently reduce the amount of harmful carbon dioxide emissions being released. So by following a few of these tips, you will not only be helping the environment by saving energy, but saving yourself money too:
In Your Bedroom
- To avoid wasting money on your heating or air conditioning bills, make sure you have the right tog duvet for the weather [1].
- Similarly, keep extra blankets by the bed so you can easily adjust your temperature during the night.
- Draught excluders for your bedroom door will keep the heat in your room over night, as will drawing your curtains at dusk.
- Set your heating to switch off a short while before you go to bed and come on just before you get up, so that it’s not on unnecessarily during the night but warm enough for you to get up and out of the house.
- Use a hot water bottle to warm your bed, rather than an electric blanket, and wear socks to bed to avoid heat loss.
- Towel drying your hair thoroughly will reduce the time and energy you need to invest in using your hair dryer.
- Make sure you turn off all lights before going to bed, but if you need a nightlight make sure it has an energy saving bulb.
- Your mobile phone only needs a couple of hours to charge, so don’t leave it over night.
- Unplug all appliances that aren’t need over night, such as laptops, games consoles and televisions as leaving them on standby wastes a lot of energy.
In Your Living Room
- Close internal doors around your house to keep the heat in the rooms you are in [2].
- Consider putting on another layer of clothing before switching on the heating.
- Clearing a space around your plug sockets will make them easier to get to.
- Make sure you switch appliances that are not in use off at the wall instead of leaving them on standby – this could save you around £40 a year on energy bills!
- Consider buying a standby saving device if you are bad at switching appliances off at the socket – often you can get these free from your energy supplier.
- Putting your digital recorder on a separate plug socket means that you can turn everything else off and not miss your programmes.
- Only turn lights on if you need them, and make sure these have energy saving lightbulbs as these can save you around £2.50 a year each.
- The energy consumption of your TV is closely linked to the screen-size so buy an appropriately sized set to meet your needs – smaller screens are generally cheaper to run.
- Make sure the brightness setting on your TV is suitable for your room as the factory settings are generally too high, so waste energy and your money.
- If you are replacing your appliances, make sure you buy energy efficient A rated products – Energy Saving Trust Recommended are generally a good bet. Make sure you dispose of your old electricals in a way that means it can be recycled. Since 2007, your retailer is under obligation to either take back your old equipment or tell you where to recycle it.
In Your Dining Room
- Avoid turning up the heating, as the room will heat up if you’re having guests round to eat [3].
- There is a variety of energy saving lightbulbs available now to be in-keeping with style of your dining room e.g. candle shaped, dimmable.
- If you have dimmable halogen bulbs, turn the dimmer switches down to the lowest possible to reduce the energy used to light your room.
- Don’t cook too much food – food waste makes a significant contribution to harmful carbon dioxide emissions.
- If you want to warm the plates, put them in the oven as it cools down after your food has cooked.
- Serve your food directly onto plates rather than using serving dishes and spoons – this will save you water and money.
- If you need to boil the kettle for coffee, make sure you only use as much as you need, or better yet consider an ecokettle.
