Efficiency

Your House as Part of an Ecosystem: siting the building, earthworks and site modification, choosing your building materials, the construction process, energy use, water and wastewater, general waste.

It’s mostly about changing old habits. If you’re on metered water you can cut your bills significantly by making a few simple changes.

By reducing the water flow from your taps, you’ll save on hot water and reduce condensation. Do you get splashed when you turn a tap on full? In many New Zealand homes, water flows much faster from taps and showerheads than it needs to. There are simple, inexpensive ways to reduce the flow of water from your taps and shower.

A Danish water quality expert has warned that degradation of the country's lakes is likely to get worse because a "time bomb" of polluting nitrates exists in the ground. Erik Jeppesen, from Denmark's National Environmental Research Institute, said years of intensive farming in New Zealand meant high concentrations of nitrogen and phosp...