Can I really make a difference?

The average household puts out approx. 4 black bin liners of rubbish a week. This takes up 12 square feet (3.6 square meters) of land space in our locality.

Over a 50 year lifetime of that household, this amounts to 10,400 bags of rubbish - this does not include old furniture, clothes, cars etc. that are also dumped . This 50 year total would take up 31,200 square feet (9,454 square meters) of land space in our locality. That's an area approximately the size of Neston Rec (or 3 football fields) - and that's just one household.

There are around 24 million houses in the UK - you do the maths!

Do we really want to say to our grandchildren…"sorry you can't play here anymore - I needed somewhere to dump my rubbish". If you recycle just half of your rubbish think how much space you could be saving for our future generations to enjoy.

So you see, even a little effort CAN make a big difference. Below are some Top Tips to help you to start to make a difference:

Around the Home

1. Make sure you have adequate insulation in your loft and walls.

2. Lag your hot water tank and pipes.

3. Turn down your thermostats. Turning down your thermostat by only 1 degree can save 10% on heating bills.

4. Seal around doors. You could be loosing 40% to 60% of heat through air leakage.

5. On bright sunny days open curtains to let the sun heat your home.

6. Draw your curtains at dusk to stop heat escaping through the windows.

7. Turn off radiators in unused rooms.

8. Turn off lights and other electrical appliances when you are not using them.

9. Unplug your phone, and other types of charges, as they burn energy even when they aren’t plugged into your phone.

10. Don’t leave any electrical appliances on ‘stand by’. A computer monitor alone can cost you £30 a year just by being on stand by.

11. Change from conventional light bulbs to energy efficient ones.

12. Car share whether possible, or better still use a bike. A good car share web site is www.liftshare.com

13. Calculate your personal carbon footprint at WWF Carbon Footprint Calculator. There are just a few simple questions to answer and it shows you how many planets' worth of resources you are currently using.

In The Kitchen

1. Always use lids on pot and pans when cooking.

2. When you boil pasta, bring the pot to the boil, put the pasta in and a lid on, and then turn the heat off – just like the Italians do! This works for vegetables too.

3. Turn down the heat a soon as anything starts to boil. A gentle boil uses much less energy.

4. A flame on a gas cooker should be blue, if it is yellow it’s wasting gas. The burner may need to be professionally adjusted.

5. Boil just the right amount of water in your kettle for the cups of teas you need. Don’t fill the kettle to the top each time just for one cup.

6. Electric kettles consume half the energy needed to boil water on a stove. So, when cooking pasta or vegetables, boil water in a kettle first and then pour it into the pan.

7. Don’t leave your fridge or freezer door open longer than needed. It takes 3 to 4 minutes to regain its temperature, wasting valuable energy.

8. Re-fill your cleaning products rather than throwing the plastic bottle away each time.

Laundry

1. Up to 90% of the energy used for washing clothes goes on heating the water. Use a lower temperature wash – there arte plenty of lower temperature detergents on the market now.

2. Washing machines work most efficiently when they are full – but keep a fist’s breath of free space at the top of the wash otherwise the clothes won’t wash properly.

3. Try not to wash clothes just for the sake of it.

4. If you have half a load, always use the ‘half load’ button.

5. Consider the washing detergents you use. It takes 10-12,000L of water per wash to neutralise non-ecological washing powder so that it can safely re-enter our water systems.

6. The second biggest household energy user, after the fridge, is the tumble dryer. Use your radiators, or the line on sunny days, for drying clothes. Tumble dryers work more efficiently in warm areas.

In The Bathroom

1. Install a water saving device in all of your toilets. Each flush used around 10 litres of water – equivalent to 2 baths of water in a day for the average sized family.

2. Use a shower instead of a bath. A shower used 2/3 the amount of a bath. Turn off the shower when soaping to save even more water!

3. Use white recycled toilet paper. Coloured dye in paper is just another unnecessary chemical added to the environment.

In The Garden

1. When you have to water your garden, water in the early morning or late evening to avoid evaporation.

2. Set your blades a little higher when you mow your lawn, then it will require less water.

3. Use water butts to store rain water for use in your garden.

4. Did you know that garden sprinklers can use as much water in an hour as a family of 4 uses in a day?

5. Sweep paths or driveways instead of hosing them down, saving about 50 gallons of water every 5 minutes.

6. Use peat free compost – over 90% of Britain’s peat bogs have been destroyed already.

7. Compost your kitchen and garden waste. Please see the Composting section of this site for more information.

8. Use different types of things as mulch around your pot plants to add interest and save water evaporation, such as pine cones, colourful glass beads or even buttons.

9. Instead of using purpose-made plant saucers to stand pots on, use lids from tins and containers such as drinking chocolate and milk powder. These are often made of plastic and are recessed.

10. Stop your balls of garden twine getting in a tangle by using old washing up bottles. Cut an empty bottle in half, put your twine inside and thread the loose end through the lid. Then insert the top half of the bottle back into the bottom half. The twine is pulled through the spout, and by snapping the lid shut it won't fall back inside.

11. Use the cold water from a teapot for watering houseplants – saves water.

12. Put food scraps on a bird table – saves bin space and attracts birds.

13. Put the ash from burnt bar-b-q charcoal - must be wood - onto flower borders.