Go green, save a fortune. We’ll need every penny

I don’t care what they say – our bank balance is in the green, writes Kate Hughes

(iStock/The Independent)

Yes, but it’s really expensive isn’t it?” the TV producer is saying in my ear while a brave cameraman sidesteps the stinking packet next door’s cat has deposited in our garden and gives me the thumbs up. We’re rolling.

Thirty minutes ago I was quietly pondering the mortgage market for the day job. Now I’m staring down the barrel of a national news programme trying to make myself heard over the roar of rush hour traffic.

It’s the third time she’s asked the same question too – keen to get me to admit that yes, all our preconceptions are true. That “being green” is only really for those with the time and money to do it.

I’m digging my heels in, though – literally sinking into the soil – because we’ve saved a fortune over the years by being more environmentally aware, and no chat about the frightening pre-grant cost of ground source heat pumps is going to change that.

A financially and environmentally careful life are all about one thing – an equally careful balance of resources. I’ve done both for long stretches and the details regularly overlap.

Take food, for example. Our zero waste home is only bin-free because we don’t buy anything that comes in packaging we can’t compost or, in the case of glass, reuse multiple times before it is no longer fit for purpose, ie a child has smashed something.

We buy our dry goods in bulk, make everything from absolute scratch and therefore cut out the middle man, along with the profit they skim off the top. As raw ingredients, meat, fish and dairy are among the most expensive items, so a plant-based diet makes sense. Especially if that diet is seasonal and local. It’s classic supply and demand dynamic. When food is out of season its not only eye-wateringly expensive, it is a rubbish eat.

Frozen cherry tomatoes are like chilly marbles (Getty/iStock)

But when tomatoes, say, are in abundance, we grow or cheaply buy them, gorging until we can’t face any more and then canning, bottling or freezing the gluts. Try freezing cherry tomatoes, they end up rolling about like chilly marbles. It’s the most satisfyingly tactile thing you’ll find at sub zero temperatures.

Actually, no, that accolade goes to the blackberries. Who needs extortionately expensive, flown-in “superfoods”? Blackberries are seriously good for you, free and can be wheeled out to brighten up the mind-numbing bit of seasonal, local eating in February. (The stretch that mostly features kale. A great deal of kale.)

Plus you can use child labour to gather the blackberry harvest and still get parenting points from random little old ladies. What’s not to love?

Then there are leftovers. Eating up, using up and even rescuing unwanted food is a no-brainer. Check out the Olio and TooGoodToGo apps for local restaurants, supermarkets and independents offloading cheap and free food at the end of the day. Last week a local producer was giving away pints of cider. I have never been such a cheap date in all my life.

When everything else is do with what we have and, if not, borrowed, swapped, rented or bought second-hand in every possible instance – from lawnmowers to posh frocks – cash goes a lot further. We rely on Freecycle, local repair cafes and some of the small-scale rental businesses out there.

I spent a grand total of £20 on my eldest’s new school uniform last month, while other parents parted with hundreds of pounds to take home what amounts to a massive pile of synthetic fibre that sloughs into the water systems at a rate of 700,000 microplastics per wash. But that’s another column for another day.

Electric cars mean we aren’t tempted by a questionable cup of coffee and a tasteless muffin from the nearest petrol station (Reuters)

Our electric car, which costs us around £160 a month to lease, saves us 80 per cent in running costs compared with our last combustion engine affair; notwithstanding the latest fuel crisis, there’s no road tax and it comes without the risk of getting rinsed for a questionable cup of coffee and a tasteless muffin from the nearest petrol station.

And for journeys further afield, the ultra low carbon, electric train to southern France pre-Covid, for example, was a third of the price of flying.

So you can see why I’m standing in the drizzle, in what remains of this year’s attempt at a mini wildflower meadow, known to the rest of the world as a postage stamp of a front garden, arguing with a woman 200 miles away about the bill for ground source heat pumps.

And wondering, after the spectacular fail of the green homes grant, if I would ever get hold of a grant for one. Because those things are pricey. Thank god for all those savings elsewhere.