Energy Saving Tips

Save Gas or Petrol

• Walk or cycle to work – you’ll save money and get a good workout.
• Take public transport, which is twice as fuel efficient, per passenger kilometre, as driving the average private vehicle. Taking the bus or other public transport once a week will cut almost 15 per cent off your vehicle fuel bill.
• Driving 90 kilometre per hour on the highway uses 20 per cent less fuel than driving 110 kph.
• Join a car pool.
• Don’t warm up your car by idling (it doesn’t need it) and turn it off if you’re stopped or parked for more than 10 seconds, except in traffic.
• Get rid of your old clunker. A pre-1998 car produces 65 times more hydrocarbon emissions than a 2001 model and gets much worse fuel economy.
• Consider Alternative Fuels, such as Biodiesel.

Save Water

• Install low-flow showerheads (about £10) – They cut your shower water use in half.
• Replace old toilets, which can use upwards of 20 litres per flush, with models that use as little as three or six litres.
• Install low-flow aerators on your faucets. They cut the flow rate in half by mixing air with the water, with no discernable change in performance.
• Water your lawn only once a week during dry summer periods and run the sprinkler for no more than 45 minutes. Keep your grass longer to conserve water.
• Take a five-minute shower, which uses half as much hot water as a bath or a 10-minute shower.
• Minimise water used per flush in your toilet by adjusting the float and/or putting a Hippo Bag / water bottle in the tank.
• Don’t run the water continuously when washing dishes by hand, shaving, washing your face and hands or brushing your teeth. Avoid rinsing dishes with hot water before putting them in the dishwasher.

Cooking

• Don’t peek while using your oven; you lose about 20 per cent of the heat every time you open the door.
• Reheat small food portions with your microwave oven, which uses less than one-half the energy of a conventional oven/range.

Hot Water

• Install low-flow showerheads (about £10) – They cut your shower water use in half, with no change in performance, saving sweaty families more than £50 a year in hot water use.
• Wrap foam insulation around the first metre of hot water pipe above your hot water tank and put an insulating jacket around older hot water tanks.
• Set the temperature on your hot water tank to 50 degrees Celsius. Every 5.5 degrees C. reduction saves up to 13 per cent on your water heating costs.

Refridgeration

• Buy energy-efficient refrigerators, which use as little as 400 kilowatt hours of electricity per year, half the energy use of standard fridges from the early ‘90s and one quarter of those from the early 1980s.
• Set the temperature in your refrigerator between 1.7 and 3.3 degrees Celsius for the refrigerator compartment and –18 degrees C. for the freezer.

Washing Clothes

• Wash clothes in cold water whenever possible and always rinse in cold water (heating water typically accounts for up to 90 per cent of the washer’s total energy use).
• Dry clothes outside on a line or indoors on a rack, when possible. Use the moisture sensor feature on your dryer, if it has one, to prevent over drying, or select the permapress setting, which uses cold air at the end of the cycle.

Save Electricity

• Turn your computer off when it is not in use . When your computer is on but not in use, turn off the monitor, which uses at least half of the computer’s energy.
• Unplug DVD players, TVs, games consoles and their set-top boxes when not in use. Even when turned off, their standby power consumes a considerable amount of electricity.
• Turn the lights off when you leave a room.
• Install CFL bulbs in your home