Get me a wormery

Like many people, I'm already what you might call a little bit green. An online questionnaire I filled out described me as 'light green', which is to say that I recycle when it suits me, and I occasionally impulse-buy organic food. Over time I have adopted a middle-aged stance on the profligate use of electricity, and have tried to convince my children that Leaving The Refrigerator Door Open is one of the seven deadly sins. I own and occasionally operate a wind-up radio. The abstract notion of being green, then, is not at all unpalatable. The idea of actually going green for a week, however, fills me with dread. But the planet isn't going to get saved all by itself; it's time to pull on my hemp shirt and get on with it.

Sunday Organisation is the key to being green, which is probably why I'm getting off to such a bad start. By midday I have done nothing to further the survival of the planet. One of my first stumbling blocks involves wasting water. Obviously, there is no time for me to install a sophisticated 'grey water' system which automatically recycles all water not used for drinking or sewerage. A Greenpeace leaflet suggests I save water by having showers instead of baths, but our shower leaks directly into the downstairs loo, filtering through a ceiling criss-crossed with wiring, so we don't use it. I resolve to make some secondary use of my bath water, but while I am busy thinking about what to do with it I absentmindedly pull the plug and let it all out. Well, you try reversing the habit of a lifetime.

The rest of the day is devoted to consuming all the non-organic food in the house, and encouraging the children to do likewise. I want to make a clean break, and it would be a shame to waste it all.

Monday In the morning I set up the new kitchen waste receptacle. Of all the aspects of recycling, the one I like least is this unsightly grey bucket of peelings and food scraps - pig swill, basically. It's just not very urban. I am also reluctant to put old spaghetti, cereal and eggshells on my little London compost heap, lest they attract vermin, and I don't like the way the dog and the cat help themselves from the bucket all day. Still, it has to be done. I have a meagre bath, and let half of it out by mistake. I carry a bucketful down to water my potted herbs, but my heart isn't in it.

In the afternoon I set out to do the shopping. Manoeuvring my bicycle past my own parked car, I head for Planet Organic in Westbourne Grove, a one-stop organic emporium perfect for those attempting to go green overnight. It is also hideously, frighteningly expensive.

I buy organic children's yoghurt, organic dog and cat food ('That's going a bit far,' says another customer, smiling archly. I really didn't expect to be heckled in here), organic toothpaste and organic butter. I buy organic coffee, which gives the coffee growers a fair deal at my expense. I spend £7 on two organic chicken breasts. They must be the finest chicken breasts known to man. I spend £51 in total, and it still all fits in my rucksack. The coffee and the chicken point up an intriguing divide in the organic market: some people clearly go organic because they are worried about the environment and the welfare of farmers and their animals, while others do it only because they are worried about what they eat. If the former seems enlightened, the latter strikes me as being a bit selfish. Until organic produce is within the means of the masses, everyone should ingest their fair share of pesticides and antibiotics. Planet Organic also has an extensive section dedicated to natural remedies and 'wellness' products, a marketing concept aimed directly at people with more money than sense.

Tuesday The children will not touch the organic cornflakes. My wife does not like the fair coffee. Even I have to admit that the organic toothpaste is disgusting and leaves one feeling in need of an emergency visit to the hygienist. Only the cat and the dog seem pleased with their organic fare, but then they are quite happy eating kitchen waste. I manage to save my bath water, without quite knowing what I will use it for.

It's recycling day. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea makes this easy enough: I have been provided with a green bin, into which I can pile newspapers, bottles, tins, cardboard packaging and plastic containers. It goes out with the regular rubbish, so I only have to remember not to throw the recycling away.

The first real drag of the green week comes when I discover a cheque needs to be deposited at the bank right away, and I realise I will have to pedal all the way up there on my bike. It's a lovely day, and not all that far, and it will be good exercise and everything, but I just don't want to. I feel better about myself for having done it, however, and cycling does allow you to appreciate London in a whole new way, solely in terms of which bits are uphill and which bits are downhill.

All day I have been formulating an ingenious plan: the idea is to use a length of old hose pipe to siphon my bath water directly into the garden. This involves crawling across a glass roof with the hose in my teeth, which I firmly believe is more than the planet would ever do to save me. To prime the siphon, I have to fill the hose by hand, blowing down it to force the water through, while my six-year-old son stands in the garden shouting, 'It's not working!' Eventually I get it going, and the bath begins to empty of its own accord. I am able to water the garden for half an hour, happy in the knowledge that the plants are being offered extra protection against dandruff.

Wednesday In the morning I announce to my wife that I am going to repair the toaster. It hasn't worked for a year, and I had been working up the courage to throw it away and buy a new one, but in the plucky, make-do-and-mend spirit that is so much a part of the green way of life, I am confident that I will have it as good as new by breakfast tomorrow. Effortlessly soaking the lawn with my morning bath water, I quietly admire my own engineering genius.

Already I have to go shopping again, and I can't afford to return to Planet Organic. I pedal up to the local Sainsbury's instead, to sample its expanding organic range. I buy coffee grown in such a way so as to provide a sanctuary for migrating birds. Hooray for me. The prices here are generally more reasonable than Planet Organic, but my limited experience has shown that with organic, as with everything else, you get what you pay for. Generally speaking, cheap organic beer tastes no better than cheap ordinary beer, even though it's more expensive than expensive ordinary beer. In spite of the cost-cutting, I still spend enough to entitle me to a petrol voucher. As if!

I take the bus to pick up my son from school (the neighbours take him in the mornings, in a car, but it's no business of mine how they choose to live their lives). His face lights up when he sees me, then crumples into a grimace when he finds out we're taking the bus back home. To make it up to him, I take him to a nearby fast-food establishment, exactly the sort of place I should be helping to smash up. I abstain from eating. When we return home, I notice the toaster is missing.

Thursday I'm worried that my green measures aren't going far enough, but it's hard to conserve energy in summer. The central heating is off, and the lights don't go on until 9pm. I diligently use the wind-up radio, but I don't think this is saving me too many kilowatt-hours per quarter. The previous evening I readjusted the hot-water timer, shaving a half hour off both the morning and afternoon cycles. As a result, my bath is ice-cold. I don't mind so much, but the roses are used to lukewarm.

I may have found the answer to my kitchen waste problem: a wormery. The worms eat the waste, compost comes out the bottom, and everybody, apart from the dog and the cat, is happy. I ring a friend who has kept a wormery for years, and she tells me horror stories about the worms escaping across the sitting-room floor, of worms drowning in their own rich liquid compost and attracting flies. Her ex-wormery is currently out in front of her house waiting for the bin men to take it away, but the bin men think it's a bin. My solution is the Junior Wormery, a small blue bucket with a lid, which does exactly the same thing on a smaller scale. It comes with everything you need to get started - except worms. I have to send off for those. There will be plenty of kitchen waste for them when they arrive.

Friday I need to make one more trip to Planet Organic to get through the weekend. By shopping more carefully, I spend £10 less and end up with slightly more than I can carry, which makes for a very wobbly trip home. Luckily, I can buy organic wine at the corner off-licence, or I'd be stuffed. Later I go out and purchase some environmentally friendly lightbulbs, but they're all screw-cap, and most of my lamps have bayonet fittings. I also discover that I replaced a lot of my bulbs with energy-saving ones several years ago, and all are still going strong. Good for me!

After two sweaty, carbon-monoxide-rich bike journeys I fancy a bath, but the garden doesn't really need it.

Saturday The organic shopping is in the fridge, I've put bricks in the toilets' cisterns (to reduce the amount of water used when flushing), the recycling is in the green bin and the toaster has mysteriously reappeared in full working order. There is nothing left to do but sit in the garden with an organic beer and reflect on the week's progress. Some of the changes will certainly stick. I will continue to cycle when I can, at least for the rest of the summer, and I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my pet worms. But too much of green living seems to be about green shopping, about making a statement by making a purchase, rather than taking action. Organic magazines are full of ads for organic trousers, organic chocolate, organic bedding, organic shampoo and organic crisps. Being green should be about how little one wastes, not how much one spends.

The single most striking revelation of the week was discovering how much water a bathtub holds. My son and I filled a two-gallon bucket 12 times over before we got tired of counting: 24 gallons a day per person - enough to keep my back garden rainforest-wet through any drought. Perhaps I'd better get the shower repaired. Maybe I can fix it myself.