Living Room

Light Bulbs
I was amazed to find out traditional light bulbs are only 10% efficient!! 90% of the electricity used to power them is wasted in creating heat and other in-efficiencies.  I know that energy efficient light bulbs are a lot more expensive but they are so much cheaper to run and last so much longer that in the long run they are cheaper. According to the Energy Saving Trust each energy efficient light bulb can save you up to £9 per year on your electricity bill!

A regular reader/contributer, Melanie Francis, has found a supplier of low energy halagon spot bulbs.  These are a replacement for halagon spot bulbs that are frequently sunk in to the ceiling.  They are pretty inefficient and create a lot of heat.  These energy efficient ones have been tried and tested by Melanie who gives them the thumbs up. They can be bought from www.litebulbs.co.uk.  Thanks and well done to Melanie!

Have a look at www.litebulbs.co.uk for all your low energy lighting needs!  They have traditional, halogen, dimmer bulbs... everything you could need.  It also shows you how much you will save by using them!


Standby
The average household has 12 appliances on stand-by or charging at any one time.  These devices are still drawing quite a lot of electricity so are costing you money and wasting resources.   Computers on standby are the worst culprits.   Even a DVD player that is turned off and is still turned on at the mains will be drawing power.  So the tip is turn it off and if possible turn it of at the mains as well. According to an Australian study the power used to power appliances whilst on standby can contribute to up to 10% of a household electricity bill.

CDs
Download tracks and albums from sites such as iTunes and MSN Music and not only do you save money it saves packaging, distribution etc. etc. which all helps the environment.  So cheaper greener music!  It is easy to plug a computer or mp3 player in to a hifi so you do not need an specialist equipment.

Furniture
Getting rid of some furniture?  Before going to the tip try selling it on eBay, giving it away on Freecycle.org  or a charity that collects unwanted furniture and passes it one to people in real need of it.  We have used The Besom in the past and the Salvation Army collects furniture as well.

Batteries
Although rechargable batteries are quite expensive to buy initially they pay for themselves very quickly and are far, far better for the environment.  Think of all the acidic chemicals going being buried in landfill, they must make their way in to the soil etc.   We made  the jump and given the number of charges they last (1000) it makes is equivalent to 0.5 per battery (plus electricity to charge them).  If you get high enough quality batteries then they actually last longer in things like digital cameras than disposables.  Well worth making the investment. Battery Logic have a good beginners guide to what can be a complex topic!  They recommend Uniross batteries and chargers, we actually went with Ansmann, slightly more expensive but seemed to win a lot of awards and have fantastic reviews.  A big question is how many things to you own that need batteries?  Perhaps time to review and decide whether you really need them?

Catalogues
We used to have a number of catalogues that we used to keep in case we wanted to look at something we needed.  We now don't pick them up in the store or have asked to be taken off their mailing list as the vast majority have their catalogues on their website anyway so we can see what they have got/prices etc. regardless of whether we buy it on the net or not.