Take a small step...

...and make a BIG change!

The below tips and facts are to encourage you to make some very small changes in the way you do things. Changes that, if enough people were to make, will have a huge positive effect on the environment. 

Green Tip -Eat Seasonally in May
Buy as much food as you can that is grown in the UK. It saves on all the energy it takes to fly foods around the world. At their tastiest and cheapest during May are Rhubarb and Asparagus. Visit www.eatseasonably.co.uk 

Green Tip - No gushing while you’re brushing
Turning off the tap when you clean your teeth can save around 8 litres of water a minute. 

Green Tip - What a drag!
If you have to use a car, save cash and cut emissions by making your vehicle more aerodynamic. Removing a roof-rack when not in use and keeping windows closed will help the car move through the air more easily, reducing fuel consumption. A fully loaded roof-rack increases fuel consumption by 30%! 

Green Tip - Put a lid on it!
When you’re cooking, always put a lid on your pan - it dramatically cuts the energy used. 

Green Tip - Right foot forward!
Don't throw out shoes that still have good wear in them. Get them reheeled or repaired at Timpsons in Fareham Shopping Centre.

Green Tip - Eat Seasonally in April
Buy as much food as you can that is grown in the UK. It saves on all the energy it takes to fly foods around the world. At its tastiest and cheapest during April is Cauliflower with a subtle creamy flavour and unique crunchy texture. Visit www.eatseasonably.co.uk

Green Tip - April Showers
The average roof collects about 85,000 litres of rain in a year! This could fill 450 water butts with free water per household.

Green Tip - It’s Bananas!
Storing fruit with a bit of care can make it last longer and reduce waste. For example, bananas emit ethylene, which encourages fruit to ripen quicker. So store them separately if you don’t want your other fruit to go mushy!

Green Tip - Better fish to fry!
According to the World Wildlife Fund, three quarters of all major global fish stocks are now fished at or beyond sustainable limits. To help safeguard remaining stocks, buy sustainably sourced fish approved by the Marine Stewardship Council. Just look for their logo!

Green Tip - Scrap the notes
Use scrap paper that has only been printed on one side for taking notes instead of using new sheets.

Green Tip -Tone down
Set printers to draft quality to use less toner. You can even set your printer to make draft prints by default.

Green Tip -Be a Mug!
When at work, take a mug, a glass or a sports bottle with you so you don’t have to use environmentally unfriendly containers.

Green Tip -Breathing new air into your garden
Chunks of polystyrene are not very environmentally friendly, but if you break them into very small pieces and mix it with the soil in your flower beds, it helps to aerate the soil.

Green Tip -Tea for one
Don’t fill the kettle to make a single cup of tea. It will use far more electricity to boil.

Green Tip -Paper count at work
Measure how much paper you use and/or throw away, and the number of copies you print or photocopy. You will be surprised at the results.

Green Tip -Review preview
Always click on print preview before printing a document to check for typos and layout issues. Choose the correct font size for your printing, and use the function 'shrink to fit' to use the paper adequately. Avoid printing a job twice!

Green Tip -Double take
Print or photocopy on both sides of the paper. Set the default settings on your printer driver to 'double-sided' where possible – so you don’t forget each time.

Green Tip - In the dark
If your office is light enough, consider whether you need the over-head lights on at all.

Green Tip - Lavatory limescale
A litre-bottle of cola (can be flat) poured into the loo and left overnight entirely gets rid of any limescale deposits. Not completely green - but preferable to chemical limescale removers.

Green Tip - Are your PC’s PC?
Enable the energy saving features on your office’s PCs, printers and photocopiers.

Green Tip - Drying up!
If you have them, use your landing and stair banisters to dry clothes in Winter instead of a tumble-drier: These are often very effective places to dry clothes because there's lots of air circulation and spare heat from your rooms.

Green Tip - Driving Power
Use public transport or carpool wherever possible to reduce your carbon footprint. Shopping locally will also keep your car usage to a minimum.

Green Fact - Pumped Up
Keep your tyres inflated to improve your fuel usage by 3%.

Green Tip - Metal Free
Many of us are guilty of dropping paper into the recycling bin without removing the staples and these can cause problems in the paper recycling process. Reduce your staple usage and the cost of refills by buying a 'stapleless' stapler.

Green Fact - Waste Away
Pizza boxes that have fatty cheese remnants and cans and plastic bottles that aren’t washed out can convert your ‘recycled’ waste into landfill waste. Most recycling companies don’t have the man power to sort your food-tainted waste from anything that might be usable, so if you have food-contaminated items in your recycling bin, everything else inside that bin will be dispatched to landfill!

Green Fact - Chill Out
Cold water washing saves 80 per cent of the energy you would normally use for your laundry.

Green Tip - Pulling the Plug
Anything powered by a remote control or has a transformer on the power cord will eat up electricity, so don’t forget to turn those appliances off when you aren’t using them!

Green Tip - Lights Out
Turn off lights when you are not using them and reduce your direct lighting energy use by 45%.

Green Tip - Bright Spot
Halogen lamps generate heat and burn up a lot of electricity. They are a huge fire risk too! Install motion sensors on outdoor lights and you will not only save on electricity but on the cost of replacing those pricey bulbs.

Green Tip - The Brush Off
Decorating? If you are working with gloss paint, don’t clean your brushes and tray every time you stop for the day. Wrap them in cling film and when you start painting the next day, they will be ready to use. It saves on paint and also means that you are not washing chemicals into the drains every time you take a break! If you are careful unwrapping the cling film, you can reuse it when you next have a rest!

Green Tip - Turn Off
By turning down your central heating by one degree, you can save 3% off your heating costs.

Green Tip - Slow down
A slow cooker or a toaster oven will use less energy than your normal stove and oven.

Green Tip - Lap it Up
A laptop uses 75%  less energy than a desktop computer, but only if you turn the laptop off at the end of the day.

Green Tip - Affordable Solar Power
Some companies are now installing solar panels to homes for free, allowing homeowners to benefit from cheaper electricity bills. Check out  www.homesun.com for details.
(Please note, we do not endorse this product or company, so please make your own assessment as to whether it is suitable for you.)

Green Tip - Rags and tatters
Turn old clothes into cleaning cloths. T-shirts or sweaters that aren’t good enough for jumble can be cut up and used as dusters or cloths.

Green Tip - ‘Cut down’ on electricity
Use a human-powered lawn mower to cut down on energy usage and noise pollution. It can also help you stay fit and healthy too. Remember to compost the grass cuttings.

Green Tip - Just concentrate!
Buy concentrates. Concentrated products are very powerful and you need to use a lot less of it for the same effect. They waste less packaging too.

Green Tip - Summer fresh
Hang your laundry out to dry. There is simply nothing like climbing into a bed with sheets that smell sweetly of sun and fresh air. And it saves energy!

Green Tip - Get connected!
You should ensure that hosepipes and sprinklers are connected to the water source correctly. Leaking or dripping taps can quickly waste gallons of water.

Green Tip - Mad dogs and Englishmen….
In extremely dry periods, try to water in the evening or very early morning when it's cooler. That way, less water will be lost through evaporation, and watering at this time will also eliminate any possibility of delicate plants getting scorched.

Green Tip - Cheat when you BBQ?
Gas burns much cleaner than either wood or charcoal briquettes. If you can’t resist charcoal, look out for stores selling natural charcoal – much cleaner than your traditional briquettes.

Green Tip -  Foods of the month!
Buy as much food as you can that is grown in the UK. It saves on all the energy it takes to fly foods around the world. At their tastiest and cheapest during June and July are Peas, Broad Beans, Strawberries, Cherries, Cucumber and Curly Lettuce. Visit www.eatseaonably.co.uk

Green Tip -  Once a week for a lush green lawn
To maintain a lush green lawn throughout the hot Summer, your lawn does NOT need to be watered every day. According to www.safegardening.co.uk, lawns are far more adaptable than plants and flowers and, even in hot weather, they do quite nicely if they're given a thorough soaking just once a week.

Green Tip -  Butt out!
Install a water butt in the garden to collect rain water. You save valuable fresh water supplies, and plants and flowers prefer a natural rain water source. You can also use used bathwater and dishwater on the lawn.

Green Fact -  Love thy garden...but not too much!
During hot summer months, an average of around 70% of our total water supply in the UK  is used on watering gardens.

Green Fact – Carrier Bag Crazy!
Each person in the UK uses 134 carrier bags a year.

Green Tip -  Be battery-wise!
Only 3% of all household batteries are recycled in the UK! 22,000 tonnes of old batteries end up in landfill, where they can leak harmful chemicals into the soil. From February 2010, new laws mean that most shops that sell batteries now have collection bins. Most supermarkets will and if they don’t – ask them why!

Green Tip – Don’t bin your bulbs!
Low energy light bulbs contain harmful mercury and should not be disposed of in household waste or in glass banks.  Take care also if you break one. To find out more visit www.recycle-more.co.uk

Green Tip - Keep your favourite pair on the go!
Your favourite shoes will last for years longer if you get them repaired regularly. Visit Timpson, opposite BB’s Coffee and Muffins.

Green Fact - Water for thought
We use an average of nearly 150 litres of water a day in our homes; our great grandparents managed with about 18 litres.

Green Tip - Real Nappy Week
8million disposable nappies are sent to landfill every year in the UK. Each nappy take 500 years to decompose. Go Real, organisers of Real Nappy Week, believe you could save £500 a year by using real nappies. Visit www.goreal.org.uk
 
Green Tip - Need help making the switch?
Visit www.biggreenswitch.co.uk, to learn about climate change, how to reduce your energy bills, buy eco-friendly products and much more.

Green Tip - Don’t shower your vegetables
Wash vegetables and fruit in a bowl rather than under a running tap. The water collected might even be used for watering pot plants.

Green Tip - Have a Green Easter
Look for Easter eggs with the least amount of packaging and be sure to recycle the packaging from your own eggs. And save the plastic packaging from your Easter Eggs and use as a mould to make your own Easter eggs next year!

Green Tip - Eco-friendly Playtime
Buy inventive recycled cardboard products from www.tactile-interiors.co.uk Great for children’s imaginative play. They can colour and draw on them to make their own creations and when they get bored with them – they are easily recycled.

Green Tip - In hot water?
You could be wasting energy if your hot water is too hot. Set your thermostat to 60 degrees Celsius.

Green Tip - Jumblebaggers
Visit jumblebaggers.co.uk for a range of products made from used textiles, from party banners to bags and aprons.

Green Fact - Dry 'Au Naturel'
The electric tumble dryer is one of the largest energy consuming devices in the home. Whenever possible dry your clothes on a drying rack or a clothes line, inside or out.

Green Tip - Away with the Readies
If you eat a lot of ready meals or ready-prepared foods, then take a night off once in a while and prepare a meal from fresh. That way you will avoid wasting all that unnecessary packaging and get a more nutritious meal.

Green Tip - Offset Some Carbon
Next time you fly, offset your carbon with a carbon company. They will redirect your money toward ethical investments. Try offsetcarbon.co.uk

Green Tip - Watch your Fish
If you like fish, then check out which ones are good for you and the environment. Over-fishing is destroying ocean ecology. Cod and halibut are on such a steep decline they could go extinct within the foreseeable future.

Green Fact – Are you doing your bit?
For each tonne of paper that is recycled and reused, 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 KW of energy and 7000 gallons of water are all saved.

Green Tip – The best screen saver!
Your monitor uses twice as much energy than your PC's main unit. So switch your monitor off when you leave it - even if only for 10 minutes.

Green Tip – Perfect printing - every time!
Change the default settings on your computer to economy print (which uses less ink) and to print double-sided, so you don't have to remember each time. 

Green  Tip – Eat seasonally
Buy as much food as you can that is grown in the UK. It saves on all the energy it takes to fly foods around the world. At their tastiest and cheapest during January and February are kale, carrots, savoy cabbage and spring cabbage. Visit eatseaonably.co.uk

Green Fact – The Cost of Christmas Cards
Recyclenow.com has teamed up with the Woodland Trust card recycling scheme which will allow people to recycle their cards throughout January at participating retailers, including M&S. Each man, woman and child in Fareham will receive an average of 17 cards this year. If we all recycle them in this way, we'll contribute to saving a lot of trees.

Green Fact – Recycle, Recycle, Recycle!
According to Recyclenow.com, English households will throw out an additional 3m tonnes of rubbish over the festive period - that's five sacks per family. Much of this will be waste that could have been recycled. 

Green Tip – Start composting now
Compost all your food peelings and vegetable food waste from your Christmas dinner, or get a wormery to help break it down into rich, nutritious soil ready to use in the Spring.

Green Fact – 'Get Real' at Christmas
On average, artificial Christmas trees are thrown away after less than six years of use, but they stay in landfill sites for centuries. 

Green Fact – Paper v. Plastic
It takes just six months for paper to disintegrate, but more than 500 years for plastic to decompose.

Green Fact – Check the bottom of the bottle
Buy wine in bottles with a flat bottom, rather than a dome. They use much less glass and can be lighter by as much as 70%

Green Tip – Go Online
For information about what you can recycle and where, visit www.recyclenow.com

Green Fact – Flatter = Better
Flat screen monitors use only one-third the power of conventional monitors.

Green Fact – Windy Britain
As the windiest country in Europe, the UK could power itself several times over using wind energy alone – if only we could harness that power!

Green Tip – Get crafty
Use a 4litre plastic milk container and an old wire coat hanger to make a peg holder to hang on your washing line. For further instructions and many more reuse and recycle ideas, visit www.junkk.com and register.

Green Tip – Go refillable
Instead of countless plastic biros, invest in a refillable fountain pen and a bottle of ink (not cartridges). Result - less plastic, nicer writing and people tend not to walk away with your pen.

Green Fact – What a lot of gas!
Farm animals create more global greenhouse emissions than transportation does.

Green Fact – Don’t dump plastic bags
One Million sea Creatures are killed by plastic bags and rubbish thrown into the sea every year.

Green Tip – Think before you print
On average each worker uses 50 sheets of A4 a day. So encourage your colleagues to print less by adding a message to your email signature, such as: Think before you print to save energy and paper. Do you really need to print this email? If you do, print it double sided.

Green Tip – Salad savvy
Did you know bagged salad can contain levels of chlorine far higher than the average swimming pool? If you can't buy - or grow - chemical free salad ingredients, avoid the bagged stuff and opt for loose ingredients when you go shopping.

Green Tip – Lawns are yawns
Help your lawn conserve water by letting it grow longer. Mow less frequently or mow high to encourage root growth - it will also give the grass a chance to self-seed. Leave clippings on the lawn to return nutrients as they decompose. Alternatively, save yourself the effort of mowing and encourage more meadow species, which are great for attracting insects. Mowing a path through the middle shows it is meant to be that way and is not the result of neglect!

Green Fact - Recycle Recycle Recycle!
Despite the potential to recycle or compost around 68% of our waste, we are only recycling or composting 15%

Green Tip - It's Summer - walk or cycle
Make the most of the sunny weather and travel short distances by foot. Enjoy a family day out on your bikes instead of driving.

Green Tip - Wash a FULL load
Save water by waiting until you have a full load before switching on dishwashers and washing machines.

Green Tip - Don't waste water in the garden
Save water by growing drought-resistant plants such as sedums and lavender, using a watering can rather than a hosepipe and watering early in the morning or in the evening.

Green Tip - Take a glass to work
If you have a water cooler at work, take in a glass to refill, rather than use the disposable cups that are often provided.

Green Fact - Use a toaster
Always use a toaster instead of the grill whenever possible. They use far less energy.

Green Tip - Bless You!
Buy a cotton handkerchief (ideally organic cotton). It will cost less than endless packets of disposable tissues - and it will save a few trees and avoid unnecessary packaging.

Green Tip - Save with every flush
Add a water hippo to older toilet cisterns to save up to 3 litres with every flush - it could also save you £20 a year on metered bills. They're available from most DIY stores or visit http://www.hippo-the-watersaver.co.uk/ Alternatively add a 2 litre water-filled plastic bottle to your cistern - check it regularly to ensure it is not interfering with your flush lever. (Don't use a brick - they crumble and the dust can clog up working parts of your cistern). If you're buying a toilet, new dual or low-flush loos are 2-4 times as efficient at saving water, so check out local suppliers to see what's available.

Green Tip - Save cooking power
When cooking pasta, bring to the boil, put the lid on and turn the hob off. It will be ready  after the normal cooking time.

Green Tip - Fix that tap
One dripping tap can use at least 5,500 litres of water a year. Mending the tap washer could save you about £18 a year
 
Green Fact - Dishwashers v. Sink
Research shows that, on average, conventional ‘washeruppers’ use 63 litres per session. A modern dishwater can use as little as 15 litres per cycle.
 
Green Fact - Unplug your phone charger!
95% of the energy used by the UK’s phone charges is wasted energy. Only 5% is actually utilised to charge phones, the rest is squandered when the charger is plugged into the wall but not switched off at the socket. That’s over 250,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions that could be avoided if we all just unplugged our chargers!

Green Tip - Try Recycled Toilet Paper
Recycled toilet paper is no longer the rough and scratchy torture it once was and many recycled rolls are now as soft and kind as the normal product. The use of chlorine bleach in the production of most toilet paper creates dangerous toxins which are harmful to the environment, people and animals.