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	The energy you use in the home    1. Insulate your home.    2. Turn down your thermostat    3. Replace all lights with energy-saving bulbs    4. Buy A-rated electrical appliances    5. Change to a green electricity supplier
	The waste you produce    1. Reduce food waste and packaging.    2. Buy things that last, and only what you need    3. Reuse things – give to charity shops, swap-shops, internet auctions.    4. Compost kitchen and garden waste.    5. Recycle everything else using Council facilities.
	Your travel    1. Try one journey a week by public transport    2. Buy a more efficient car.    3. Drive more efficiently.    4. Holiday in the UK - try public transport    5. When flying abroad, offset your flights
	The food you eat    1. Eat 5-a-day fruit and veg    2. Buy local food.    3. Cook from scratch.    4. Eat seasonal food.    5. Plan your meals.
	All the other stuff you use    1. Do you really need it?    2. Is it made from recycled materials, and if not, what?    3. How much energy will it use?    4. Can it be recycled    5. Where was it made?

The energy you use in the home.

In the average home, 75% of the energy is used to heat the house and hot water, and 25% to provide power to electrical items.

• Insulate your home. Heating your home is responsible for up to 60% of your home’s energy use and carbon emissions. Insulating walls, lofts and floors can cut that by half.
• Turn down the thermostat. Turning down the thermostat by 1oC can save 10% of your heating bill
• Switch off lights. Lights use up to half the electricity in your home. Switch off unwanted lights or use timers, and change to energy saving bulbs – avoid halogen spotlights!
• Buy A-rated appliances. Hot or cold appliance use the next biggest amount of electricity - fridges, freezers, washers, driers – buy just the size you need, and make sure they are A-rated.
• Change to a green electricity supplier. See website for comparisons. Check what they are selling. Some suppliers just sell you the green electricity which the government already makes them provide. Others actually generate more green electricity, by installing new wind turbines with your money.

Links:
Energy Saving Trust - the first place to look for all home energy advice
The Green Electricity Market Place - an independent site to compare all green electricity supplier

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The waste you produce

In the average home, food and garden waste make up over 50% of what you throw away, so start here to make the most savings.

• Only buy what you need, especially for the food you buy, and avoid lots of packaging and plastic bags.
• Buy things that last. Do some research into the best products, think about quality as well as price, and avoid clothes and gadget that go out of fashion or out of date quickly.
• Reuse unwanted goods. Someone can always use what you throw away. Donate and buy from charity shops – good for cheap books! – use local or internet swap-shops, or sell stuff on the internet.
• Compost your kitchen and garden waste. Use a compost bin if you have a garden, or buy a small wormery if you don’t have space.
• Recycle the rest. Use the Sunderland kerbside box and brown bin. Use the Civic Amenity site for a range of other items that can be recycled.

Links:
Sunderland City Council's recycling pages - for information on what can be recycled in Sunderland
Recycle Now - the national recycling campaign, as featured on TV recycle webpage

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Your Travel

A family of four doing 12,000 car miles and taking one flight to Europe uses produces about as much carbon emissions as your home uses in a year.

• Try one journey a week without the car. From your regular car journeys to work, school etc, try doing one journey a week without the car – you might enjoy the change and end up switching completely!
• Buy a more efficient car. Cars are now rated by efficiency A-G, just like fridges. When buying your next car, choose one near to band A. You’ll save a packet, what with fuel prices going up and up.
• Drive more efficiently. You can cut fuel cost by 10%, simply by reading the road ahead to avoid heavy braking, changing gear less and avoiding high revs.
• Holiday in the UK. If you’ve always gone abroad, why not holiday in the UK for a change – you might be surprised. You could see if public transport.
• Offset your flights. If you still go abroad, you can offset the carbon emissions from your flights by paying into a climate fund. For about £6, you can plant enough trees or pay for renewable energy projects that will absorb the emissions from flying a family of four to Europe.

Links:
Cycling in Sunderland - the Council's website for all cycling maps, events and information
Transport direct - the national route-planning website
Nexus - the Tyne and Wear Transport Authority's website, containing all local bus, train and metro timetables
VCAcarfueldata - the Vehicle Certification Agencies site, listing MPG and CO2 emissions of all new cars
Efficient driving - tips from the Energy Saving Trust
Visit Britain - the site of the British Tourist Agency, for information on holidays at home
Climate Care - a website to calculate and offset your carbon emissions from day-to-day activities

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The food you eat

Food makes up the largest part of your footprint – from all the land, energy and transport needed to grow your food and get it into the shops and onto your plate

• Eat five-a-day diet. Besides being more healthy, a high vegetable and fruit diet (at least five portions a day) has a significantly lower Footprint than a high meat diet, because meat requires more land and energy to produce than vegetables.
• Buy local food. Less energy goes into distributing local food than food which is transported hundreds or thousands of miles and requires refrigeration and complex distribution systems.
• Cook from scratch. Making processed food in a factory uses much more energy than cooking from scratch, and has extra packaging and transport costs. Plus unprocessed food is often more healthy – lower in the amounts of sugar, fat, salt and preservatives that are often found in processed food.
• Eat seasonal food. Seasonally available food is fresh, and likely to have taken less energy to transport, store and produce before reaching the plate. If you buy organic food too, even less energy is used since only natural fertilisers are used, avoiding energy-intensive chemical fertilisers.
• Plan your meals. By planning ahead you buy only the food you need – about 10% of all food bought in the UK ends up in the bin. This can save money and reduce waste.

Links:
5-a-day - the national campaign to help you get 5 portions of fruit and veg each day
North East Farmers' markets – a list of when and where farmer's markets are held in the North East
Seasonal Food Guide - the BBC's all-year-round guide to what food is in season when.
The Soil Association - all you need to know about organic food

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All the other stuff you use

Everything we buy or use comes with an environmental cost. Follow these simple steps to reduce the impact of the stuff you buy and use.

• Do you really need it? Out-of-date food in the fridge, unwanted presents, last years fads and gadgets, – all this stuff mounts up and can be avoided if we just thought more about what we buy in the first place.
• Check for environmental labels. Is it made from recycled materials? Can it be recycled when you’re done with it? Learn what environmental labels mean and be wary of eco-products that don’t explain why they are green.
• How much energy will it use? Before buying any electrical equipment that doesn’t have an energy label, look for the electrical label on the back for how many Watts (W) it uses. That new plasma TV may be on half-price offer, but did you know it will use 5 times the electricity (300-400W) of your regular TV (60-80W). That's five times the electricity bill too - £25 a year for 2 hours a night, instead of £5 a year. 
• Where was it made? Get used to looking for where something was made – the nearer the better, which saves on transport cost, and supports local or UK jobs. If something is only made overseas, see if there is a Fairtrade producer?
• Harmful materials, rogue companies? Try to avoid buying stuff that is made from products known to have big environmental impacts – e.g. palm oil, tropical hardwoods [need to find a website summarising this]. Also, some companies are known to have poor records in looking after people and the environment – find out about the big culprits and try to avoid them where possible.

Links:
Shoppers guide to green labels - a government guide to some of the common, trusted environmental labels you'll find in the shops
Ethiscore - Want to find the greenest mobile phone, or trainer? This site is for you.
Friends of the Earth - a good source of information on products and companies with bad environmental impacts.
Corporate Critic - an environmental scoring system for the best and worst national and international companies.
The Guardian's Ethical Living Guide - The Guardian's collection of quirky questions on what and not to do for an ethical life.
Rainforest Products - a list of the main products which help cause destruction of rain forests 
The Fairtrade Foundation - find out what fairtrade is, and why it's important.

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