Keeping your home warm on a budget

Winter is well and truly upon us, and as the weather’s got colder, many of us have turned the heating on already –  and probably won’t be turning the thermostat down until after February!

Although energy prices are falling, the average family still spends over £1000 a year on gas and electricity, which is no small sum.

Thankfully, there are a few ways to cut your energy costs without shivering all winter. If you want to keep warm without breaking the bank, here are five top tips.

Maximise your radiators

How many of us have our sofa up against the radiator in the living room? It might be keeping the back of your sofa toasty warm, but the heat won’t get much further than that. Moving furniture away from the radiators, even just a few inches, lets the heat circulate through the room and warm it properly, as well as saving on damage to your furniture.

To make your radiators work even harder, consider investing in radiator panels; reflective panels you put behind a radiator to reflect more heat into the room – these really do make a difference: using them on every radiator in your house can cut your heating bills by as much as 15%! And if you don’t fancy buying them, you can achieve a similar effect by lining the wall behind your radiators with tin-foil.

Keep your home warm this winter.

Photo by Fredo, displayed under a creative commons licence.

Stop losing heat

You may already use draught excluders to keep heat from escaping under doors, but what about your windows? Even with double glazing, thin curtains or blinds can let heat out. Consider replacing yours with a heavier option to keep the warmth in the room, or line them with a thermal lining – a cheap fleece material will do.

And curtains aren’t just for windows! Try placing them over external doors for extra draught exclusion, as well as a bit of interior design flair. However, don’t keep curtains or blinds drawn in the day, as sunlight will warm your rooms up naturally.

Don’t heat what you don’t need

If you have a spare bedroom or second bathroom that’s rarely used, turn radiators off in those rooms, and shut the doors to them so that heat from the rest of the house doesn’t escape into them either. It might be unpleasant if you have to nip in to find something, but it’ll be worth it for the savings!

Additionally, if you have radiators in the halls or corridors of your home, these can be turned down slightly – if not shut off altogether – as you’ll only ever be passing through them for a couple of minutes at a time.

Insulate

Professional home insulation can be costly, but DIY loft insulation is relatively cheap and simple. Foam insulation is cheap, and three 8inch rolls should be enough to give most lofts a decent layer of insulation. Make sure you know what you’re doing before you start, and wear protective clothing and goggles to stay safe, though.

Another part of your house to insulate is the hot water tank and pipes. You can buy a jacket for the tank and foam tubes for the pipes, both of which are easy to fit, and will keep the heat inside the pipes – so it heats the water, not your airing cupboard.

It’s all about timing

It’s a basic tip, but putting the thermostat on a timer is a great way to make sure you’re only heating the house when it’s needed. Set the timer for 20 minutes before you wake up and 20 minutes before you get home from work, and you’ll feel toasty 24/7 without having to think about it.

Additionally, try to keep the heat setting at 18C – this is the temperature that most of us should feel warm in a jumper and jeans, and ensuring your heating doesn’t go above this temperature often will save you cash. If it seems too cold at first, try bringing the temperature down 1 degree every few days until you’re acclimatised.

Liberty is writing on behalf of Lifestyle Blinds.

Improve the energy-efficiency of your home – before winter hits

With winter rapidly approaching, it might be a good time to improve the energy-efficiency of your home. Not only will this reduce your carbon footprint, but it could help you save money throughout the cold spell – so check out these five simple tips:

Take a look at your Energy Performance Certificate

If you have recently moved home, or were thinking of selling up, you might have access to a recent Energy Performance Certificate. This will include information about your property’s energy use and typical energy costs as well as recommendations about how to make your home more eco-friendly. Take a look at these suggestions, as you could find several ways to reduce your outgoings when the temperatures drop.

Arrange a boiler service

The cold weather is sure to set in over the next few months, so why not book a gas boiler service in good time? An approved engineer will make sure everything’s running properly and will replace any broken or damaged parts if necessary. If your boiler cover’s in date, don’t forget to check the conditions of the policy, because annual gas inspections are often included.

Switch to energy-saving light bulbs

If your house is lit up like Vegas throughout winter (particularly at Christmas), try to use energy-saving light bulbs. According to the Energy Saving Trust, compact flourescents are a great alternative to traditional bulbs and LEDs can replace 50W halogen downlighters – so see what you can find. While we are on the subject of lighting, try to turn all switches off when you leave a room and use candles and lamps whenever possible to reduce your energy output.

Insulate your home

Does your house get a little chilly from time-to-time? Are there cold winds blowing around? If so, take steps to insulate your home. Get hold of some self-adhesive sealant strips to close up gaps and buy special foam to spray between doors and windows. Once that’s done, fit draught excluders to your letterbox and underneath your doors and buy yourself a keyhole cover. A few small changes can make a big difference, so it’s worth taking action – sooner rather than later.

Bleed your radiators

If your radiators are warm at the bottom and cold at the top, there might be an air bubble trapped in the system. This blockage is called an airlock and can stop your central heating from working properly. To solve the problem, try bleeding your radiators by turning the bleed valve anticlockwise and waiting for the air to hiss out. Once water emerges, tighten everything back up and check things are working as they should be. Still having issues? Then ask your insurance company to send out one of their qualified heating engineers.

Winter is just around the corner, so do all you can to make your house energy-efficient.

Green Deal green-lighted

The long-anticipated Green Deal has been green-lighted with the passing this week of The Energy Act into law. The enactment sets in stone the legal framework for the Green Deal, which will be launched in Autumn 2012.

The Green Deal has the ability to revolutionise the energy efficiency of the nation’s homes and businesses. It will help people insulate against rising energy prices, creating the opportunity to make homes warmer and cheaper to run.

The initiative is greatly needed. The Department of Energy & Climate change has published a report, the Housing Energy Fact File, that highlights that more than half of the 26 million dwellings in Great Britain have insufficient insulation.

The Green Deal is the first piece of legislation worldwide that will remove the upfront cost of energy efficiency measures (like loft, cavity and external wall insulation, draught proofing and energy efficiency glazing and boilers) making expensive home improvement affordable.

Householders will be able to borrow money at low cost interest rates on Green Deals to have the work undertaken. The newly formed Green Deal Finance Company has the potential to offer a better deal for the consumer and to support healthy competition amongst Green Deal providers including small businesses.

Significantly, the energy saving work undertaken will be repaid over time through a charge on the home’s energy bill. The repayments must obey a “golden rule” whereby the charge is no more than the expected savings, meaning householders should save from day one.

Chris Huhne, Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said: “When it’s introduced, the Green Deal will be as easy as ABC by making work affordable, providing bespoke independent advice and choice in the market from well-known and trusted high street names.”

High standards will be crucial from the first independent home energy assessment to getting the job done by qualified installers. All Green Deal participants will need to carry a “quality mark” so customers know they can be trusted to do a good job.

Anwar Harland-Khan CEO of Sustain Worldwide, an elite membership organisation of developers, houesbuilders and professionals committed to sustainability, said: “The coming Green Deal is a significant piece of legislation that will enable homeowners to make their homes more energy efficient with no upfront cost, which will benefit them financially through lower energy bills and later should they come to sell their property.

“Clearly, those homes that have significant energy efficient improvements will score higher on the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), which is mandatory when selling a home. Already, we are beginning to see purchasers take a property’s energy efficiency into account when buying a home. As energy bills rise, the launch of the Green Deal will push a property’s energy efficiency ever higher up the buyer’s ‘must have’ checklist.”

How the Green Deal will work for consumers

Gordon Miller is co-founder and sustainability & communications director of Sustain Worldwide. He writes for The Financial Times and The Guardian, co-founded and chairs energy and environmental awareness social enterprise The High Barnet Green Home Zone.

For more information about Sustain Worldwide’s members’ luxury sustainable homes, resorts and communities, visit www.SustainWorldwide.com or call  +44 (0)20 7754 5557

Valuing Sustainability

A home’s sustainability characteristics should be considered within property valuations, according to a new information paper, entitled Sustainability and Residential Property, launched 20 Sepember by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).

The issue of sustainability is not currently viewed as significant to property market value. However, this is changing and RICS is suggesting that, should a home possess sustainability features, which are likely to have an impact on value, this should be reflected in a valuer’s assessment of the property.

Sustainability features can include a home’s energy efficiency rating, the materials used in its construction and other features such as an energy-efficient boiler. Although, elements such as a building’s proximity to public transport links and its ability to adapt to occupiers’ changing future needs could also be considered.

Sustainability, which covers a broad range of physical, environmental and social factors, is moving progressively higher up the coalition government’s agenda. It is likely that residential markets will become progressively sensitised to sustainability considerations. Therefore, RICS feels residential property valuers should be fully aware of the sustainability characteristics of buildings when carrying out a valuation. Also important is consideration of legislation and policy that can influence current and future value.

Ben Elder, RICS Global Director of Valuation, said: “Although market awareness of sustainability has risen significantly, attention is currently focused largely on a home’s energy efficiency, propensity to flood and carbon emissions. However, a property’s sustainable status can cover a range of social, environmental and economic matters that can potentially lead to changes in demand and therefore affect value.

“With the increased emphasis on green living and energy efficiency, it is highly possible that the market will need to adapt. This new information paper offers advice to our members, recommending that they are fully aware of sustainability policy and the characteristics of individual buildings when valuing property.”

Anwar Harland-Khan, CEO of Sustain Worldwide, an exclusive membership organisation of sustainable developers and industry professionals delivering sustainability, said: “We welcome the RICS information paper, while noting that in our opinion it is long overdue that the valuation industry recognised the inherent value premium in sustainable property.

“It stands to reason that today’s sustainable homes have a value premium. They are cheaper to run because they are better insulated and require less heating and mechanical cooling, and they are fitted out with ‘hands off’ energy saving applications. What’s more they will increase in value faster because these homes are more ‘future proofed’ than a conventionally built existing house that will require expensive retro-fitting.”

Gordon Miller is sustainability & communications director of Sustain Worldwide. He writes for The Financial Times and The Sunday Times and founded eco homes website whatgreenhome.com and local energy and awareness social enterprise The High Barnet Green Home Zone.

For more information about Sustain Worldwide’s members’ luxury sustainable homes, resorts and communities, visit www.SustainWorldwide.com or call             +44 (0)20 7754 5557

New properties save homeowners money on energy bills

Energy provider E.ON’s recent announcement that gas bills will increase by an average of by 18.1% and electricity prices by 11.4%, with effect from 13 September 2011 underscores the huge rises in energy prices confirmed by the UK’s other major energy providers in the last month. 

However, homeowners in the UK who have installed solar PV are mitigating against the price rises.  They benefit from payments from the Government’s Clean Energy Cash Back Scheme, which pays homeowners 43.3p per KWh they generate. The average resident will earn (and save on their electricity bill) in the region of £1,100 per year.

Homeowners who have installed solar PV will be interested to read new research by the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which finds strong evidence that homes with solar photovoltaic (PV) systems sell for a premium over homes without solar systems.

The research finds that homes with solar PV in California have sold for an average home sales price premium of approximately $17,000 (approx £10,500) for a relatively new 3,100 watt (kWh) PV system (the average size of PV systems in the Berkeley Lab dataset).

The Berkeley Lab research is the first to explore empirically the existence and magnitude of residential solar PV sales price impacts across a large number of homes and over a wide geographic area. The research analysed a dataset of more than 72,000 California homes that sold from 2000 through mid-2009, approximately 2,000 of which had a solar PV system at the time of sale.

Anwar Harland-Khan, CEO of Sustain Worldwide, which is an élite membership organisation of the world’s leading sustainable property developers and architects, said:

“The Berkeley Lab research supports our long-held contention that energy efficient and energy generating homes have a value premium over conventionally built existing homes.

“At a time when energy prices are rising rapidly, particularly in the UK, new home buyers with installed solar PV are saving a considerable amount on their electricity bills and can look forward to a higher sales price when they come to sell up.”

Gordon Miller is sustainability & communications director of Sustain Worldwide. He writes for The Financial Times and The Sunday Times and founded eco homes website whatgreenhome.com and local energy and awareness social enterprise The High Barnet Green Home Zone.

For more information about Sustain Worldwide’s members’ luxury sustainable homes, resorts and communities, visit www.SustainWorldwide.com or call +44 (0)20 7754 5557

A New Era in Home Heating? Renewable Heat Premium Payment

The Government’s has today launched a new £15 million ‘Renewable Heat Premium Payment’ scheme. The initiative will open for applications on 1 August this year until March 2012. It is claimed it will support up to 25,000 installations.

The scheme will be mainly focused at around 4 million households in Great Britain not heated by mains gas. These residents have to rely on higher carbon forms of heating which also tend to be more expensive than gas, such as heating oil and electric fires to keep warm.

Climate Change Minister Greg Barker said:

Today starts a new era in home heating because we’re making it more economical for people to go green by providing discounts off the cost of eco heaters.

This should be great news for people who are reliant on expensive oil or electric heating as the Premium Payment scheme is really aimed at them.

Householders will need to ensure they have basic energy efficiency measures in place before applying for the grants, which will be available on a first come first served basis.

From 1 August, grants for the following technologies will be available:

• Ground Source Heat Pump – £1250 grant (for homes without mains gas heating)

• Biomass boiler – £950 grant (for homes without mains gas heating)

• Air source heat pump – £850 grant (for homes without mains gas heating)

• Solar thermal hot water panels – £300 grant (available to all households regardless of the type of heating system used)

Anwar Harland-Khan, CEO of Sustain Worldwide, a membership organisation of developers and architects, said: “The Renewal Heat Premium Payment scheme is a welcome initiative but in truth it’s a stop gap before the Renewal Heat Incentive scheme and the Green Deal are introduced in 2012.

“However, for anyone considering installing solar thermal before next winter why not grab what is effectively a £300 discount on the average £3,000-£5,000 purchase and installation cost?

The Premium Payment scheme will be run by the Energy Saving Trust. Householders can call 0800 512 012 or visit www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/RHPP. A factsheet on the Premium Payment scheme can be found here.

Gordon Miller is sustainability & communications director of Sustain Worldwide . He writes for The Financial Times and The Sunday Times and founded eco homes website whatgreenhome.com and local energy and awareness social enterprise The High Barnet Green Home Zone.

New Initiative Launched to Improve Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Housing

One of the most cost effective methods of cutting emissions is through improving energy efficiency in the UK’s existing housing stock.  Whilst on the surface this might sound quite easy, it’s actually quite a challenge.  Four out of five homes in the UK are owned privately and to date nobody has been able to successfully deliver an efficient method of managing a large scale retrofit project such as this.  One initiative, the Government’s Green Deal, is designed to help, but there are many hurdles to jump in order to make this a success.

Whilst more and more homeowners might be focusing on recycling and being more self-sufficient, there is still major work to be done to encourage improvements to energy consumption.  Switching off the odd light switch here and using less water there is a great start, but simply isn’t having a dramatic impact on improving energy efficiency nationwide.  With this in mind, a new initiative is being launched to address the challenges faced by homeowners on a financial and advisory level.

Refit West is a revolutionary new scheme which as assisted private homeowners to reduce how much energy they use in their homes, whilst Forum for the Future has formulated a practical model that will see whole houses being retrofitted across the country.

A report, released by Forum for the Future, entitled ‘Update from the front line: real homeowner retrofit journeys and barriers the Green Deal must overcome’ shares insights and experiences of the customer journey and highlights areas that still need to be addressed by the Green Deal initiative.

Forum for the Future has been working on a pilot project together with a small number of other pioneers in Bristol and the West of England.  This project hopes to make this region one of the most sustainable in the UK.  The project has taken a broad spectrum of properties filled with homeowners who are committed to improving the energy consumption and efficiency of their properties.   The experiences of these homeowners will help the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Energy Saving Trust in their development of a nationwide scheme for energy efficiency.

Despite the best efforts of the Government and environmental agencies, residential carbon emissions have fallen by only 6% since 1990.  That’s a worrying statistic when you consider how many initiatives and advertising campaigns there have been during this time.  However, the work of the Forum for the Future is essential to ensure we meet our national carbon reduction targets.

It’s really important, says Forum for the Future, to empower homeowners, giving them all the information and cost effective options they require to improve energy efficiency.  This includes designing effective solutions, ensuring suppliers offer value for money and quality services and solutions, and to build confidence and trust in the emerging market.  Working with Refit West, Forum for the Future has developed some innovative financial models that will help homeowners to invest the necessary capital costs required for retrofitting their homes to make them more energy efficient.

In order for this initiative to work, it’s important that key elements are in place including providing financial incentives, creating demand amongst homeowners and ensuring a professional workforce with the necessary skills is available to carry out the refit works.

In time, Forum for the Future aims to create a replicable model that can be rolled out across the whole of the UK and to increase the demand by homeowners for energy efficiency works.

A recording of the webinar held by Ben Ross and Refit West homeowner Chris Priest on 25th March is now available on the 2degreesnetwork website for registered members of 2degrees.

Barnet residents paint the town green

I’ve come across a couple of fantastic projects recently where people are doing their bit towards living more sustainable lives – that is, living in a way that recognises that our petroleum fuelled days are numbered.  Both on the roads and at home.

Energy sustainability is one of biggest challenges of the current age and rather than taking the view that some other clever bugger will invent a way to power a Range Rover using old Evian bottles, residents of High Barnet are organising themselves.

The High Barnet Green Home Zone is a not-for-profit project run by volunteers and sets itself the task of raising awareness and reducing energy consumption in the borough.

A team of volunteer ‘Street Champions’ visit residents and help them measure their energy use and waste production and look at ways to reduce both.  According the organisers simple things such as joining a car share club can reduce travel costs by around £2500 a year whilst helping reduce your fuel consumption and carbon footprint.

The home is a great place to start when looking at your own carbon footprint as it uses massive amounts of energy in the form of electricity and gas – the majority of which is produced from fossil fuel reliant systems – and it costs you money!  So the more energy you can save the more money you can save – what more incentive do you need!

Search for houses for sale in Barnet on The Big Property List

Find out more at the High Barnet Green Home Zone website

Sustainable Buildings: Raise high the green roof beams

Constructing homes sustainably, i.e using materials, technologies and practices that have the minimum possible impact on the earth’s resources, is an exponential growth industry. From what was perceived as a minority ‘fringe’ world only a decade ago (how we laughed at Prince Charles’ green assertions in the 1990s – who’s laughing now?) it’s now mainstream, and worth billions to the global economy. But what does constructing homes sustainably actually mean?

The villas at Alma Verde Resort & Spa on Portugal’s Algarve use 94% less energy than conventionally built homes in the region.

In short, it’s perceived as lots of different things to a great many people with different convictions, agendas and interests. To some it’s all about preserving natural resources e.g. if you chop down one tree for lumber, then the sustainable thing to do is to plant another. For others that doesn’t go far enough. The tree should only be used locally because to transport it has a high ‘embodied energy’ cost i.e. it uses an abundance of fossil fuels – oil (petrol), gas etc to get it to its destination.

At the heart of this argument is the belief in the science of climate change i.e. that through the release of green house gases (CO2 and methane being the primary two, which is primarily brought about through the burning of fossil fuels: coal, oil and gas) the planet is heating up to a level beyond which humanity, fauna and flora cannot survive. En route to the apocalypse, sea levels will rise, drowning cities, famine will ensue, and civil conflict will break out. Some predictions argue that this will occur if the planet’s temperature rises 4 degrees above the current level.

Properties built by the MGM group in the French Alps are constructed to high levels of energy efficiency, known as BBC in France

Ok, so how do our homes impact on the domesday scenario? Well, almost 50 per cent of CO2 emissions are attributed to the built environment – residential and commercial buildings. In the UK the residential sector accounts for 27 per cent of CO2 emissions. This

is affected by a combination of newly built dwellings – including the embodied energy of e.g. making the brick that the house is constructed from and the energy required to get it to site e.g. on lorry – and the emissions from our existing homes.

Because 99% of our electricity and heat generation domestically in the UK is from fossil fuel based sources, our homes have a huge carbon footprint. The average household in the

UK emits 6 tonnes of CO2 annually; in the US it’s higher than 10 tonnes. We can reduce or CO2 emissions through a combination of using less electricity and gas, and by generating the fuel we need to light, power and heat our homes from renewable energy sources e.g. the sun, wind and water, which are carbon neutral and emit little or no CO2 when they are used to create electricity and heat.

So, in essence, that’s why building our new homes – there is a huge housing shortage of quality housing in the UK as well as elsewhere in the world – needs to be undertaken sustainably. It also explains why we need to what’s called ‘retrofit’ our existing homes: to make them more energy efficient which means beginning with air-tightness – in the UK the majority of heat (and CO2) is lost through un- or poorly insulated roofs and walls (in hot countries where there is an over-reliance on energy hungry air-con the homes need to be better built to remain cooler naturally).

Increasingly, new homes (spearheaded by those built by the members of Sustain Worldwide, a membership organisation of global sustainable developers) are being built sustainably. Such homes are significantly powered and heated from renewable energy e.g. solar PV and solar thermal panels, or ground source heat – all of which have a heavily reduced carbon footprint over conventionally heated and powered homes. Many of the homes are built using locally sourced building materials e.g. timber from a local forest that is sustainably managed.

These homes are also being built with an awareness to conserve water e.g. through the installation of aerated shower heads and taps; some have inbuilt grey water systems which once cleaned recycle tap and bath water to be used in the toilet and washing machine. Waste reduction measures are implemented – both to minimise building waste during construction – but also provisions are made to sort, reuse and recycle, where possible, once people are living in the homes.

Reduce, Reuse, recycle is not a bad motto to build solid foundations upon.

This article was contributed by Gordon Miller, sustainability and communications director of Sustain Worldwide. +44 (0)20 7754 5557 http://www.sustainworldwide.com/

Be water-wise: Saving water in the home

Water, water everywhere, says the old idiom, but not a drop to spare.  The saying has never been more true, primarily because there’s more demand than ever before for the available water.  There are more mouths to quench than previously – approaching seven billion – and increasingly levels of agricultural and technological development worldwide require escalating volumes of water to grow crops successfully, and to ‘oil’ the machinery.

Recycling of water – including that from swimming pools - is an essential and standard practice at the Porto Heli Collection in Greece.

In the developed world, water comes from a tap.  We rarely give a second thought to how it got there, or where it ends up.  But we should because water is not just an issue about water, but also one of energy use and CO2 emissions.

Every drop of water we flush, pour or let drain away is treated before re-entering the potable water cycle. Treatment requires mechanisation in industrial plants that are powered by energy hungry and CO2 emitting – one of the greenhouses gases scientists say causes climate change – machinery.

So, your seemingly innocuous leaving of the tap running when you clean your teeth wastes water, impacts on the clean up process which in turn has an effect on the depletion of the earth’s resources and, some would say, the planet’s very sustainability itself. Gulp! In fact our “water behaviour” is responsible for huge volumes of wastage. For example, watering the garden from a hose, washing the car from a hose, having a bath instead of a shower, leaving the water running when washing the dishes and so on.

Rainwater harvesting and greywater recycling will both be practised at Medina Palms, Kenya

Most of those require ‘behavioural’ change as well as practical measures. The good news is there are plenty of products in the marketplace to assist you to save water.  Let’s start in the home. To reduce the volume of water from your taps and showerheads, buy an aerated showerhead, or fit tap aerators. In doing so you’ll also reduce your hot water bill because the less water you need to heat for your shower, the more money you’ll save on your gas or electricity charges. You’ll also reduce your household CO2 emissions, and water consumption, of course.

If you have a lever handle toilet, rather than the modern push-button type, the water volume – 7.5 or 9 litres – is greater than is necessary (6 litres and as little as 4.5 litres in new toilets) to evacuate the deposits. Instead fit a “save a flush” or a “hippo bag” or even a brick, which will displace one or more litres of water in every flush. Indeed, think about whether you need to flush every time. Some people use the ditty “if it’s light it’s alright (meaning no need to flush) if it’s brown, flush it down”.

In the garden, don’t attach a hosepipe to the tap and use potable water, but install a water butt to catch rainwater, and use that. A water butt costs from around £20, and is easy to fit. Think about the plants you put in your garden. Many Mediterranean species are more drought resistant than indigenous ones, so they will require less watering in the hot summer months when we traditionally experience the driest time. (And does it really matter if your grass goes a little brown? One heavy rainfall, and it’ll be back to its glorious green.)

You could even consider recycling your “greywater” – from your shower, washing up, teeth cleaning, washing machine etc – everything except that from with is dispelled from the toilet. Greywater treatment systems, which are usually ‘buried ‘ in the garden, cost from around £1,000 and can be retrofitted in older properties – although not always very easily as the pipework – which often goes under floors and joists – may need rerouting.

Increasingly, new homes (such as most of those built by members of Sustain Worldwide, a membership organisation of global sustainable developers) are fitted out with a greywater system. The measure – as well as others, and homeowners’ being “water aware” – is aimed at reducing the average Briton’s net water usage to 90 litres a day. Currently, it’s a huge 150 litres per person, per day. The impact of the 40% reduction will save water, decrease energy use and lessen CO2 emissions.

This article was contributed by Gordon Miller, sustainability and communications director of Sustain Worldwide.

+44 (0)20 7754 5557 

http://www.sustainworldwide.com/