Thrifty and green

The most pleasant thing about living a sustainable lifestyle and being green is that not only do you help the environment by consuming a lot less energy and resources, but you also save money.

Reducing our energy consumption is an absolute priority, it only takes a little effort on evey individual’s part and a little re-education. Once we reduce our electricity usage we can see  that a lot of the power we use in our home is wasted. The simplest thing to do is to start by switching off all the appliences not in use as well as all lights in rooms that are not occupied. All our TV’s and electrical appliences are on standby, even the ones only used occasionaly, by switching everything off at the socket we could save 5 to 10% of our power bill.

I have started to turn off the hot water heater when i go out of town for more than a day or at least turn it to minimum if you live in an area with frost so as not to damage the system.

There are so many ways to save without any unnecessary hardship, get into the habit of being consumption conscious and you will save a lot.

Here in Queensland we have a government incentive to reduce our water and power use, you will receive a climate smart home service for free if you live in Brisbane or you may have to pay a small fee[$50], they offer for you to save $250 a year . This is performed by an electrician who will install:

• an energy monitor
• energy efficient devices such as energy saving light bulbs
• and an assessment on how further savings could be made and water saving tips

For more info check out The Climate Smart Home Service