It’s all good and well that new homes are being built to greener standards, but what about the millions of old houses that are as leaky as sieves when it comes to keeping the heat in (or out in the middle of summer).  So there’s a new campaign, headed up by Grand Design’s Kevin McCloud that’s going to be having a go at persuading the government to help home-owners green up their currently un-energy saving houses and flats, countrywide.

It’s called the Great British Refurb campaign and you can support the campaign by signing a petition asking the government “to offer households new ways to pay for green refurbishment, which would significantly reduce upfront costs and instead spread them over a longer period of time.  It also asks for better financial incentives for householders to refurbish their homes to make them greener and more energy efficient, through substantial government grants, subsidies or tax rebates. Its final demand is to ensure installers are qualified and approved to undertake the work.” [edie]

In the meantime, there are plenty of smaller things that we can do to improve our energy efficiency.  Find out how to run a greener fridge, choose an energy efficient washing machine, or put together your own DIY energy efficiency kit for your home.

So, we all know that we should be buying energy saving appliances these days to replace the old energy vampire ones that we had before (once they’ve shuffled off their electric coils of course).  But what do with with the old appliances once they’re no longer needed?  You could take them down to your local municipal waste drop-off to be recycled.  On the other hand, you could start a band and use them as the instruments.  Don’t believe me?  Check this out.

[via: greenUPGRADER]

Around 20 to 25% of our household energy bills are spent on lighting.  So it stands to reason that by cutting our energy use for lighting we’ll be saving a whole lot of money.  Here are some ideas for cutting back on energy used for lighting in your home.

1. Replace all incandescent lightbulbs with CFLs.

2. Switch off lights when you leave the room.

3. Open curtains and use daylight during the day.

4. Use solar lights where possible.

5. Make your own lamp out of an empty bottle like this:

We all need a little reminder from time to time.  Why is it that you decided to turn your life around and go green in the first place?  This might help you remember.

If you need more reminding, or want to convince someone else why they should be going green too, get yourself a copy of The Inconvenient Truth on DVD and watch it.

Photo credit: johnrobertshepherd

Beachcombers don’t bother, there’s no treasure to be had on British beaches, just a load of trash.  This is the message in Reuters story about how our beaches have deteriorated into rubbish dumps over the last 15 years.  That’s right, the state of British beaches is the worst ever.

A survey by the MSC revealed an average of 2,195 items of litter per kilometer of beach.  Over 5,000 volunteers cleaned and surveyed 374 beaches for the survey, finding 385,659 items of litter.  A third of this litter was made up of food packaging and cigarette butts, and discarded fishing equipment made up another 15%.

All this rubbish not only detracts from the beauty of the beaches, it’s also very dangerous for the wildlife who live on and around them.  Birds and marine animals often accidentally eat litter or plastic, causing infections or death.  They also become entangled in fishing lines and nets that have been discarded.  There’s also the possibility that the plastic eaten by marine animals could end up in the human food chain.  And then there’s cost to taxpayers of cleaning up the awful mess.

Environment minister Huw Irranca-Davies said it was up to the public to take responsibility for the state of the beaches.

“Litter goes in our bins, not on our beaches — and ultimately this is an issue of personal responsibility,” he added.

“This is a problem caused by a minority who spoil things for everyone else, and campaigns against this behaviour can help us to make this unacceptable to everyone.”

So take your litter home with you, and make sure that you recycle all recyclable packaging.  It’s up to you whether our beaches stay beautiful.

Earth Day is just a few days away, and I’ve been thinking about what I can do to mark the day.

Here are some of the ideas I’ve come up with:

1. Take a hike with my children.

2. Buy a composter and water-butt for my new house.

3. Change all the lightbulbs in our new house to CFLs.

4. Plant a tree.

5.  Make a recycled cardboard laptop case.

Tell us what you’re doing for Earth Day.  And if you’re a Twitter-bug, be sure to add the #earthtweet hash tag to your Earth Day Tweets.

Photo credit: woodleywonderworks

The beginning of the English summer holds so much promise.  Tiny green things are coming up everywhere and there’s so much potential to make your lifestyle greener too.

Get out into the garden and plant yourself some food (you can do this even if you don’t have a garden), or even a tree.

Equip yourself with a homemade recycled tyre trug,

Light your garden with the power of the sun.

Install a water butt.

Start composting.

If you don’t have a garden, why not find out about getting an allotment?

Growing your own food can save you loads of money every month.

Photo credit: Robert S Donovan

If you’ve been putting off going green because it’s too expensive, now’s your chance to save BIG and get onto that greener path.  Pricegrabber is offering FREE DELIVERY on everything.

Cut your carbon footprint with a bicycle.

Charge your electronic devices with a solar charger.

Switch to energy saving bulbs.

Buy organic whenever possible.

Buy recycled to close the recycling loop.

There’s nothing like a rainy long weekend to get me in the mood for crafting, happily indoors with the pitter-patter of rain on the windows.  I’ve been taking a look at CRAFT, who have just won an award in Treehugger’s 1st annual Best of Green Awards for being the Best Crafting Blog.  They’ve got some brilliant recycling and repurposing crafty projects just right for this time of year (i.e. Spring, Easter…)

How-To: Refashion a T-Shirt into a Halter Top

How-To: Recycle Baby Socks Into Bunnies, Chicks and Eggs

Stuffed Bunny Pattern

If you’re not feeling all that crafty, never fear, you can still do your bit for the planet by buying recycled goods.  There are more recycled goods than you could imagine right here at Pricegrabber.  Take a look!

I certainly hope not, but you will if you don’t take action.  That’s right.  It has recently emerged that the average person in the UK does get through 13,000 in their lifetime.  Isn’t that horrendous?  But it just gets scarier:  in 2008 9.9 million plastic bags were distributed, that’s enough bags to fill 188 Olympic swimming pools, or stretch to the moon and back 7 times [source: edie].  The UK government are so shocked by these statistics that they’re going to do something about it in the form of a campaign encouraging us to re-use our plastic bags.  But, is that taking it far enough?

You can do more, by not taking plastic bags in the first place, and choosing a reusable bag that is not only made from something else that would have ended up in landfill somewhere.  So using recycled re-usable bags are just about as green as it gets.  To that end, you can buy one of these gorgeous bags, or you can save your pounds and make your own out of something that you already have.

Photo credit: Zainub