Energy Saving Week

Green issues – and in particular saving energy – have recently hit the limelight but it’s been a long and hard struggle to raise awareness. One of the biggest UK awareness campaigns, Energy Saving Week, has been letting people know the importance of greener living for ten years. It happens annually, usually in the autumn, and is a full week of events, information and energy saving fun.

The Aims

Each year a new theme is adopted for Energy Saving Week in order to help raise awareness of saving energy at home, work and in different aspects of our everyday lives. In 2006, the focus was on how individual consumers can make a difference by adopting small measures to reduce the amount of energy they consume on a daily basis. It helped to convey to people that through everyday, ordinary actions, they can make an enormous difference to help the environment and save themselves money.

Save Your 20% Campaign

One of the key achievements of Energy Saving Week was launching the ‘Save your 20%’ campaign. Set up by the Energy Saving Trust, it aims to enlist consumers to commit to make certain changes in their day to day lives. The commitments can be as simple as turning down your thermostat to using a lower temperature washing machine cycle. The CO2 emissions that you’ll reduce your household by are then calculated and emailed to you, as a lasting reminder of how much even small changes can make overall.

Breaking Habits

Also key in last year’s Energy Saving Week was a report into how Europeans use energy – and the bad habits we’ve formed in our homes. Significantly, the survey – conducted across the UK Germany, France and Spain - uncovered that Germans are the best energy savers while Britain were the worst for energy wasting. Leaving appliances on standby, chargers plugged in, forgetting to switch the lights off and using the car for short, unnecessary journeys were all highlighted as the energy guzzling habits we should be learning to break.

Why Energy Saving Week is Important

Energy Saving Week is a great way of making it hit home just how vital everyone’s input is in the fight against climate change. It’s helped propel the issue of saving energy into people’s thoughts, and into the political arena – not to mention giving people energy saving tips they can easily adopt. In 2006, even Tony Blair committed to make some energy saving changes at 10 Downing Street, saying: "I've already turned the Downing Street thermostat down by one degree, and made sure we use energy efficient light bulbs as much as possible. I hope Energy Saving Week will encourage many more people to look at how they can reduce their own energy use."

Energy Saving Tips

If you can’ t wait for this year’s Energy Saving Week to kick off in your area, why not try and adopt some of our quick tips to help you become more energy efficient:

• Replace used light bulbs with energy saving bulbs

• Move furniture away from radiators to allow heat to circulate

• Choose energy saving recommended household appliances

• Turn your thermostat down a degree

• Fit an insulating jacket to your hot water tank

• Place foil around the back of your radiators to reflect heat back into the room