I am a whore for electrical appliances. If I had to go camping (in a tent), I don’t know how long I’d cope before the need for electricity would take over my senses, causing an inhumane fit. I live and breathe my mobile phone, computer, Internet and music. I am also what some might call a New Man who is in touch with his feminine side - I take pride in my appearance so would struggle without a hair drier being handy.

With that in mind, it has become quite apparent lately the impact that is happening across the globe with the lack of fossil fuels and excessive use of energy in our daily lifestyle. Polar ice-caps are melting, animals are becoming extinct and many of the World’s landmark cities are destined to be put under water in the next fifty years. As a new father, it is scary to think that my son will live in a world without continents, polar bears and New York. I don’t want that and I think it is finally dawning on the public that we have to do something to reduce our carbon footprints as much and as soon as possible.

Over the last few weeks, I have got particularly anal about the way I live, making considerable changes to my habits and lifestyle.

1. Turn everything off.

Rather than hitting the stand by button, I am turning electrical appliances off at the mains. Every night after working, I will turn my laptop off, hit the power switch on the wall it was plugged in to and turn the wireless router off at the mains. It’s amazing how much electric you can waste. Think of the money you could save too!

2. Use screensavers.

Every computer has a screensaver option. For some unfathomable reason, I turned my screensaver off and not thought about it up until now. Rather than leaving my screen to show some pointless animation, I’ve used the power facilities available and set my computer to turn my monitor off after 1 minute of inactivity. It might have a very slight knock on effect with my productivity rate (not that needs any help) but doesn’t it seem irrelevant when you could be doing your bit for Mother Earth?

3. Use Eco-Friendly Colours

OK, this only really applies to the designers out there but there was a recent study about the energy used to render certain screen colours. Unsurprisingly, the darker colours were more economically friendly than the brighter colours. Think about using them in your designs. It is also another great argument for why dark backgrounds are better for your websites than white backgrounds. If you design or run a highly used website which has a white background, think how much difference you could make just by changing your background colour to black or dark grey.

4. Driving in lower gears.

Not everything revolves around computers. I’ve seen billboard adverts dotted around Walsall and Birmingham about cutting the CO₂ emissions from your car by driving in lower gears and making sure your tyres are fully pumped up. Obviously, you can go one better and use public transport or walk but you can’t get away from the fact that you need to drive occasionally. If you need to, be thoughtful about it.

5. Recycle, recycle, recycle.

As a nation, Brits aren’t particularly good at recycling. We throw away our own body weight in rubbish every seven weeks (source: Recycle Now)! Half the time, it is due to unavailable solutions. Local councils are very slack on adopting decent recycling schemes so the public tend to be extremely frivolous with their waste. If you have a recycling scheme in your area, use it. In Walsall, we are supplied plastic green boxes to accumulate certain recyclable materials. (At the moment, it is restricted to glass bottles and jars, paper and certain types of metal. If you put any non-recyclable material in that box, it is likely the collection people won’t even filter it out. The box will just stay on the ground full. It’s not much of an incentive to try doing your bit). If you don’t have a recycling sheme, it is highly likely there is a local community wreck that you can take your waste to. Use them!

These are just my top five tips for being economically friendly in your every day life. There are loads of other tips you can adopt, you might even want to suggest some below. Just think about the future of our planet and do your bit.