Warwickshire News Mine

Warwickshire County Council presented the family with a Sustainability Challenge at the start of the year, and now a few months on they are winning praise for their efforts.

As a special thank you, the Warburton family from Dunchurch, near Rugby, will be presented with a year’s family pass to Ryton Pools Country Park, courtesy of the Countryside Recreation team at Warwickshire County Council. Climate Change Champion, Cllr Gordon Collett, will make the presentation to the family on Wednesday. 

The Warburtons were asked to take on the challenge set by the Climate Change team at Warwickshire County Council as part of its Switch It Off campaign.

The family has spent four months getting to grips with environmental living 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, eight-year-old Martin, and six-year-old Helen, were presented with a host of goodies to help make their environmental efforts a little easier.

The family received Christmas presents of a compost bin, Ecover products, low energy lightbulbs, TravelWise pedometers and a cycle computer, Tropical Wholefoods health foods and water saving devices, including a water butt, sponsored by Severn Trent Ltd.

The family were also loaned a Wattson device produced by DIY Kyoto to allow them to monitor their energy use and work out which appliances were using the most electricity. 

David said: “We’ve really enjoyed the challenge and have definitely got a lot out of it. From composting to saving energy, the whole family has really taken on board the green message and we’re even seeing financial savings as a result. We’ve managed to reduce our electricity bill by £5 a month – the Wattson device really made us think about how much energy we were using and we’ve changed lots of things to cut down costs and help the environment.

“For example, the children have been great at nagging us to switch off lights when we’re not using them; we’ve been switching off things left on standby like the TV and DVD player, running our dishwasher and washing machine at night when the electricity is cheaper and stopped using our tumbledryer.

“We’ve also become compost converts and have seen a big reduction in the amount of waste we’ve been putting into our black bin. The children have loved gathering leaves to put in the bin and are very good at emptying the kitchen caddy for their mum. This gets used for peelings, old tea bags, apple cores and the like. We’ve been surprised at how easy it has been and are even considering getting a second one! 

“I’ve been cycling with Martin and Helen to football training on Saturday mornings. It’s quite funny arriving on bike when lots of other families drive up in their 4x4s, but it’s great exercise and we’ve been enjoying spending some quality time together. All in all, we’ve really enjoyed the challenge and would recommend that everyone has a go – it should save you money and you’ll really be helping the environment.” 

Cllr Gordon Collett, Climate Change Champion for Warwickshire County Council, said: “Well done to the Warburton family for taking on this challenge and completing it so successfully. They’ve shown that, with a little bit of thought, it’s much easier to be green and sustainable than a lot of people realise. I’d urge other local people to find out more about the challenge and consider how they too could become more environmentally aware, as climate change is such an important issue and we’ve all got our part to play.”

For further information please log on to the Sustainability Challenge website at http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/thechallenge

Link to WCC