Let's look around the home first:

l        Standby – Yes, leaving the TV, PC, or any other electrical device in standby is a great convenience. It starts up quickly from where it left off, but bear in mind that recent studies show that 10% of a bill can be attributed to standby power usage (on average £37 a year is wasted by a house in standby) Also remember the safety aspects, you don't leave Christmas lights on in standby in case of a fire, it's also possible for other standby items to succumb to the same fate.

l        Light bulbs – Swapping all your bulbs for energy saving bulbs will not only cut your bill and carbon footprint (by £7 per year in electricity costs) but will also last 10 times longer than ordinary bulbs, that means you won't be blowing fuses and plunging parts of the house into darkness as often and needing to run to the shop for a new bulb for the toilet, because showers in the dark are hard.

l        Double glazing – I know that you as a student won't be installing the double glazing your self but before you sign your contract for a new house check for double glazing, if it hasn't ask if the landlord will have it installed, again another energy saving as you won't need to have the heating on as high to maintain a nice warm environment.

l        Heating – Turning down your heating by just a couple of degrees can have a great impact on your carbon footprint, and you won't notice a few degrees of heating change, also remember the timer is your best friend. Turn the heating on for just before you wake up and for an hour before you get in, the house doesn't need to be warm when you're not in.

Now we've looked around the house let's think about getting around:

l        Walking, it's simple and in most cases you won't live that far away from university, and with the odd weather we have currently autumn is the new summer, last year I was hot and sweaty at the start of November on my walk to university in the morning.

l        Public transport, again let's face it even if you have got a car do you really want to risk it in in a student area? Not that student areas are rough but after a pub crawl people tend to be less than agile and can take a windscreen off and you can wake up to sick on your car. The trains and buses can be rubbish, but in major university areas the local transport are fairly trustworthy.

So we covered your home and transport lets finish off with some other tips

l        Recycle, buy two bins for your kitchen, recyclable and none recyclable, you can really help the environment by recycling all those beer cans and old magazines.

l        Offset your CO2  emissions, if you have some spare cash which wasn't going to be spent on anything in particular why not donate and have some trees planted to help offset the CO2 you produce? Visit http://www.treeappeal.com/

Always remember that going green isn't something that's going to go away, we need to think seriously about the world we want to live in, in the future.