Eco-Friendly Green Lifestyle

The active air system that heats this house has an unusual storage arrangement: the masonry north wall serves as a well- insulated rock heat storage bin. Filled with 60 tons of fist-size rocks, the bin receives heated air from the collectors through ducts leading into its bottom. Hot air then travels up through the rocks, [...]

Though the ducts and rock storage bins of active air systems are space-consuming, they set no unusual limits on the architectural style of new homes built to incorporate them, beyond the basic requirements of southward orientation and energy conservation. Traditional-looking houses can shoulder their solar collectors as gracefully as “futuristic” ones, and their interiors can [...]

If you want to give away some of your hard-earned income, thousands of charities are only too eager to accept it. Choose your charity carefully to match your environmental, ethical, and green priorities. You can give to local housing projects or to clean-water projects in remote parts of the world. Whatever your principles, there’s sure [...]

Some of the best methods you can adopt to reduce your car use are:

Leaving your car at home for a day: Use your car to drive to work only four times a week rather than every day of the week - walk, cycle, or use public transport on the fifth day.

Sharing your journey: How [...]

Mopeds and small motorcycles have really caught on in the cities in recent years — often because they are so much easier to manoeuvre through heavy traffic and to park, but more recently in London because they are exempt from congestion charges. They’re well suited to people who don’t have to travel too far to [...]

Decide here and now to become more energy-efficient. Look around your home at all the appliances you own. Many of them are plugged in and switched on even though you aren’t using them. Go round switching them off. Many are on standby but unless appliances are switched off at the electrical socket they are likely [...]

Counting the Cost of Car and Air Travel
If there’s no choice but to use your car for most journeys ask your children to think of ways to cut down using the car. If children get used to going to school by car and never walk or take the bus, it’s hard to break the habit. [...]