Want to install solar power, recycle rainwater, even build your own lighthouse? It has never been easier, says Caroline McGhie
All homeowners these days probably suffer from carbon footprint anxiety, be it a vague worry about failing to compost the potato peelings to a fullblown drive to change those fossil fuelguzzling heaters to something more eco-friendly.
We know that 27 per cent of Britain's carbon emissions are produced at home. But whereas a few years ago it was hard to know how to clean up our lives, now there are real choices on offer.
Build it yourself
Imagine: A zero-carbon house buried in a hill in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the Cotswolds. It requires no manufactured energy to heat it and is tucked under the picturesque ruins of an old barn you have known since you were a child.
You have designed it with your partner, and within two years you will sell your London cottage and move in with your family to start a new life.
This is what Helen Seymour-Smith, 32, is doing with her husband Chris, 41, and three-year-old son Ben on her father's farmland.
"Everyone thought we were mad," she says. "The planning officers were against it. The local authority has a moratorium on new houses. But under a little-known paragraph of planning policy which allows a new isolated house of 'exceptional quality and innovative nature' to be built once in a blue moon, it got planning permission."
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