Being green in London

Being green in London may seem like a waste of time. We’re a capital city after all, with just under 8,000,000 people rushing around, living their hectic lifestyles in a city where a lot of emphasis is placed on convenience. The convenience of things like ready meals and speedy cab journeys across town means that people have very little time to worry about the environment. Yet, as we each become more aware of the factors that endanger the environment, lots of Londoners are starting to make small efforts to become ‘greener’. It may be these changes that have catapulted London from 9^th position in 2008 to 5^th position this year in the Britain’s Greenest Cities table. (Newcastle-upon-Tyne came top).

So what can we do to become green in London?

Let’s start with travel as it’s the most obvious topic. Try and forego transport for walking, where possible. Admittedly it might not always be feasible, but imagine if you did a once a week walk home from work. It might take you a couple of hours, but you’d burn lots of calories and save lots of C02 from being pumped into the environment. A good website to look at for plotting journeys across London is Walkit. On a similarly energetic thread, try riding a bike as your main transport to and from work. I wrote a post on cycling in London recently, which will give you lots of information on this method of travelling. Public transport is better than driving a car, but if you must drive, then try car-sharing  as a greener option.

When shopping, make sure you use re-usable bags. If you’re in a supermarket, fork out an extra few pence for a sturdy recyclable bag that can be used again and again. Sainsburys has a loyalty scheme called Nectar that gives you extra loyalty points each time you re-use one of their bags. If you’re clothes shopping, try taking along a bag of your own, rather than collecting several high-street carrier bags each holding only one piece of clothing.

Next, let’s look at recycling. It may seem like a bore, but it’s so important not to have all of your waste thrown into a landfill. Local councils have become MUCH better at providing domestic recycling bins and banks in supermarkets or station carparks. The plus side to recycling is that your kitchen bin won’t fill up half as quickly once you’re not filling it with wine bottles, newspapers and plastics. For the more committed environmentalist, you might want to look at setting up a wormery. The idea is that you buy an outside wormery composter such as this Junior Wormery, which is perfect for flats and single households and you fill it with composting worms. When you want to throw away items such as vegetable scraps, fruit (except citrus), coffee grains, newspaper or egg cartons and even dog poo, rather than throw them in the bin, you would put them into this wormery and the worms will consume the scraps and turn it into compost liquid that will be extracted from the filter tray at the base of the wormery. This liquid is great for growing tomatoes and other plants.

There are other household items other than potato peelings that you should think about recycling too. Clothes, furniture, electrical equipment etc can all be recycled thanks to an initiative called Freecycle. The main thing to remember is that it’s not Ebay or Gumtree. Everything offered on this site is free. So you would post your piano for freecycling and someone would come and collect it from your house. In return, you might fancy an extra armchair, which again would be free.

Other changes you can make within your household are of the energy-saving variety. Most people are aware of what they should be doing, but actually putting these points into action is another story.

• Use energy-saving lightbulbs.
• Turn lights off in rooms that you’re not using.
• Use draught excluders at the bottom of doors.
• Household appliances such as TVs, computers, DVD players, microwaves and stereos should be turned completely off when not in use, rather than on standby.
• Use your washing machine on a low setting and in summer, dry your clothes on a clothes rail rather than using a tumbledryer.

That’s the energy side of things covered, but what about water?

• Turn off the tap whilst you’re brushing your teeth.
• Fix dripping taps.
• Use a toilet ‘hippo’ or brick to put into the cistern to reduce the amount of water used when flushing.
• Take a shower, rather than using a bath.
• When using dishwashers or washing machines, make sure you have a full load before switching on.

So, hopefully after reading these tips, you can be assured that moving to London doesn’t mean that you can’t be green. If you want to learn about further ways to become a green god or goddess, then this book entitled ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ is amazing – it’s packed full of ideas and information on how to cut down on creating rubbish. It’s also very cheap and is currently priced at £3.21 with free delivery. so well worth picking up.