You couldn’t celebrate New Year’s Eve without making some resolutions for the year ahead.  In addition to personal ones, it’s a great time of the year to make some family resolutions that can also save the household some money, notably ‘going green’. 

Becoming more energy efficient has certainly risen up people’s agendas in the last couple of years, but changing the way your family consumes energy is a real test.  Therefore, including some green energy efficient guidelines in your New Year’s resolutions could be a great way to get things moving.

Saving Energy as a Family

If you’re trying to involve a family that has young kids, it can be very hard to focus them on things such as saving energy.  However, a little ingenuity can go a long way!  Why not make energy saving a game, in which the whole family has to work together to reduce running costs? 

It can be done whether you have a smart meter or not, but if you do have one, then it’s even better as the family can see the impact their behaviour is having every single day. Many energy suppliers can now supply smart meters free of charge, so it’s worth enquiring with your supplier at the very least.

The secret is to make it an easy game to play. Explain the importance of completing each energy-saving task, and make sure each member of the family is keeping an eye on each other’s habits. It will

• Switch the lights off when you leave a room
• Ensure appliances such as televisions and computers are turned off at the socket when you have finished using them. Avoid leaving them in standby mode.
• If something has an “eco” or “green” mode, make sure you place it in that mode.
• Reducing the temperature of the several heating by just a few degrees can also represent significant savings over the course of a year, sometimes up to 5%, or more.
• Taking a shower instead of a bath can greatly reduce the amount of energy use

Shopping Local & Organic

In the New Year many of us feel a push to be more healthy and more energetic, and this can also follow through to decreasing out food miles and embracing a more organic diet to help both our bodies and the environment. Shopping locally, for local produce reduces food miles while also putting the money in the hands of shopkeepers in your community rather than large multi-nationals – win win! Swithcing to Organic or Free Range foods only takes a little research on your behalf to really make a difference to the environment.

Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle

It’s an old adage but a good one, and a one easily forgotten in our very consumer driven world, buy once and buy well is now coming back into vogue as our society embraces the need for well made goods that don’t harm ourselves, our environment or the economy.

Buy Organic Items

As mentioned above buying organic food is a good thing to aim for to reduce the amount of chemicals we ingest, but have you thought about incorporating your approach into other items that you buy. There are a lot of chemicals that we come into contact with, without thinking about it – take children’s toys, cheap plastic imported toys have lots of chemicals that children play with and inevitably put in their mouths!

Take a look at the range of great natural rubber toys from Mushroom and Co, safe to chew and play.