At home

We’re on familiar ground here as we explore energy and material use in daily domestic life. Simple ways of using less electricity, heat, water and packaging, and of recycling and reusing what we can are painlessly recommended and illustrated. Particularly helpful is the oft-forgotten point that the use of piped water consumes energy – ergo wasted water is wasted energy. Although this primer breaks no new ground, it can never be stressed enough that small individual energy-saving actions can add up to a hefty reduction of a community’s carbon footprint. So, familiar as the book’s guiding principles may be, the ideas it expresses may well repay the amount of energy used in its production.