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Can you get cracking with Plan A and help cut your household carbon emissions? We know there is no Planet B and there is no time for draft plans … and that means no time for draughts at home either … Do you sometimes forget to shut the back-door when you go outside to play? Or leave the fridge door open while you decide what you want to eat or pour the milk on your cereal? Even the tiniest of gaps – a key hole or a crack in the floorboards - can let warm air leak out of our homes and cold air flow in to take its place. This lowers the room temperature, meaning the boiler has to work harder for longer, burning more fuel and creating more carbon emissions. How much harder will your boiler or fridge motor have to work if you leave the doors open??? Your challenge this week is to Shut the Door on Draughts! Remember to HIT THE RED BUTTON and tell us when you’ve completed the challenge.
Did you know we cause more carbon emissions in the UK by heating our homes (and providing hot water) than by anything else that households do – even driving or flying? Around a third of our household carbon emissions relate to the energy we use for space and water heating – and at present most of this depends on burning gas, a fossil fuel, in individual boilers in individual homes. To tackle climate change, we will need to replace all these gas boilers, possibly with bio-fuel or hydrogen boilers, or more likely with other ways of heating our homes such as heat pumps or district heating powered by renewable electricity. But that won’t do the trick on its own, we also need to be substantially cutting back on the energy used for heating our homes. Recent research suggests that even if we expand renewable energy as fast as we can, we will still need to cut our overall use of energy by 40% to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050. Shutting the door on draughts is one way we can make a start!
If you’re feeling super keen, as well as making sure you Shut the Door on Draughts, why not go on a draught-hunt? Choose a cold day, then hold a feather near to external doors, key holes, windows, gaps between floorboards, unused chimneys. If your feather flutters or you feel a cold chill, it’s time to take action! Ask your parent or carer if you can fill in small gaps with old newspaper. For larger gaps you could have a go at making your own draught-excluder by stuffing one leg of an old pair of tights with scrap paper or fabric. When you have succeeded in Shutting the Door on Draughts, then don’t forget to HIT THE RED BUTTON!
