Changing your habits
There is now irrefutable evidence that small changes in behaviour can reduce your energy bills and emissions and increase your disposable income dramatically. Human behaviour has been divided into two types : (1) habits and you can find information on these here and (2) purchase related behaviour which can be found here
Changing our habits cost us nothing, in fact by making a few changes we are saving large amounts of energy and money. We all agree that for example we can leave the lights on when there is no one in the room or leave appliances on standby and we have found that if we tackle these habits and change them that the savings in energy, money and emissions can be dramatic. TEA have been working on projects which tackle and help consumers change in small ways. We have found that working on our habits together with friends, work colleagues, family or neighbours can be beneficial. Recently we worked with 34 Tipperary communities on a project called Energy Neighbourhoods which is explained at this link here. Participants were delighted to know that we just needed to tackle a few habits at a time and that small changes are good at the community level. As neighbour A changes 3 habits so does neighbour B and they share experiences. When new habits are acquired neighbour A starts to think about making futher changes and neighbour B’s experience is of great use in this light. Though many habits can be changed and details of this can be found here some of the main habits that Tipperary householders were able to change simply were:
- Drying clothes on a clothes line or clothes rack,
- Boiling only the water needed in the kettle,
- Filling the dishwasher or washing machine before use,
- Reducing the thermostat setting by one degree
- Reducing standby
- Turning lights off where possible
There is interesting research on communities and reducing energy use both in the Tipperary Institute and in the University of Limerick. The Centre for Environmental Research in UL have worked with approximately 80 communities in order to define low carbon pathways. Information on one such community, Ballina in Tipperary, can be found here. Some of the ways the householders in Ballina reduced their emissions and consumption impacts can be found here.
