Spare your boiler - energy saving

Simple energy-saving measures can cut emissions and your bills - such as wearing a sweater in winter so that you don't have heat the house quite so much, or draught-proofing.

Advice about energy-saving measures is available from:

• Government websites Find ways to save energy in your home and Clean Energy Homepage 

• The Energy Saving Trust

• Ealing Council

You can learn about energy efficient appliances & lighting, installing insulation, solar panels, heat pumps, and more.

Avoid solid-fuel stoves like log burners

Log burners are becoming a major source of urban air pollution - whatever claims are made by manufacturers about being 'clean burning'. Modern diesel engines for example are far more hi tech and burn a more uniform fuel, yet still pollute. There's a reason why we did away with coal fires in London after the dreadful 1950s smogs, and that hasn't changed.

Less Stuff

A large part of the CO2 emissions heating the planet are generated during the manufacture of products - so called 'embedded carbon'. Moderating our consumption by making things last, repairing/mending rather than discarding, buying second-hand, etc., are ways to reduce these emissions as well as other sorts of environmental damage such as pollution and pressure on resources.

If your interested in learning to repair clothes, look out for Ealing Repair café.

Plastics and recycling

Some types of plastic are not accepted in the Ealing Council's domestic recycling collection (blue bins), such as plastic bags. However some shops offer a recycling service for these 'soft plastics', e.g. Some Co-op and Morrisons stores. Better still is to try to avoid excessive plastic wrapping and single-use plastics when shopping.

Reduce impact and help nature

In the garden

If you have a garden, leave space for plants and animals (including the tiny creatures we hardly or can't see):

• Don't concrete over everything - that leaves little hope for life in the soil and increases water run-off which worsens local flooding.

• Similarly, avoid plastic grass - plus microplastics are already a major problem.

• Leaving some wildish spaces in your garden - long grass, bushes, wood piles, etc. helps nature. See: Wildlife gardening (RHS), How to start a wildlife garden from scratch (The Wildlife Trust),  Seven simple ways to create a wildlife-friendly garden (Natural History Museum).

Prefer natural cooling to air conditioning

With climate change our summers can be too hot. Unfortunately the manufacture and installation of air conditioning adds to the CO2 emissions that are causing the problem. Air conditioning also makes the environment around buildings even hotter as that's where it pumps the heat to. And of course it is expensive to buy and run.

You can make your house quite a lot cooler with natural cooling methods, like:

• Close windows and curtains on the sunny side of your house (adjust as the sun moves around during the day).

• Even better is installing an exterior curtain or blind over windows that are facing the sun.

• Grow plants that shade your house and its windows.