Save Money Save Carbon Leeds

11/03/2026

https://leeds.ghost.io/welcome-to-leeds-new-paper/?ref=leeds-newsletter Please considering supporting this project so more independent news written about our wonderful city.

I am not involved in the project but I thought people would appreciate knowing about it.

West Yorkshire deserves great local journalism. Help us launch it.

08/02/2026

We all think we've cracked the lightbulb and that typical off the shelf LEDs are the most efficient thing since sliced bread. And they are compared to Incandescent bulbs but compared to A rated LED they are still in the dark. An A rated LED lightbulb is typically 2x as efficient as a D rated LED lightbulb and lasts twice as long (50,000 hours vs 25,000 hours). They are 50% more to buy at the beginning but over their lifetime they will save you £25 per lightbulb (energy cost and additional lightbulb) plus the priceless cost of actually replacing the lightbulb itself. That's like a 25x return on investment not to mention the energy savings and reduced waste associated with throwing away broken lightbulbs and packaging.

https://www.simplelighting.co.uk/led-light-bulbs/a-rated-light-bulbs/ I have no affiliation with this company but they sell A rated lightbulbs and with a large enough order discounts can be had. I really want some new amazing lightbulbs and I want the bulk discounts too so if you are in Leeds and want some amazing lightbulbs too please message me so we can do a bulk order together. Share this please as the more people who know about this the more likely we'll get past the £75 threshold for discounts.

12/12/2025

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3v3e6eyeqno there's also a great bbc article and Ukrainians collecting and upcycling batteries for drones. Consider helping them if you are in Leeds.

We will work harder in 2026 to collect more tapes at Leeds festival 2026

29/01/2025

All are welcome to our 'Housing matters' drop-in on 5th February, with valuable information on saving energy bills and your rights as a homeowner.

Find out more and book here: https://climateactionleeds.org.uk/event-details/housing-matters

15/01/2025

https://facebook.com/events/s/ask-me-anything-what-can-i-do-/887717343346526/
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/low-carbon-homes-club-ask-me-anything-what-can-i-do-myself-tickets-1083531565079

It's SO cold. Are you feeling the drafts in your home? Wondering what you can do yourself to reduce drafts, save money on energy bills, and simply use less energy? There are many things you can do yourself with a little bit of knowledge and support. Please book in.

16/11/2024

bedroom retrofit project weekend 1 summary. 3 people worked for about 10 hours each over 2 days. we used sds drills with wide blade attachments to remove about 15 bags of plaster from the walls. first 15cm of ceilings cut away to allow for continuous insulation to the floor of the room above using an oscillating cutter tool. first 15cm of floor cut away around perimeter to get intimate contact with insulation below and prevent thermal bridging, used a ciruclar saw for this. walls had dust glued down so insulation will stick better. wooden studs around windows removed to allow for more space for insulation. wood treated with fungicide and borate rod inserted so wood doesn't rot if it ever got wet. socket points were moved inboard from wall so they can be mounted on inside of insulation and not act as thermal bridge

tools needed for this: circular saw, oscillating cutter, sds, masonry chisel, metal mallet, crowbar or claw hammer, dust mask, paintbrushes/paint rollers.

28/10/2024

I've finished insulating my living room and kitchen and ground floor and loft. Next is the master bedroom. It was almost impossible to keep warm last year and I couldn't really get it above 16 degrees. As we peeled the plaster away we found out why & you'll find out later...I dont want to live through it again so I'm insulating it before winter comes.
I'll be breaking down the works carried out over the next week so stay tuned. I'll be explaining how much it costs, how long it takes, what materials are needed, how and why we do what we do. so hopefully people feel confident doing it themselves as a DIY project. please see very boring pictures of the before. Note the mold damage in the corner and under the windowsill.

26/10/2024

I'm a little late to the Leeds festival discourse but the team & I have been counting the amount we salvaged & tallying it up. This year we salvaged slightly over £32,000 worth of stuff from Leeds festival which went to Armley Yum foodbank, St Lukes cares charity shop, Hunslet revive centre, Wild campers against waste, Trad collective, Ilkley Library of things, Otley Library of things, BuyNowtLS6 Library of things, Rainbow Junktion, Tom-O designs, Leeds kurdish house & countless other smaller orgs & individuals. That's just the people I worked with & know about. Lots of others wonderful groups came to & collected stuff too.

It was a great year for the diversity of people that came, people coming to upcycle 'waste' material as well as leader of sectors who may be able to change things moving forward for the better.

On the other hand it was the most disappointing year in terms of results for efforts put it. I was aiming for over £100,000 worth of stuff to be collected this year. I'd organised 14 vans, nominally 200 volunteers.

Sadly not all of the, much needed, volunteers who signed up came, we were denied access to 40% of the campsites & had 1 hour less on site on Monday evening). All these things sadly meant we just couldn't salvage as much & it was left on the field to be macerated & incinerated. Basically like setting fire to money. None of the vans we took were filled up before they left.

Leeds city council also asked the festival to deny people going with the purpose of salvaging to distribute to the homeless of Leeds which meant less people came, the slightly bad weather meant less people came too.

I work so hard to encourage people to go & organise transport for them and to borrow vans to go but to have the council & the festival then throw up these roadblocks which make it even harder to collect stuff is immensely frustrating. I work for 2 months organising this entirely in my free time.

We're planning on working with the festival & council to make next years festival less wasteful with preventative measures & hopefully more time & access to the festival to make salvaging more successful.

See pictures of Armley Yums Haul from the festival.

11/09/2024

25/06/2024

Would anyone like to help salvage at Leeds festival? You could go for foodbanks (Armley yum pantry), for the Library of things, refugee charities, St luke's cares charity shop or Leeds homeless charities. Its on Monday the 26th of august (bank holiday) between approximately 2pm -8pm.
All the waste will otherwise be macerated up and incinerated. https://www.leedsfestival.com/information-category/staying-green/ #:~:text=Salvage,them%20to%20the%20Recycling%20Points . This page has info on Salvaging as well as being a Green volunteer (helping people take down tents etc). email them for more info.
Or if you want to come with us and salvage under our umbrella then sign up on this google form:
https://forms.gle/ySuqHveMKDkZtn4z8
Please share!

This form is for you to express your interest in Salvaging at Leeds Festival 2024. Please fill in all the mandatory boxes and we will get back to you about whether you can join the salvage expedition. If you have a question please email us at [email protected]. Any data collected will be looked...

20/06/2024

This was my living room before. Old doubled glazed windows, gaps between the floorboards and around the perimeter of the room and uninsulated brickwork. A classic Leeds Victorian terrace house. Cold, draughty and almost impossible to keep warm in winter.
We took of the radiators, skirting boards and original coving (sadly), We stripped of all the existing plaster back to brick. Treated the joist ends to inhibit damage. We then applied between 80mm and 150mm of PIR celotex insulation to the external wall surface with PU adhesive foam. Sealed any seams or breaks with Aluminium foil tape to make it vapour tight and then put new plasterboard back on ready for plastering. It took a few weekends but was much more affordable to hiring a builder to do it (who might not even do it to such a high standard either) and now the U values of my walls are approximately 0.15 W/m² down from over 2 W/m². over 10 better insulated and nearly to passivhaus standard. Please share with anyone interested in doing this on their own home!