North Norfolk, UK.

We get 2 wheelie bins, a black one (non recyclable) and a green (recyclable) one and they are emptied on alternate weeks (black one week, green the next).

The council also had a scheme for buying composters cheaply and we bought 3. As well as garden waste, we put some household waste in them.

We take glass to a bottle bank at a supermarket. We collect our newspapers and our 2 neigbours newspapers and take them to a skip at a local church. I believe the money made helps a little towards the upkeep of the church.

Another form of recycling is feeding food scraps to the hens, or sometimes (like some left over cottage pie the other day) to the dog. Between us, the animals and the composters, hardly any food is truely wasted.

I think that's it for recycling. We have also tried to become a bit more energy conscious down to switching most things off at night (it's surprising how all these things on standby can add up) and using low energy bulbs.

My parents qualified for free wall and roof insulation and we had that done last year. On top of that, I revamped the heating system, fitting programmable thermostats for hot water and heating and a new zone valve. It's hard to gauge but I think between the 2 it's looking like we have almost halved our oil consumption for a warmer house. It did have one drawback though. We usually get our oil at the same time as our neighbours as we can negotiate a better price with the supplier for 2 drops and a larger volume but last time when next door were ready, we didn't have room for a minimum delivery so when we did need the oil, we had to pay more per litre.

I've got a solar power project lined up for later in the year. It's just to power a pond pump, a couple of lights, have some 240V in an old pigsty we use as a BBQ area, etc. on an area of land where on top of liking the idea of having the sun do the work, I don't want to be running mains from the house to.

I don't know if this experience will lead me to attempt to do anything with the house or not but I doubt it. Although if I ever start dabbling with lapidary again and the outside system works, I might consider an upgrade and see if I could run the pebble polishers (one is a big one that takes 3 drums), the grinder/cutter/polisher, etc. in one of the sheds over the summer months.