You may remember our 14 month quest to buy a house. It may, just may, be coming to an end. After two very near misses and countless fairly near misses, we are a fair way down the road to buying a house. The survey’s been done, mortgages have been researched, and, so far, the vendor has shown no sign of being an irrational nutcase. So fingers crossed.

Of course, there’s a wider question as to whether now is the time to be making the biggest financial decision of our lives. Those feelings will no doubt be stronger on Wednesday evening as we all digest the Comprehensive Spending Review. But this is the road we’re going down at the moment.

I’ve written before, and tweeted a lot, about trying to be more green. The choice of where you live is one of the biggest ones you make, in terms of implications for the environment. I thought I’d try to document our efforts to make green choices over the next few months. It may give you a few ideas. You might have ideas and contacts you can share with me. You might well challenge me and make us alter the decisions we’re thinking of making.

So, first things first – the house. It’s a pretty standard 1930’s semi. 3 bedrooms. Corner plot – so modest gardens to three sides. About 4 miles from the centre of Leeds, a mile and a half from school. So distances you can comfortably manage on a bike. Well looked after – but in need of a lot of updating. It seems that an older couple have lived there for a long time – it doesn’t even have a proper kitchen – just a kitchenette.

The reason I’m telling you this is that it needs a fair bit of work – and there are therefore choices that can be made which could be greener, or less green, choices.

I’ve been doing some research – and here are the things I think we could explore:

Obvious things

Decent loft insulation and cavity wall insulation
Draft proofing
Double glazing

Less obvious things

Solar panels – both types
Electrics/lighting (house needs re-wiring)
Biomass boiler
Multifuel oven
Wood stoves/fires
Velux windows in the kitchen roof (to increase natural light)
Interior insulation on walls which don’t have cavities
Grow fruit and veg in some of the garden
Rainwater harvesting
Choice of furniture, furnishings, carpets, paint etc

There’ll be other things we could do as well – if you have ideas please let me know.

The constraints will be as follows. Can we do that in this house? And can we afford to do it? But we’re keen to explore this in some detail – because we want to see if we can do it, and also because millions of us live in houses a bit like the one that we’re hoping to buy. So if we’re going to make our housing stock more green, we’ll need to work on houses which were built at a time when we didn’t have to worry about this kind of thing quite so much.

I’ll tell you more next week, once I’ve looked into things a bit more – but if you have any thoughts, contacts (particularly in the Leeds/Yorkshire area) or ideas please let me know.

One type of social business that I particularly like to work with are businesses which are meeting some sort of environmental need.

At the Danone Social Innovation Lab last month, I chatted with several Danoners (and their NGO partners) from around the world who were involved in setting up social businesses which had an environmental impact, including Gonzalo Roque and Martin de Ferrari from Buenos Aires, Argentina. They were planning to set up a business to improve the quality and quantity of plastic recycling in Argentina. You can see my interview with them here:

The main thing that interested me in what they were doing was that there were clear social, environmental and business benefits from the work they planned to do. The way plastics are currently recycled – by people working informally, and selling plastic on to middlemen – was largely unsatisfactory. The prices people got varied a lot – as the middlemen tended to exploit people – who were themselves reliant on the prices being paid by China for plastic. That meant they couldn’t always make a living out of it – and as a result children would often join their parents in the search for plastic bottles. The quality of the plastic that was processed was often poor – making it more difficult to re-use. And that made it more difficult for Danone to reach their ambitious targets for use of recycled plastics in their bottles.

It makes it easier to do the right thing environmentally if it also makes sense financially. This morning I’ve spent an inspiring few hours with SCRAP – a scrapstore in Leeds which takes business waste and sells it on for creative re-use. It’s a great way to divert a good few tonnes of waste from landfill – whilst also helping people to be creative.

What I like about them is that they are really committed to finding a way to make their social enterprise stand up as a social business. Traditionally they’ve had some funding – but not much – and my work with them is to help them to develop further so that they can generate more income and do more good.

Our affluence has made us a bit lazy and complacent when it comes to how we use the world’s resources. Maybe now, with the environment and our economy looking increasingly fragile, we’re rediscovering that thrift and respect for nature make financial sense as well as environmental sense.

Just back from a fortnight’s holiday in France. Rushing back into the country via Eurostar on Austerity Tuesday seemed counter-intuitive. In reality it felt like we should be traveling as fast as we could to anywhere but here. The holiday’s over in more ways than one.

In some ways the holiday was a bit of an austerity boot camp. Not that two weeks in France – including a week in Aix – one of the nicest places I’ve ever been too – could ever be described as tough. But we really had to manage our money. When you’re only getting €1.15 to the £1, France turns out to be very expensive. Having 25% less spending power than the last time you were there hurts, as does paying £4 for half a pint of lager.

It was a bit of a shock to the system. I’m very fortunate. Like many people, I’ve seen my income rise gradually as I’ve got older – leaving University, getting a job, getting a better job. So it doesn’t feel very nice to suddenly not be as wealthy as I was. And personally, and as a society, that’s something we’re going to have to get used to. It’s an understatement to say that it won’t be much fun.

As I’ve written before, as a family we’re trying to be more green. So flights are out and trains are in. This time we went to Aix – just north of Marseille – via Paris – with a stop-off in Lille on the way back. Around 2000 miles in total – and it all went to plan, with a grand total of 10 minutes of delays (on the Leeds to London leg).

I love traveling by train – and for me all the cliches are true – traveling becomes part of the holiday, when traveling is fun and relaxing. Compared to how you’re treated at airports these days, traveling by train is a dream, particularly in France. And if you plan it well, it doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Taking advice from Seat 61, door to door cost us £450 in total – which for 3 people, taking in 4 cities, isn’t bad – although obviously not 99p plus taxes (plus luggage plus fees plus a pound for having a wee plus the privilege of being treated like a potential terrorist etc).

And in green terms, this carbon calculator estimates that by traveling exclusively by train we were each responsible for just under 200kg of CO2 – whereas the figure for flights would have been 550kg. So it makes a difference. At least that’s what I tell myself.

In other travel news…. we’ve also been trying to cut down on how much we use the car. Since 1 March we’ve driven just under 750 miles – so we’re averaging around 250 miles a month. Which given that our target was 700 miles a month (a 15% reduction on the previous year) that’s not bad going.

Of course that doesn’t tell the whole story – we’ve been living in the city centre for much of that time – so the car’s been parked a few miles away – and we’ve had no excuse not to use public transport, with the bus station and rail station just a few minutes walk away. But that in itself tells a story – if you make it less convenient to use the car, and more convenient to use public transport, then the results are pretty obvious.

I don’t tell you all this as some smug green. That’s the last thing I am. But I tell you as someone who is trying to act consciously. I make loads of questionable/contradictory decisions when it comes to how to live my life in a more fair/sustainable way. But I engage with the issues, and I take responsibility for my actions. I also try to do things that are manageable – like using the car a bit less, or trying not to fly. It’s nice to be reminded how resourceful we human beings can be when we put our minds to it. We’ll need all that resourcefulness over the next few years.

I had an interesting day in Derbyshire on Saturday at an event run by the East Midlands School for Social Entrepreneurs and members of the Transition movement.

I was there to make the case for good marketing. My basic argument is that many of us who think that the world – and business – need to be run differently are pretty sceptical (or even hostile) towards marketing. We also think that it can only be done by big brands with loads of cash, who push unwanted products onto an unsuspecting public. My argument is that it doesn’t have to be like that – and that proper marketing – building relationships with people – can come naturally to social businesses if they just think it through.

The premise of the day was to explore whether a next step for some Transition initiatives could be to set up social enterprises. Let me be clear from the start, I have the kind of knowledge of Transition that you get from reading about it in magazine articles – so I don’t pretend to be an expert. But it does seem to make sense that, after following the twelve steps of Transition, some communities may go on to set up social businesses to help to build a different type of economy.

I’ve written a fair bit in the past about what I see as the differences between social activists and social entrepreneurs. I’d say that the majority of people who were there on Saturday were activists – and I’d guess that that’s pretty typical of the Transition movement.

I’m not saying that activism is not important. It’s vital, and there’s clearly some inspiring stuff happening in Transition initiatives around the country. It’s an idea which has clearly captured people’s imagination. But I would argue that making the next step – if that is to be settting up social enterprises – requires a different mindset.

I’m not suggesting that you need to be some kind of socially enterprising Del-Boy, or have an MBA, to set up a social enterprise. Far from it. But making changes to your own lifestyle – and teaming up with others to do the same – is quite different to setting up businesses which need to sustain themselves through the money they make.

I look at my own background for evidence of this. I never thought I’d get involved in business – not even social business – because I thought business was for fat-cat capitalists. I couldn’t understand how anyone who wanted to change the world could also find motivation in making money. Even if that money was ultimately used to do more good.

I was hostile towards business. There was a lot of that hostility – understandably – in Belper on Saturday. But to run a social enterprise I think you have to accept that things aren’t so black and white. That sometimes you have to compromise, or be pragmatic, or take decisions which might not sit totally comfortably with your value base. You might have to do deals with other businesses which traditionally you’ve seen as the enemy. This might mean you fall out with those who believe in the simple rights and wrongs of capitalism.

On a practical level it also involves different skills. And I believe that these skills can be learnt, but it takes time. This is a point relevant to the whole debate about Big Society. Phillip Blond wrote a letter to the Observer on Sunday expressing how he is puzzled by the hostility of people like me towards Big Society. (By the way, I’d be grateful if anyone can point me to the evidence for Blond’s assertion that volunteering has doubled in the last few months.)

One reason I’m sceptical is that I believe that it will take time for communities to develop the skills and build up the experience to run lots of services themselves. I do believe that, in the long term, it’s the right direction to be travelling in. But I have done this work for long enough to know that the road to better services is littered with painful, expensive examples of initiatives which haven’t worked. Because, sometimes, people got it wrong, because they were still learning how to run things themselves. And, I would suggest, the people who need better services most are the ones who may take a bit longer to get organised and get things right. Blond and Cameron will suggest I’m being patronising. I think I’m being realistic.

It may be that the Transition entrepreneurs were busy doing other things on Saturday – like traveling to the course on how to set up your own community supported bakery, run by the inspiring Handmade Bakery in the Transition hotspot of Slaithwaite. Either way, I think it’s worth us reflecting on the differences between what it takes to form a movement for change, and to run a business, so that we can continue to do the former, whilst also doing more of the latter.

I was invited along to the MBA Dinner at Leeds University Business School last night. It was a good evening, apart from an excruciating pre-dinner talk on business etiquette. I can’t help but be wound up by talk of the norms that you must follow in business.

But other than that it was an enjoyable evening. I met a guy from the Business School who I’ve wanted to meet for a while, and chatted with a good number of students. The guy from the School spoke about wanting to take social business from its current niche as a second semester CSR module and a placement with a charity, through to it being a consistent theme throughout the programme. I hope I can help them with that.

Chatting with students about what I do, it’s clear that many people see achieving social impact as something you do once you’ve taken care of the serious business of making profit. No surprise there, as that’s the approach which has been hard-wired into us by years of shareholder capitalism. But when you dig a bit deeper you begin to draw out of people the desire that most of us experience, to do our bit to make the world a slightly better place than it is today.

But many people don’t make the connection between the strategies and tactics of their business, and the impact they could have. This, for me, is a big area to work on. We will only really change society when the achievement of social objectives is as central to the running of a business as the achievement of its financial goals.

That starts with the planning process. Planning for impact, not just thinking about it later once the money’s been made. I’m pleased to say things are changing. For example in the environmental field, it’s clear that it’s far more efficient to design pollutants out of your processes from the start, rather than try to clean up the mess you make. We need similar, proactive approaches when it comes to achieving wider social benefits.

Exciting things can happen if smart, well-run businesses start to take the achievement of social change seriously. It has to go beyond Corporate Social Responsibility. It will involve planning for those impacts, and it could well affect negatively the amount of profit you make (the retailer Next make much more profit than our beloved John Lewis, on half the turnover). But it could also open up new markets and create new opportunities.

At the last Social Impact Camp, I spoke about how we need to start talking casually about the social change we create. It needs to become something that we’d talk about down the pub, rather than something that gets lost in jargon, or in the linguistic equivalent of soft-focus photography or tear-jerking mood music. A marketing man would probably say that we have to work on making social sexy.

It seems that every other story in the news is about energy. Saving it, greening it, producing it, being able to afford it.

We got our final bill for the old house today. We spent £400 on gas in the four months from November to February. That’s a small fortune for a 3-bed terrace. We’re OK, as we can afford it, but I’m sure that once quarterly bills start filtering through to people at the end of the month, fuel poverty will make front-page news once more.

The Government launched a strategy this week – Warm Homes, Greener Homes – a Strategy for Household Energy Management. You’ll have seen some coverage on the news – one of the headline-grabbing initiatives concerns new loans which you’ll be able to take out to install green measures in your home. The clever bit (if you think this is a clever thing to do) is that the loan will stay with the house. The idea is that this makes it more attractive for people to install things like solar panels, given that the payback time for certain green measures is pretty long – by which time you may have moved out.

I’m about half way through reading the strategy, and there’s some interesting stuff in there. I like the emphasis on linking green measures to fuel poverty – there will be a greater emphasis on working with social housing providers, more carrot and stick to encourage private landlords to green their homes, and a stronger role for Local Authorities to develop local partnerships with energy companies and third sector organisations. There seems to be a recognition that, if you leave this to the energy companies, they’ll end up focusing on the easy things to do – like sending out unsolicited energy saving bulbs to people who already have three in the cupboard under the sink.

George Monbiot had an interesting piece in the Guardian this week, criticising, amongst other things, Feed-In-Tarrifs – which oblige energy companies to pay people for energy they produce at home. His argument, in brief, is that the environmental benefit that comes from installing solar panels and domestic wind turbines are minimal, compared to other measures that could be taken. He sees the tariff which early adopters will be paid – 44p per kwh for domestically produced solar energy – not as a smart incentive but as a regressive tax on the poor. Because who is going to access the subsidised loans to install solar panels? The middle classes, who will proudly host dinner parties which include a pre-canape tour of the cellar – to see the electricity meter turning backwards alongside the case of 1995 Lynch-Bages. Except it probably won’t be turning backwards, because it’ll be dark outside – and the oven will be on full-blast cooking the organic rib of beef.

I don’t read enough of Monbiot to know whether he’s just going off on one, (he’s certainly stimulated a few responses on the letters page), but I would certainly agree that there’s a danger that we end up doing things which make us feel like we’re making a difference, rather than focusing on measures which really make a difference. As far as I can tell, the jury is still out on the merits of domestic solar panels in countries that are a fair-bit north of the equator. But I know full well that deep down, I’d love to have them. And I know I’m not alone.

Our individual green fetishes could also be matched by the desire of politicians and policy makers to do something. I always quote Yes Minister, but it’s such a great line:

We must do something about [insert pressing social issue]. This is something. Let’s do this.

I welcome the Government doing stuff on this issue, and on first reading the Warm Homes Strategy looks good. But you could quite easily see how targets (x district heating systems by such and such a year) or incentives (cheap loans to get solar panels) could end up stimulating inappropriate responses to this issue. And there’ll be no shortage of green energy installers setting up in the next couple of years, ready to convince unsuspecting homeowners that a ground source heat pump is just what they need.

I’m setting up a social enterprise this month – more on that soon. One of the first markets we’re getting involved in is this one. We want to get involved to help to make sure that in Leeds and elsewhere efforts to tackle climate change achieve as much positive social impact as they can. So we want to work with people like energy companies, the council, landlords and social housing providers to make Leeds greener – and save people money. We’re looking for collaborators – so if you’re interested, please get in touch.

It’s the first of the month so that means it’s time to check how many miles we did in the car last month.

You may remember that we’ve set ourselves a target of 700 miles a month – a reduction of 150 miles a month on previous years (around 10000 miles a year).

In January we did 297 miles, and in February we did…. 503. So we beat the target by just under 200 miles.

I’m now realising that it’s not just about the mileage – it’s also about whether the journeys you make could be made in other ways – and how far each journey is. This month, a lot of the journeys were necessary – whilst others were for convenience. We’ve moved house – and most of the car use was for going to the tip, the charity shop, or to work because we were too knackered and hassled to cycle or get the bus.

We’ve moved in to a friend’s city-centre flat for a few weeks, until our house purchase goes through. As a result we’ve parked the car at a friend’s house – so our mileage in March could well end up at zero. Obviously if you live in a city-centre you’ve got no good excuse not to use public transport – and having a car suddenly becomes very inconvenient.

In October I wrote about trying to consider green issues when buying a house. I’ll write more once we’ve moved (we’ve had an offer accepted on a house in North Leeds) but the point to make here is that we’ve gone for somewhere where we think it would be feasible to give up the car. It’s not far from the city-centre, it’s near to those all-important local amenities, and there’s a car club. So our city-living experiment – with its 8 week cold turkey treatment on the car – may well prepare us for the next step.

We sold our house this week and to cut a long story short we’ve moved into a friend’s flat in the centre of Leeds. It’s not a long-term move – with a bit of luck we’ll move into a house in a couple of months time.

I’ve never lived in the city-centre before. When I were a lad it wasn’t really an option, and to be honest I probably wouldn’t have considered it if it was. But I’m enjoying the opportunity to try it out for a few weeks, in the knowledge that we’ll be back amongst trees in a few weeks time.

Can the city life be the good life? It’s been interesting to see how living here has affected our behaviour.

On the positive side, we’ve parked our car at a friend’s house for 8 weeks. Obviously there’s no parking here, and, in Estate Agent speak, the transport links are excellent in the city centre. So we don’t really need the car. I’ve written before about our aim to reduce our car use – and perhaps get rid of it. Maybe going cold turkey for 8 weeks will do us a favour.

On the negative side, it’s well known that getting people to recycle when they live in a block of flats is a challenge. There doesn’t seem to be a recycling bin, and there’s no option for composting your food waste. I may well have a chat with the building manager – and perhaps the Council – about this. I wonder if other blocks of flats have tackled this issue?

Then there’s the convenience of life in the city – particularly having all the shops so close. I’m no big shopper but even I find myself tempted to buy more stuff as I pass all the tempting shop windows, day after day. When you live in the city it feels natural to consume.

As far as energy use goes, I have no idea where the meter is, but I imagine the flats are pretty efficient, particularly as we’re surrounded on all sides by other flats. And, to their credit, all the corridors have motion-sensor lighting, and the double glazing is decent.

I’m setting up a social enterprise next month, which, amongst other things, will encourage businesses and individuals to do practical things to be more green. Hence why I’m particularly interested in this block of flats. I doubt I’d get very far if I chatted with other people – it’s a smart block of flats, and a nice place to live, but it very much feels like everyone just keeps themselves to themselves – there isn’t even a noticeboard.

I’d be interested to hear other people’s experiences. Are there good examples of blocks of flats which have become more green?

I blogged a few months ago about buying an energy use monitor with the money I won for my post about plastic bags.  

That was a few months ago, and as planned, I'm passing the monitor on to some friends.  So here are my thoughts.  If you've tried to keep an eye on your energy usage, please let me know how you've got on – and share any tips below.

I took in a parcel for a neighbour over Christmas.  It was a free pack of energy-efficient bulbs, courtesy of npower.

That was good of them, I thought, an energy supplier doing their bit to help us save a bit of energy.  Helping people to not spend their money with you doesn't come naturally to most businesses.  

In 1997 I worked as an interpreter on an Overseas Development Agency project to build hydro-electric power stations north of Lima.  One day we went to an event where the local energy company was handing out T-Shirts with the slogan "Apagando un foco, ahorras un poco"  - roughly translated as "You'll save some money if you turn off your lights".

The UK engineer for whom I was interpreting thought this was a daft strategy – particularly for a recently-privatised energy company.  As you might expect, I disagreed.  It led to some interesting three-way discussions.  Whether they ultimately took more notice of me or him probably had more to do with economics than ecology.  Yet it's a good illustration of the tension that exists in any business which is involved in the consumption of natural resources on our behalf.  

So I was interested to read a piece in the Times today suggesting that npower's handout of 12 million energy-saving bulbs may not be such a great idea after all.  They were sent out to help the company to meet their legal obligation to cut carbon emissions – just before a new law comes into force which bans companies from mailing out unsolicited bulbs.

The problem is that research suggests that the average household has half-a-dozen unused bulbs in the cupboard under the sink.  So four more bulbs are unlikely to have the intended impact.  But they have helped npower meet their obligations, and thus avoid a fine of up to £40 million.

And, of course, free doesn't really mean free.  Companies are allowed to pass on the cost of these schemes to customers, through higher tariffs.  So we end up paying for bulbs we don't want, and which don't have the environmental impact that we so dearly need.  Cheers npower.

This story demonstrates how first steps very quickly need to become next steps when it comes to preventing runaway climate change.  Low energy bulbs are a good quick-win, and as my energy use monitor demonstrates, they do make a noticeable difference to your energy consumption.  But consumers, energy companies and governments now need to raise their game.  Sending out light bulbs is the easy, cheap bit, and it ticks the energy-saving boxes for the energy companies.  Yet it clearly isn't having the impact that the government intended when it set up the scheme.  

An npower representative, quoted in the Times, said:

"There is nothing under [the carbon emissions target reduction scheme] that means that we have to get evidence that the bulbs are being used.  It's up to the customer."

Which you may read as we've done our bit, not our problem Guv (or more accurately, Gov).  

If we're going to stop runaway climate change, businesses need to take more responsibility for the social and environmental impacts of their actions. Hopefully this will encourage/embarrass companies like npower, and Governments, to do more.