lifestyle choices

Around the home:

• Stay cosy at home: close your curtains when the sun goes down and keep the heat in and cold out.
  
  
• Turn the lights off when you leave a room.
  
  
• Turn your central heating thermostat down by a degree and put on a jumper, it'll save you money and can cut up to 10% off the bills.
  
  
• Unplug your mobile/mp3 player/laptop chargers when not in use.  95% of the energy used by mobile chargers is when the phone isn't attached.
  
  
• Turn electrical appliances off at the wall, rather than using "STANDBY", 8% of all energy used around the house is from gadgets we're not even using.
  
  
• A quick shower uses a third of the water of a bath, but a power showers can use more water than a bath in less than 5 minutes.
  
  
• Swap your energy hungry lightbulbs for eco-light bulbs, they look better than ever, save 80% of the energy and last 6 times longer than regular bulbs.

In the kitchen:

• Don't overfill the kettle, only boil the amount of water you need.  If everyone did this the energy saved could power over 75% of the UK's streetlamps - that's mental.
  
  
• Don't leave the fridge door open, for every minute it's open it takes three minutes to cool it back down.
  
  
• Put lids on pans when cooking - you'll keep the heat in and cook food faster, great who wants to wait for food!
  
  
• Wash up by hand rather than using the dishwasher, clean the dirtiest plates last and don't leave the water running!

On the move:

• Use your legs - 25% of car journeys are less than 2 miles, could you cycle or walk instead?
  
  
• Make more use of buses and trains - more than 87% of us live within a 6 minute walk of a bus-stop.
  
  
• When you're booking that holiday ask yourself, "Do I really need to fly?"  There's a tonne of stuff in the UK that we just take for granted, why don't you explore it a bit?
  
  
• If you must fly, we suggest that you offset the flights through Climate Stewards.  Climate Stewards was set up by Christian conservation charity A Rocha and their strategy is to invest in tree-planting and conservation projects in developing countries. They also plan to implement renewable energy projects in the developing world. Thank you.