We often feel a little overwhelmed when thinking about the impact we can make on climate change. How can we make any difference? How can we afford to be more eco-friendly? However, when we look at tweaking our daily habits, small changes really do mount up.
ENERGY SAVING
There are so many easy changes we can make that save us a lot of money over time. Do you put the lid on your saucepan when cooking? This reduces the amount of time it takes for the water to boil. You can even turn the power off a few minutes before the veggies have cooked as they’ll continue to cook in the boiled water. Saving just 5 minutes of energy a day equates to 24 hours worth saved over a year. This is just 1 habit change.
Now think about your oven. Can you set this to switch of 5 minutes before your food has finished cooking? Or if it’s baked potatoes, why not push that to 10 minutes early? This saves another 24 hours worth of power. I’m sure there are many other areas you could think of too.
Switching your washing machine to 30 degrees could save you £40 over a year. This is something we can all do, at least for our dark and coloured clothing. I also do this for my whites as I add Percarbonate of soda to the drum, which brightens my whites and is antibacterial too. As most of the power your washing machine uses is for heating the water, reducing the temperature is a really impactful change.
Another huge impact you can make is a small change to your shower routine. Reducing the flow, shortening your shower by just 3 minutes and reducing the temperature could save you over £250 per year on your energy bill. Here is a simple to use energy calculator that will tell you how much you could save based on your current usage – https://www.tritonshowers.co.uk/calculator/savings
WATER SAVING
We wash our hands several times a day, so the simple act of reducing the flow of water and using cold water instead of hot, has a quick impact.
Your loo uses at least 2 litres of water every single time you flush – so think about whether you can use the toilet straight after a family member. Changing this habit, even once a day saves 10 litres of water each week. Alternatively, you could just not flush the toilet every time you use it.
We all know to rinse our recycling before popping it in the recycling bin – but you don’t need to use fresh tap water for this. Place your tin or jar in the sink under the tap and simply catch the water next time you wash your hands. You can then re-use the same water for every tin you need to rinse that day.
Taking a closer look at the things you do on a daily basis DOES make a difference – and sharing these ideas with family and friends has an impact too. If every household adopted these small, money saving changes, how quickly we could all make a difference. As you can see, small changes really do mount up.