Warburtons going green
A Rugby family has taken up this year’s Sustainability Challenge in the run up to Christmas, to demonstrate that it is possible to change your life to a greener way of living with very little effort.
This is the third year of the Challenge, which is run by Warwickshire County Council as part of its Switch It Off campaign. Environmental experts at the council will be on hand to guide the Warburton family over the next few weeks.
They are being challenged to discover just how easy it is to go ‘green’, by trying out everything from home composting through to making sure they are not wasting energy by leaving things on stand-by.
The Dunchurch family of mum and dad, Caroline and David, seven-year-old Martin, and five-year-old Helen (she’s six on December 23rd), have now taken delivery of a host of goodies to help make their environmental efforts a little easier.
So far the family have received Christmas presents of a compost bin, Ecover products, low energy lightbulbs, pedometers and a cycle computer thanks to TravelWise and health foods from Tropical Wholefoods. Other gifts are on their way, with Fair Trade products being sponsored by Heart of England Co-op and water saving devices, including a water butt, being sponsored by Severn Trent Ltd. The family will also be loaned a Wattson device produced by DIY Kyoto to allow them to monitor their energy use over the Christmas period.
Caroline said: “We already do kerbside recycling, and we’ve tried to get low energy bulbs, so hopefully we should do fairly well with this challenge. It might be quite tough over Christmas though with all the cards, wrapping paper, packaging and food to keep our waste down.
“I’m already getting teased for talking about recycling in the playground when I’m dropping the children off – and I’ve not even started the challenge yet!”
Cllr Martin Heatley, Warwickshire County Council’s Portfolio Holder for the Environment, said: “It’s great to see a family taking on this challenge – particularly at Christmas time. Of course, with a little bit of thought they will hopefully find that being green ad sustainable isn’t really as difficult as it may first appear.”