Welcome to the Reduce Toolkit you could save around £2,000 per year by using this toolkit.
Reduce is the first level of the Waste Hierarchy. Waste that is not created in the first place does not need to be reused, recycled or disposed of, so preventing or reducing waste is the most sustainable and environmentally beneficial thing you can do with your waste.
Reduce does not only apply to the rubbish we create, we should also be looking at the way we use energy in homes and also the fuel we put in our cars.
For instance did you know that by making six simple changes to the way you use the energy in your home you could save around £150 per year.You could also save around 15% on your fuel bills by changing the way you drive, and if you spend around £30 per week on fuel that equates to a saving of around £234 per year. Did you also know that the average household in Scotland throws away £430 of food waste every year, most of which could have been used.
So just by making a few simple changes you can not only reduce the waste you create but you could also save around £814 per year. (That is the equivilant of about a £95 per month payrise.) What could you do with an extra £814 per year?
With some simple DIY to stop drafts around your home and generating your own electricity the savings could be as much as £2,000 per year.
This toolkit has been designed to help you make these savings and more. Just click on the links below savings and you will be directed to various websites that will help you make these changes.
Save £150 per year with these six simple changes
Click here for more energy saving tips
The savings shown her are based on a 3 bedroom semi-detached with Gas central heating. The savings are per year. 1. Fit energy saving lightbulbs - save £40 (CO2 saving 125kg) 2. Turn down your thermostat by 1 degree centigrade - Save £50 (CO2 saving 284kg) 3.Turn off applicances and avoid standby - Save £30 (CO2 saving 126kg) 4. Wash your laundry at 30 degrees centigrade - Save £10 (CO2 saving 44kg) 5. Only boil as much water as you need - Save £10 (CO2 saving 28kg) 6. Always turn off your lights when you leave a room - Save £10 (CO2 saving 245kg)
Do some simple DIY and save a further £60 per year
Click here to get more free advice
Draughts in the home are a drain on heating bills, contributing to up to 20% of heat loss in the home. The good news is that draught proofing is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to heat proof your home and save around £60 a year on energy bills.
How to Draught Proof your Home. First, check around your home for draughts. Look for obvious gaps around windows, doors and pipes
Chimneys should be draught proofed first to prevent heat loss. Chimney Balloons are a cost effective way to do this and come in a variety of sizes to suit every chimney. A saving of around £15 per year can be made doing this.
Letterboxes can be a problem in winter as heavy winds can make them rattle and let in cold air. The eco flap is a brilliant solution. (See website address on left). The eco flap is cheap and easy to install and starts saving you money straight away.
Keyholes covers will help eliminate drafts and cost under £10, or use masking tape for a budget option.
Doors and Windows – Plug any gaps around doors and windows. You will be able to get different sealants and self adhesive draught strips from your local DIY store. You can save around £25 a year by doing this.
Floors and Skirting – Blocking gaps around the edges of the ground floor or between the floorboards can save you around £20 per year
Generate your own Electricity and make money doing it
It's easy with the Governments Clean Energy Cash Back Scheme
What is the Scheme? The clean Energy Cash back scheme or Feed in Tariffs (FITs) was introduced in Great Britain on 1st April 2010. The scheme requires energy suppliers to make regular payments to householders and communities who generate their own electricity from renewable or low carbon sources such as solar electricity (PV) or wind turbines.
The scheme guarantees a minimum payment for all electricity generated by the system, as well as a seperate payment for the electricity exported to the grid. These payments are in addition to the bill savings made by using the electricity generated on-site.
As an example, a typical domestic solar electricity system, with an installation size of 2.7 KWp could earn around:
£990 per year from the Generation Tariff
£40 per year from the Export Tariff
£140 per year reduction in current electricity bills
This gives a total saving of around £1,170 per year
Example of how the scheme operates
Click on above image to find out more about generating your own electricity and how much you can get paid for it
Reduce your Fuel Bill by around 15% by becoming an Eco-Driver
Click on the above image for more tips
As well as saving money and fuel, eco-driving will help you drive safely and reduce wear and tear on components like tyres, clutch and gearbox.
Become an eco-driver today by following these top tips:
1. Shift to a higher gear as soon as possible - Driving at lower engine speeds reduces fuel consumption. Change up between 2,000 and 2,500 rpm
2. Anticipate road conditions and drive more smoothly - Rather than last minute braking, decelerate smoothly by easing off on the throttle as early as possible. This allows the car to decelerate using engine braking. With the car in gear and the throttle released, a modern car uses virtually no fuel at all. This form of braking is also gentler of the car and it's occupants.
3. Maintain a steady speed in as high a gear as possible - Driving at a steady speed requires little effort for the engine. Avoiding unnecessary acceleration and heavy braking helps reduce your fuel consumption
4. Drive a little slower - Stick to the speed limits and make your fuel go further. For most cars the most efficient speed is 45-50 mph. The faster you go above this, the more fuel you will use. Driving at 50 mph rather than 70 mph reduces your fuel consumption by 10% at a stroke.
FuelGood Training Sessions
Understanding how to drive more efficiently could save you a lot of money on your fuel bills. To help you adopt these techniques why not sign up for FuelGood training? Subsidised by Transport Scotland there are a limited number of sessions available for only £12 per person! Training normally costs £40 per person.
Free FuelGood App for iPhone and Android
Download your free app
FuelGood, our new free mobile phone app, is designed to help you track fuel efficiency for each car journey you make. It can track your car journeys, flagging when you’re driving inefficiently and at the end of your journey, provides a summary of distance travelled, time taken, average miles per gallon and the savings you could make by driving fuel efficiently.
Save £430 per year by reducing the food you waste
In Scotland we throw away 566,000 tonnes of food waste every year and of that 69% could have been avoided if we managed our food better. This is an expensive habit and costs each household an average of £430 each year. If we stopped wasting this food we could pevent the equiviland of 1.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year in Scotland. This is the same as taking 1 in 4 cars off the road The Love Food Hate Waste campaign can help you put this money back into your pocket. Click on the icon on the left for money saving tips and recipes.
Did you know? Two thirds of all food waste could have been eaten and half of the good food thrown away is untouched , whith 1 in 7 items still in their packaging.
At least £10 million of food thrown away is still in date.
Top tips to help you reduce food waste Planning your meals and food shopping can save you money as well as food waste as you only buy what you really need - remember to write a list
Before you go food shopping, have a look to see what you have in your cupboards, fridge and freezer. This will help you remember what you already have in there.
Buy the amount of food you need, rather than being tempted to bulk buy perishable items that you might not use in time.
Try rotating the food in your fridge, so that any food at the back that needs used up first is brought to the front.
Click on the above Love Food Hate Waste logo to get more tips on reducing your food waste including recipes from letovers.
What you can do to reduce packaging.
To find out more visit the Positive Package Website
Packaging plays an important role in protecting and preserving the products we buy and in a lot of cases we couldn’t do without it. Retailers and manufacturersare working hard to reduce the amount of packaging waste we produce and reduce its impact on the environment, So the Government, Retailers and Manufacturers are doing their bit to reduce waste through reducing packaging but what can we do to help. Below are some tips on how you can help reduce the effects of packaging of the environment by either reducing the amount of package you use or recycling and reusing the packaging and sending less packaging to landfill.
Reduce the packaging you use. Buy Concentrates. These products use less water so can reduce packaging by over 50%. Buying refillable products is also a way to reduce the packaging you use. Using refills can reduce the amount of packaging used by up to 75% and can also save you money. Fabric conditioner, squash, liquid detergent and hand wash are all examples of concentrated or refillable products.
Reuse the Packaging you use. Always reuse your carrier bags. Take you own bag when you go shopping. Another way to reuse your carrier bags is to use them in your bin instead of bin bags, Although they still go to landfill you are saving resources because a new bin bag is not needed. Reuse food containers and drinks bottles for storing food and packed lunches. Spread tubs are great for home freezing and yoghurt post can be used for growing seedlings in. or used to make individual jellies in. The small fromage frais pots can be used for small ice lollies.
Recycle the Packaging youuse. New on-pack recycling labels are being introduced by leading retailers including Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Waitrose, Co-op, Asda and Sainsbury to help you see what packaging can be recycled.
Stop the Drop - Reduce Junk Mail
STOP THE DROP is a campaign by Waste Aware Scotland that aims to reduce the amount of unwanted mail delivered to Scottish households by at least 10 per cent.There are 5 easy ways that you reduce the amount of unwanted mail you receive and benefit the environment.
Write to Sender—Where mail is addressed to “The Occupier” or is personally addressed you can write to the sender to indicate that you no longer wish to receive mailings specifically from them. You could also email where possible.
Register with the Mail Preference Service (MPS)—Registering with the MPS can reduce the amount of personally addressed direct mailings that you receive by up to 95%.
Register with Your Choice Preference service and opt out of the Royal Mail’s Door to Door Service—Door to Door is Royal Mail’s service that delivers unaddressed mail. Registering to opt out of this service will stop these items being delivered to your door within 6 weeks.
Opt out of the edited version of the electoral register—There are 2 versions of the register the Full Version and the Edited Version. By law anyone can look at the full version, but copies can only be supplied for certain purposes such as elections and law enforcement. Credit reference agencies are also allowed to use it to check for names and addresses of people applying for credit. The edited version can be bought by any person, company or organization and could be used for direct mailing purposes.
Use online services—Most banks and utilities companies now offer online services. This will reduce the amount of paper bills you receive.
For more information click on the above image.
You can save around £500 per year by using real nappies
Visit the real nappie website for more information
At the moment about eight million disposable nappies are thrown away every day in the UK! By choosing real nappies, you could reduce your household rubbish by half. This will help towards a big reduction in the number of disposable nappies buried in landfill sites or sent to incinerators. Real nappies can be used again and again.
A 2006 study has estimated costs from birth to potty for real and disposable nappies as:
Buying Real Nappies and washing them at home costs from £182.50 to £359
Buying disposable nappies costs from £615.16 to £922.74
These costs are based on nappies being used over two and a half years. They are average costs and depend on the type of nappy used and how often disposable nappies are changed. Visit www.wen.org.uk for full details of the study and the assumptions made.
Using even just one reusable nappy instead of one disposable nappy each day has the potential to save a family over £40 a year.
You can save even more money by using Real Nappies on your second child.
You never run out of Real Nappies.
You can sell your Real Nappies once you have finished using them.
Use reusable baby wipes to reduce your costs further.
In addition to these savings, some local authorities offer incentives such as cash back rewards, vouchers for the purchase of Real Nappies, free or discounted laundry trials or free sample packs of nappies. To find out more go to your local authority website and search for Real Nappies or Real Nappy Campaign.
Recycle for Scotland Reduce Directory
THE REDUCE DIRECTORY
We can all take part in activities, use services and make purchasing decisions that will help the amount of waste that we generate. This directory highlights the many activities that help prevent waste at source and lists a range of shops, facilities and services that can help you Reduce your household waste in Scotland.