Future Friendly Tips

1. Turn your thermostat down. Reducing your room temperature by 1°C could cut your heating bills by up to 10 percent and typically saves around £55 per year. If you have a programmer, set your heating and hot water to come on only when required rather than all the time.
2. Is your water too hot? Your cylinder thermostat should be set at 60°C/140°F.
3. Close your curtains at dusk to stop heat escaping through the windows and check for draughts around windows and doors.
4. Always turn off the lights when you leave a room.
5. Don't leave appliances on standby and remember not to leave laptops and mobile phones on charge unnecessarily.
6. If possible, fill up the washing machine, tumble dryer or dishwasher: one full load uses less energy than two half loads.
7. Only boil as much water as you need (but remember to cover the elements if you're using an electric kettle).
8. A dripping hot water tap wastes energy and in one week wastes enough hot water to fill half a bath, so fix leaking taps and make sure they're fully turned off!
9. Use energy saving lightbulbs. They last up to 10 times longer than ordinary bulbs, and using one can save you around £40 over the lifetime of the bulb. This saving could be around £65 over its lifetime if you're replacing a high wattage incandescent bulb, or one used for more than a few hours a day.
10. Do a home energy check. Just answer some simple questions about your home and we'll give you a free, impartial report telling you how you can save up to £300 a year on your household energy bills.
1. Think before you buy something new. Do you really need it? Could you buy it second-hand? If you are only going to use it a few times, try to borrow, swap, or hire the item.
2. Think before you throw something away. Can it be repaired or could it be reused by you or by someone else? If it is in good condition, you could donate it to a charity shop, swap it, or make some money by selling it online or at a car boot sale.
3. Reduce the amount of junk mail you receive by up to 95%, by putting a No Junk Mail sign on your front door and subscribing to the Mailing Preference Service online at http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/ or call 0845 703 4599.
4. Try to buy goods which have minimal packaging – for example loose fruit and vegetables, and look for packaging which can be recycled.
5. Drink tap water. It's 500 times cheaper than bottled water, and is kinder to the environment, using 300 times less CO₂ to process than bottled alternatives. Carry an empty bottle with you to fill up on the go, and proudly order tap water in restaurants!
6. Save £480 by eating all the food you buy. The average family throws away the equivalent of one in every three bags of food they buy, wasting £480 each year. Make a list before you shop, plan your meals, ensure you understand use by and best before dates, and store your food properly to extend its life.
7. Use up your leftovers to save waste, time and money. Yesterday's roast chicken can become today's chicken sarnie and you can make and freeze next week's chicken curry.
8. Compost your food waste. When we throw away food it gets buried in landfill sites and creates methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than CO₂. Why not make nutrient-rich compost instead – your garden will love you for it!
9. Recycle as much as you can. Visit www.recyclenow.com to find out what you can recycle at home and where your nearest recycling banks are located.
10. Most of the 800 carrier bags the average British family gets through each year are used once, and for less than 20 minutes. Reduce waste by reusing your carrier bags and 'bags for life' – keep some on hand to take when you go shopping.
11. Get your friends, family and colleagues involved! You could organise a 'swishing' (clothes swapping) party – take those clothes you never wear, and swap them for a new wardrobe. Or organise something similar at your children's school to encourage parents to swap pupils' outgrown school uniforms.
12. Think about waste-free gifts for birthdays and holidays. 'Experience' presents such as concert tickets or day trips can be more thoughtful and less wasteful than buying an unnecessary gift. Or give your gift the personal touch by baking a cake or getting crafty and making a bag, dress or photo frame from recycled materials. And what about a gift of skills or time... you could offer to help decorate their living room, an evening's worth of babysitting, or a piano lesson?
13. Grow your own! It's easy to grow your own fruit and veg in the garden, a window box, an allotment or even an old pair of wellies. Eating food you have grown yourself tastes better, saves resources, saves money, and is lots of fun!
14. Using the computer at home or work? Save paper by only printing what you really need to and print double sided so less paper is wasted. Re-use scrap paper for notes.
15. Don't bin your old electronic items. Many charities will recycle your old mobile phone (and printer cartridges), and you can visit www.dontbinitbringit.com to find out where to recycle white goods, televisions, computers, hairdryers, remote controls and other electric and electronic goods.
1. Healthy teeth healthy rivers: Remember to turn off the tap while brushing your teeth – a running tap wastes over 6 litres per minute. If the entire adult population of England and Wales remembered to do this, we could save 180 mega litres a day-enough to supply nearly 500,000 homes.
2. Drop a hippo in your cistern: About a quarter of all the clean, drinkable water we use in our homes is flushed down a toilet. If you're in the market for a new loo, consider buying a water efficient toilet or one with a dual flush. If your loo is still as good as new, put a hippo or other displacement device into the cistern to save some water. Give your water company a ring; they can give you one of these devices for free.
3. Stop those drips: A dripping tap wastes at least 5,500 litres of water a year: that's enough water wasted to fill a paddling pool every week for the whole summer. Mending your dripping tap washer could save you over £18 a year.
4. Fill up those dishwashers: Hand-washing dishes typically uses about 63 litres per session; if those dishes are rinsed off under a running tap the total water used averages 150 litres-in comparison, a modern dishwasher can use as little as 15 litres of water per cycle. But make sure you fill the dishwasher or you'll be wasting even more than if you were to wash up by hand. And if you're in the market for a new dishwasher, have a look at our rankings to help you buy a water efficient model.
5. Bathers beware: A bath typically uses around 80 litres, while a short shower can use as little as a third of that amount. But beware since many power-showers may actually use more than a bath. You can minimise your water use by reusing your bathwater to water your houseplants or garden.
6. Short, sharp, showers save water: By using a shower timer you can increase your awareness of the amount of time you spend in the shower. Try taking shorter showers to reduce the amount of water you use.
7. Frigid water: Fill a jug with tap water and leave it to cool in your fridge. This way you don't have to run the tap for ages just to get a cold drink.
8. Burst pipe preparedness: Check out where your main stop valve is and make sure that you can turn it on and off. If ever a pipe bursts, you'll know how to cut off the flow.
9. Sparkling asparagus: By washing your fruits and veg in a bowl rather than under a running tap, you could cut down on water waste effortlessly. And as an added bonus, you can use the leftover water to feed your houseplants.
10. Rubbish for rubbish bins: Try to avoid flushing away cotton balls, make-up tissues, and those pesky spiders-throwing them in the bin will cut down on the amount of water that is wasted by every flush.
11. Be sprinkler savvy: We all love our gardens, but sprinklers can use as much as 1,000 litres of water per hour – that's more than a family of four can use in a whole day. Using your sprinkler early in the morning or late in the evening will mean less water will evaporate from your garden and more will get to the roots, where you actually want it to go.
12. You can with a watering can: Your hosepipe can spew as much as 18 litres of water a minute. By using a watering can in your garden you can significantly reduce the amount of water wasted; or consider fitting it with a trigger gun to control the flow (although during a hosepipe ban you will need to use a watering can).
13. Invest in a butt: Your roof collects about 85,000 litres of rain each year which then just runs straight into the sewers. This could fill 450 water butts with free water: you could water your garden, your houseplants, or wash your car for free! To get a butt, call your local water company.
14. The bucket and sponge approach: Rather than washing your car with a running hosepipe, try using a bucket and sponge instead. (Better still: fill the bucket up with water from the water butt). Just 30 minutes with a hosepipe will use more water than the average family uses in a day. And, using a bucket will give your car a much more precise wash.
15. Magnificent mulch: Mulching is one of the greatest things you can do for your garden. Mulches such as pebbles, gravel, cocoa shell, chipped bark, and grass clippings should be applied as a five to eight centimetre layer; but do avoid mulching too close to plant stems as this can lead to rotting in winter. Mulching will not only keep away water-loving weeds, but it will also keep the soil cool, decrease evaporation, and reduce soil compaction.
16. Soak, don't sprinkle: Giving your plants' roots a good soaking once or twice a week in dry weather is much better than lightly watering them every day because most of that water just evaporates away. Do remember, though, that new plantlings do need regular watering until they are established.

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