Old home, new tricks

Last year less than one per cent of the gas and electricity consumed by Londoners came from renewable sources, according to a Greater London Authority report. The same study, called City Limits, also estimated that we ate our way through more than 680kg of food, produced half a tonne of household waste each and drank 58,000 litres of water.

If you build yourself a new home you can learn some new, environmentally friendly habits such as recycling and incorporating energy- and water-saving measures into the infrastructure of your house, thus giving you an altogether healthier lifestyle. But, if, like most Londoners, you live in a Victorian terrace, insulating the loft, plugging up the draughts, replacing the lead piping and the heating is an expensive nightmare that rarely gets tackled.

However, as the pioneering families on these pages show, it is possible to take an older home and turn it into an ecological, sustainable habitat, with grants and mortgages available for the work and long-term savings on bills.