WEEE Compliance

In today’s current climate I find myself having more and more conversations about the cost of living. The cost is going up and people are starting to feel it. Within my own budget i noticed i was having less and less disposable income. This caused me to sit down and have a look at my out goings to see where my money was going. I found that a large chunk of my money was going to

• Gas
• Electric
• Water

Lucky for me these are tree areas where i can have a bit of control of what i spend. I set out to cut back in all these areas to see how my usage when down and in turn my spend. My first point of call was:

Gas

I turned my hot water off. So instead of being on all the time i set it to come on 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour at night. This provided the family with enough hot water for showers and washing up.

When cooking with the gas cooker, i tried not to open the oven door as much in order to keep the heat in and not make the cooker work harder. When using pans i used the lids with them to get the food up to the right temperature as soon as possible.

I turned the thermostat down by 2 degrees and also only set the time to come on in the morning and night, while people were in the house.

Electric

Why does every household gadget feel the need to have a clock on it? I know it does not make a massive difference but as Tesco says “every little helps”. I turned off every household appliance that did not need to be on. This list is:

TVs left on stand by

Microwave with a clock display

Oven with a clock display

Mobile charger left turned on

The laptop left charging after battery was full

Pc left on standby

Lights on in rooms with no one in

I turned all these things off. At night now there are only 2 things left turned on, the fridge freezer and the cordless telephone. Everything else including the wireless internet box and the satellite box are turned off at the plugs.

Water

Since we are on a water meter, if we use less we pay less. The first changes were to cut out as many baths and have a shower instead.  Also showers were kept to 4-5 minutes in order not to waste the water. I installed a water saver shower head as we had a very strong power shower. While brushing teeth or having a shave the tap is turned off and is only on when we need to rinse. In with the toilets i put in a flush saver bag in both toilets. I wanted to restrict us more but the family over ruled me on the “yellow mellow” brown flush it down”.

I am happy to say that my project has worked and after we got our next lot of statements we had over paid in all 3 areas.

Yes my objective was to save me money but in turn i helped the planet by using less resources then i was before.