This Defra survey looked at the types of actions that respondents said they were doing that directly reduce the amount of energy they were using in the home – for example, turning the heating down or boiling the kettle with a limited amount of water. Table 6 summarises the extent to which people had thought about, or tried each of these behaviours (using the stages of change response scale).  Here at BuilderScrap.com we look more at the reducing waste and energy on worldwide scale. Sharing, recycling and reclaiming building materials that otherwise would be sent to landfill…. therefore reducing costs.

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The results show that most people said they were doing each of the five energy saving behaviours and intended to keep these up – few had tried the behaviours and later relapsed. Respondents were most likely to be doing and intending to keep doing the following behaviours:

• Only boiling the kettle with as much water as you need (84% said they had done this and intended to keep it up)
• Washing clothes at 40 degrees or less (77%)
• Cutting down on the use of gas and electricity at home (76%)

There had been a significant increase in those respondents who reported cutting down on the use of gas and electricity at home from 58% in the 2007 Defra survey to 76% in 2009. Fewer respondents reported turning down thermostats or cutting down on the use of hot water, though it was still a majority of respondents at 66% and 64% respectively.

For all five of the behaviours shown in Table 6, relatively small numbers of respondents reported relapsing (having tried the behaviour but stopped doing it) – 5% or less of respondents for each behaviour. Similarly, a relatively small proportion of respondents had rejected each behaviour before ever trying (between 3% and 9% of all respondents had rejected each of the five behaviours).

The majority of respondents had at least thought about adopting each of the five behaviours with only a small proportion being classified at the pre-contemplation stage (where they had either not heard of the behaviour or not thought about it). Just 6% of respondents were at the pre-contemplation stage for the first three behaviours shown (boiling the kettle with only as much water as you need, washing clothes at 40 degrees or less, and cutting down on the use of gas and electricity at home).

A larger proportion of respondents were either at the pre-contemplation stage (i.e. had either never heard of it or had not thought about doing it) or rejection stage (i.e. had thought about doing it but had dismissed the idea) for cutting down on the use of hot water at home (25% in total for both stages) and turning down thermostats (19% in total for both stages).