About a quarter of all our clean, drinkable water at home is flushed down the toilet. Place a sealed bottle of water or brick in your cistern to reduce this amount.

Check the programmer on your heating and hot water to make sure the timings match your needs. If you don’t have a seven-day programmer fitted consider getting one.

Use a microwave. Generally a microwave oven is the most efficient way to heat up and cook food.

Get into the habit of turning lights off when you leave a room. A family could save between £50 and £90 a year just by remembering to flick a switch, if they don’t already do this.

Make sure your pans fully cover the rings on your hob to use all of the heat being provided. Use the right sized ring for the pan you are heating.

When cooking you can often use the residual heat to to save energy if you switch your cooker off just before you finish cooking. However, you still need to make sure that your food is properly cooked through.

Thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) help ensure your heating is evenly distributed where you need it. Check them to make sure they are set properly so each area reaches the temperature you need and gets no hotter.

Fit a water butt to collect rainwater. Your roof collects about 85,000 litres of rain each year (around 450 butts full). That’s water you can use for your plants and to wash the car, and it’s free!

If your charger has an LED to show it’s in use, it is still using energy until you switch it off at the wall or unplug it.

Think before your print. Reducing the amount of material you print has a long list of benefits including saving paper, chemicals and electricity. More and more offices and industries are going paper free, so think about how you can reduce any printing you do.