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On June 3rd 2007 TBC launched environmental 'Tip of the Week' each Sunday. For the following year we put together our 52 top tips for caring for creation. By implementing as many of the tips below as you can, do your bit to help save the environment, and the earth God gave us responsibility for in Genesis 1:26: "Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”" If we all do our bit in our homes and work-places, think what a big impact together we could have.
52 Creation Care tips that won’t cost the earth...
Around the Home
- Tip 1: Fix dripping taps and save the water lost when the hot tap is
heating up, then use it to water your plants. In the UK we each use about 150
litres of water a day – in the south-east, it’s 163 litres – yet we have 80%
less water to start with!
- Tip 2: Take control of your mail! Register with the mail preference
service to cut junk mail, and leave mailing lists you don't use. Send emails
instead of letters and sign up for online statements where possible. Over ½
million tonnes of junk mail, equivalent to 8½ million trees, is sent in the UK
every year, and 90% goes straight in the bin.
- Tip 3: Ditch the cling-film! Put leftovers in a sealable container or a
bowl with a plate over it. If you need to wrap food up, use greaseproof paper
or a paper bag and buy fruit and vegetable loose. Cling-film just ends up in
landfill, creating methane gases.
- Tip 4: Have a eco-friendly toilet! Get a descaler ring from the Ethical
Superstore. This chemical-free magnetic ring will polarize the calcium
preventing stains and lime scale build up for up to 5 years! Get a ‘toilet
hippo’ to reduce the amount of water flushed and use eco-friendly toilet
cleaner and recycled toilet tissue.
- Tip 5: Ditch the disposable nappies. Use cloth nappies whenever possible.
When you use disposables, use ones made from recycled paper. Eight million
nappies are thrown away every day and each child uses a total of 5,850 nappies
in their lifetime.
Energy Saving Ideas
- Tip 6: Turn lights off when you leave the room replace bulbs with energy
saving ones which use much less energy, saving 80% on running costs – around
£5 a year per bulb. If each house installed 3 energy saving bulbs, the energy
saved could run England’s street lights for a year.
- Tip 7: Only fill the kettle as full as you need to. It is estimated that
we normally boil twice the volume of water needed. If everyone boiled just
enough water for their cuppa, the energy saved could power over three-quarters
of the UK's street lights.
- Tip 8: Turn electrical appliances off at the mains. 8% of electricity
consumed at home is from appliances on standby – so for a monthly bill of £20,
you waste nearly £20 a year! Britons waste the around two power stations'
worth of electricity each year by leaving TV sets and other gadgets on
standby.
- Tip 9: Get cavity wall insulation. The cost of the insulation can be
recovered in under two years and the ongoing savings can be as much as £130
-£160 each year. If every household in the UK that could, installed cavity
wall insulation, it would save £960 million a year – which could heat 1.7
million homes for a year!
- Tip 10: Set your washing machine to 30° C and always ensure that you have
a full load. Modern washing detergents are designed to work well even at low
temperatures, so most clothes can be washed in cooler water. Washing at 30° C
for 1 year saves, on average, enough energy to watch around 700 hours of TV or
boil enough water to make 2,500 cups of tea.
- Tip 11: Use your washing line instead of a tumble drier. Clothes hung to
dry in the sun smell fresher than ones out of a dryer drum. Tumble
dryers are expensive, so spin dry clothes first and use tumble dryer balls.
Tumble driers are inherently inefficient, every use generates enough CO² to
fill 150 party balloons.
- Tip 12: Watch your use of the heating control! Energy used in homes
creates more than a 1/4 of the UK's carbon emissions - 80% of this is for
heating. Install individual thermostats, use a timer and turn down your
heating by 1º. Close curtains and blinds when the sun goes down to reduce heat
loss. Direct electric heaters where you need them, and turn them off when you
leave the room.
- Tip 13: Use individually switched extension leads. Exchange your extension
leads for ones that are individually switched and you only turn on what you
want to use. With an individually switched extension you save electricity and
money without having to change around plugs all the time.
- Tip 14: Use Green or Ethical Energy! Equipower charge everyone the same,
whatever their payment method. Choose a tariff which offsets your carbon
emissions, contributes to building new green energy sources, or purchases
green energy. Go to www.confused.com to find out who could supply your home.
- Tip 15: Invest in a Steamer. Steamers save energy as they enable you to
cook different foods on one ring. After use, let the water cool down, and use
it to give your plants a drink. You save on water and pass on good nutrients.
- Tip 16: Use the dishwasher effectively. Using a dishwasher once uses the
same amount of water as about 5 washes by hand. Make sure you use your
dishwasher full on a cool setting – and when buying a new one go for an ‘A’
rated appliance – this way you’re being economical on electricity too.
All about Rubbish
- Tip 17: Don’t chuck it – reuse it! Sign up to your local Freecycle group (www.freecycle.org)
to recycle useful items. Give old clothes and bric-a-brac away and share items
like lawnmowers or hedge trimmers.
- Tip 18: Make the most of paper. Re-use and recyle paper products as much
as possible, and buy recycled paper products. About 1/5 of household waste is
paper which could be recycled. Every tonne of paper used for recycling saves
30,000 litres of water, 3,000 – 4,000 KWh of electricity and 95% of air
pollution
- Tip 19: Reduce, reuse and recycle - batteries! Buy rechargeable batteries
and a charger or look for alternatives like solar powered lights. Sainsbury’s
will recycle household batteries. Most batteries contain heavy metals or
mercury which can cause soil and water pollution and endanger wildlife.
Currently only about 4% of batteries in the UK are recycled – 24,000 tonnes of
them aren’t!
- Tip 20: Don’t throw clothes in the bin! Take unwanted clothes to
Clothes-to-Go at TBC, your local charity shop or put them in a textile bank.
Designer clothing can be sold through dress agencies. Over 900,000 million
clothes go to landfill each year in the UK, but around 94% of textiles put
into textile banks can be re-used.
- Tip 21: Recycle unused glasses, mobile phones and hearing aids. Take old
glasses to Vision Express for recycling and old hearing aids to Help the Aged
- they will refurbish them and distribute them to people who can’t buy them. A
number of charities now collect old mobiles including Oxfam, Fones4Schools and
Scope - they will normally be sold to raise funds.
- Tip 22: Give CDs and DVDs a new lease of life. Take CDs and DVDs to
charity shops. Polymer Recycling can turn old CDs and cases into burglar
alarms, street lighting and lenses, and DVD cases into birdfeeders. Hang old
CDs and DVDs outside as bird scarers, use them as coasters or cut them up to
make a disco ball!
Cutting down on Chemicals
- Tip 23: Use environmentally friendly chemicals. Chemicals such as
Bio-D, Clear Spring and Ecover are developed using selected vegetable and
mineral sources, guaranteeing maximum biodegradability. Phosphate based
detergents add nutrients to the waste stream with can cause algae blooms in
water. Chlorine products (e.g. bleach) react with organic chemicals in waste
streams to produce chemicals similar to the weedkiller DDT.
- Tip 24: Do your washing with Ecoballs ® At a cost of £35 for a set of
three balls from the Ethical Superstore these last for up to 1000 washes (a
cost of over £250 with a regular detergent). The Ecoballs® ionize the water,
allowing it to get deep into your clothes and lift the dirt away.
- Tip 25: Use lemon juice for cleaning. Bleach wooden chopping boards by
rubbing with lemon juice, leave overnight, then rinse. Remove limescale from
non-plated taps and kitchen surfaces by rubbing with lemon juice, then
rinsing. Half a lemon left in the fridge will help remove unpleasant odours.
- Tip 26: Use traditional cleaners. Use vinegar to clean surfaces, remove
stains, deodorize and as a disinfectant; use a dilute mix with newspaper to
clean windows. Olive oil polishes furniture and cleans stainless steel and
tea-tree oil works as an antiseptic, disinfectant and on mould and mildew. Use
bicarbonate of soda with water to dissolve dirt and grease or dry to lift
carpet stains.
Greener Shopping
- Tip 27: Get a ‘bag for life’ from your supermarket instead of using
disposable carrier bags. 17½ billion plastic bags are given away by
supermarkets each year. This is over 290 bags per person in the UK. (17½
billion seconds ago it was the year 1449.) Plastic disposed of by landfill can
take up to 500 years to decay.
- Tip 28: Think about your grocery shopping. Plan your meals, check your
cupboards and shop with a list. Reduce food wastage and compost as much as
possible. 1/3 of our grocery shopping ends up in landfill, producing
methane gas as it rots, a greenhouse gas that is 21 times more potent than
carbon dioxide.
- Tip 29: Buy seasonal, locally produced, food. Buying food in season
reduces food miles and uses less energy to get it from place of production to
your table. Avoid air freighted food – shipping a kilo of apples from 'down
under' emits one kilo of CO² emissions.
- Tip 30: Have your milk delivered. Having your milk delivered saves
on supermarket food miles as it will come from a local dairy. Dairies will
sterilise the glass bottles and use them again and again.
- Tip 31: Look for the Labels. Green labels help you choose products that
are less harmful to the environment. However, there are so many labels around
it can be hard to know what they all mean! Have a browse through the 'Green
labels and claims' page on the government website (www.defra.gov.uk) for
examples.
- Tip 32: Try a new Fairtrade item. There's a whole range of goods
available now - how about trying wine, sugar, honey or fresh fruits. You can
also get Fairtrade cotton products and flowers. Get your workplace to buy
Fairtrade.
- Tip 33: Shop at a farmers’ market Supermarkets are quick and easy, but
they frequently don’t pay the producers well, and the food may not be local or
very fresh.
- Tip 34: Buy fish from sustainable sources using practices like diving,
trap or line-fishing. Find out more at www.fishonline.org. Research indicates
that, unless trends change, some fish stocks could collapse within 40 years.
Poor practices have harmful knock-on effects to the marine environment and
kill 100,000’s of marine mammals, turtles and seabirds are killed each year.
Gardens and beyond
- Tip 35: Light up your garden with the sun! Most solar-powered lights
charge with daylight which shines on the solar panels and creates electricity,
which in turn charges the battery to power the light, so you save electricity,
and reduce CO² emissions.
- Tip 36: Buy and install a Water Butt (or several). Plants prefer to be
watered with rainwater than purified drinking water. If you’re on a
water meter, you’ll save money too! Our water comes from rivers and
groundwater so each drop we use directly effects the environment. Saving water
will help it last in case of a drought.
- Tip 37: Make your own leaf mould! Autumn leaves can be turned into great
compost or leaf mould for your garden. Just fill a plastic bag with wet
leaves, pierce a few holes in the sack and leave it in a corner of the garden
for a year or two.
- Tip 38: Protect endangered species. There are 41,415 threatened species on
the World Conservation Union Red List - 16,306 are threatened with extinction.
Find out more about this and pray intelligently. Join international or local
charities who protect endangered species or adopt an animal for as little as
£25 a year.
- Tip 39: Pick up litter. As God’s people we were created as stewards of
God’s creation. Clean streets make the place look better and encourage
other people not to drop litter too. Why not try to pick up one piece of
litter on your way to work each day.
- Tip 40: Feed the birds. Birds require high energy (high fat) foods during
the cold winter weather and there’s often not enough naturally occurring food
for them to eat. Mixed bird seed, peanuts, nyjer (thistle) seeds, mealworms,
and uncooked cereals and fresh coconut are all good food - more info from the
RSPB.
- Tip 41: Start growing your own organic produce, it reduces the amount of
pesticides you eat – even washed veg can contain pesticides due to their
permeable skins. Grow your own without using chemicals – you know exactly what
you’re eating! If you don’t have lots of room, many plants can be grown in
pots.
Travel
- Tip 42: Don’t use your car for short journeys. 1/4 of all car journeys in
Britain are under 2 miles long, so walk or cycle instead. Walking briskly for
30 minutes a day will improve your fitness and help the environment. Car
travel is the fastest growing source of CO2 emissions in the UK, creating up
to 20% of all emissions.
- Tip 43: Drive wisely and use less fuel. Drive in the highest gear you can,
use a light throttle, avoid heavy braking, switch off your engine whenever it
is safe to do so, lighten your load and remove empty roof racks. How we drive
can improve local air quality and influence fuel efficiency by as much as 30%.
- Tip 44: Car share – even if it’s just with your family! According to
Friends of the Earth, the average commuter drives 19 miles a day. Car-sharing
with one other person can save 640 kg of carbon dioxide, reducing your
contribution to climate change. With current fuel prices you could save a
fortune!
- Tip 45: Holiday at Home. Holiday in the UK, cut your CO² emissions and
explore our wonderful country! Britain's CO² emissions from aircraft doubled
between 1990 and 2000, and are expected to double again by 2030. One long-haul
return flight can double your annual carbon footprint. Proportionally more
fuel is used in take-off and landing, so short-haul flights are trouble too.
Christmas Time and Gift Ideas
- Tip 46: Hand make decorations and cards. Recycle old cards and wrapping
paper into new homemade cards or gift tags and paper chains. Use fabric scraps
to make Christmas stockings and tree decorations or decorate with holly, ivy,
mistletoe, nuts and fir-cones. Few of the millions of cards sent in Britain
are made from recycled paper.
- Tip 47: Give ‘green’ gifts. Buy ‘recycled’ presents (like glasses from
recycled glass), or Fairtrade gifts - or even make your own! Wrap gifts with
recycled paper, and tie with string or ribbon so both tie and paper can be
re-used.
- Tip 48: Give an alternative gift. Give your time to help someone, or take
them somewhere special! Give a gift of membership to an environmental charity.
Give an ‘Alternative Gift’ to your friends and family – send a goat, or even a
new teacher, in your friend’s name through a charity like World Vision.
- Tip 49: Cut down on your Christmas dinner miles. The ingredients for your
Christmas lunch can travel tens of thousands of miles to your table. Try to
buy local food and wine, supporting local producers and cutting down on the
transport costs, pollution and fuel use. If you can’t get an ingredient
locally, buy Fairtrade.
- Tip 50: Dream of a Green Christmas! We create more rubbish at Christmas,
so unwrap presents carefully, keep the wrappings to use again, re-use
envelopes, plan the menu in advance and don’t over-buy. Compost the leftovers
and recycle empty containers.
- Tip 51: Recycle your Christmas Cards. Around 150 million cards are
delivered each day over Christmas. About 1 billion Christmas cards (17 per
person) just get thrown out that could be recycled into toilet paper, kitchen
paper, toilet roll inners, or cardboard. 17 trees are saved for each tonne of
cards recycled
- Tip 52: Recycle your Christmas Tree. Christmas trees with roots can be
replanted in the garden, and used again next year. Put trees without roots in
your green-lidded bin for composting. In 2005 only 12.5% of the 6 million
trees bought were recycled.
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