January 10th, 2020 by Chris Chapman

With the climate crisis affecting us all, it's important that everyone tries to be as green as possible in 2020. These 5 tips will help you be more eco-friendly, reducing your bills and helping the planet at the same time!

Reduce Heating Usage

Your heating bill is likely one of the main worries you have throughout the winter. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to reduce the amount of energy you use on heating without turning your home into an icebox! The main one is to be smart about which rooms you actually need to heat. If you’re spending the vast majority of your time at home in your living room, for example, do you really need to heat your whole home all night long? Take a bit of extra time to program your central heating based on your schedule and the rooms you actually use.

Picking up an affordable electric heater can help massively with this. Modern panel heaters and oil filled radiators can heat most rooms just as efficiently as a central heating radiator, so they’re great for use as bedroom heaters. Turn off your central heating (or leave it on very low if frost is forecast) and use your electric heater to keep your bedroom warm rather than waste energy heating unused rooms.

You can also make your central heating more efficient by plugging up gaps around your door frames, fireplace, floorboards, and chimney. This will prevent draughts from entering your home while also reducing the amount of heat that escapes.

Go Smart

Smart technology is here to stay, and there’s never been a better time to get on board with it! You can find smart versions of most household appliances these days, from TVs to light bulbs to electric heaters. The main benefit of smart technology is that it gives you total control over the amount of energy you can use. You’re much more likely to program your heating efficiently if you can do it with a few taps of your smartphone, and the same applies to all electrical appliances.

Depending on the type of smart app an appliance uses, you might be able to control it from anywhere in the world provided you have an internet connection. This makes them really convenient to use in your day-to-day life. For example, if you have smart light bulbs and you forget to turn them off when you leave for work, you can just switch them off remotely!

MYLEK App Controlled Digital Electric Panel Heater with 24/7 Timer 1KW

Price: £100.00

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Ditch the Air Con

Aircon units guzzle electricity. If you have a large office space or a shop floor you need to keep cool in summer, then you probably do need one. However, if you’re trying to keep cool at home or in a small office space, you probably don’t! An air cooler is a much more energy-efficient way to keep cool. They provide much more cooling power than a fan while (usually) using less than 100W of power to run, so they’re a great eco-friendly compromise.

MYLEK Large Remote Control Portable Air Cooler with Timer + LCD Display

Price: £139.99

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Buy (or Grow) Seasonal Food

Buy British fruit and veg if you want to help the planet! The carbon footprint of imported food is massive, so try and buy seasonal food where you can. That means seasonal fruit in summer and root vegetables in autumn and winter. No one’s saying you have to completely give up eating strawberries in winter, but if we all make an effort to cut back a little, our combined efforts will make a huge difference.

Reduce Water Use

Despite what you’d think was a high number of lakes and rivers in the UK, we actually have a lot less water per person in our country than other European nations. This puts a tremendous strain on our water sources as so much of it is used. Luckily, there are lots of ways you can reduce your water use without impacting your daily life! For one, you can recycle water used for cooking and use it in your garden. If you boil some veg, keep the water to one side and use it to grow some more! You can also pick up a water butt to collect rainwater and use that in gardening.

Outside of that, you can try and reduce the amount of time you spend in the shower by around a minute every day. It probably won’t make that much difference to you, but it’ll save you around 2.5 gallons of water a day. Over a week, that’s 17.5 gallons. Over a year, it’s more than 900 gallons – enough to fill around three six-person hot tubs!