At IKEA, we love to encourage our coworkers to live a sustainable life at home. For instance, in the UK, every coworker is given a bulb box on joining the company. It contains 6 IKEA low energy bulbs and when the bulbs are at their end of life, IKEA will replace them free of charge and recycle the returned ones. The box contains information about IKEA and what the coworker can do to save energy at home and at work.

Pasta water boils up to 75% faster with a lid on it because the heat doesn’t escape. That’s why we design pots with glass lids so you don’t let the heat out when you peek in to see how stuff’s cooking. Your kitchen stays cooler, which can save cooling costs in the summer.

Remember, when you boil, steam or reheat, cover your pots to save fuel and money, and get dinner on the table much faster.

Dish towels are an easy way to save money, trees and reduce trash. Paper towels have their place if a kitchen mess is germy (like raw chicken), but to dry dishes or sop up a spill, dish towels work better, make glasses gleam, and are easy to wash so you can use them over and over and over – and over. If everyone used just a few less paper towels each week, think of how many trees we could spare every year.

As you shop for food, pack groceries according to where you put them away. That way, cold things stay cold, and when you get home, things that go into the refrigerator or the freezer are bagged together.

This will help food stay fresher on the ride home and your fridge won’t work so hard to chill it again. This can save energy and your time!

‘Vampire energy loss’ is the way computers, TVs and other stuff sucks power even when you turn them off or put them to sleep!

Unplug what you’re not using and you can save up to 10 percent in energy and on your electric bill.

To reduce wear and tear on cords, plug lots of gear into one power strip - such as TV, DVD, and game consoles in your wall unit – and shut it all off with the flip of one switch.

White reflects heat, so use light curtains in the summer and keep them closed to block out warmth on sunny days. In the winter, heavy fabrics can help insulate against the cold, and darker colors can absorb the sun to warm rooms and let you lower your thermostat. Add our thermal shades to use even less energy.

For each degree you adjust the thermostat, you can save 3-5 percent on your energy bill and reduce carbon emissions too.

Instead of letting water run, get a big bowl, drop in fresh vegetables and fill with cold water (which also revives limp veggies you might otherwise have tossed). Swish around, rub and let sit. When you come back, the dirt’s fallen to the bottom of the bowl, and veggies are clean.

You’ll save litres of water every time you rinse a head of lettuce this way. Then, just pour the bowl of water into thirsty houseplants or out into your garden.

If we all wasted less food - as little as the weight of a slice of bread a day – we could feed three meals a day to 1.3 million homeless children for a year. More people eat, you save money, and there’s less garbage hauled by trucks to dump into landfills.

Put leftovers in smart storage containers that keep food fresh longer so you’ll be able to enjoy every bite and never have ‘bad’ food to throw away again.

When your freezer’s full, all the food keeps each other cold and your appliance doesn’t have to work so hard. The less power it uses, the more money you save, and the fewer carbon emissions your power company emits. So, portion big batches of soup, pasta sauce or chili into freezer-safe containers. You’ll always have quick meals handy, you can defrost them in the fridge and reheat to save energy, time, and money.

In the winter, when you’re toasty under a comforter you can turn the heat down. Come summer, use a light quilt and choose our sheets that wick away moisture so you don’t get so sweaty.

For each degree you adjust your thermostat seasonally, you could reduce your energy use and utility bill from 3-5 percent.

Bring a mug or thermos to work or to your favorite coffee shop and fill that instead.

All those paper cups – and heat sleeves, stirrers, sugar packets and napkins – make a lot of trash.

If we all used just one less paper cup per week, we could save thousands of trees a year and much less trash would need to be hauled by trucks and dumped into landfills. That means a lot less air pollution too.

Growing plants in your home is great, and having herbs handy saves you time when cooking and you won’t have to throw away or recycle all those plastic packages they come in.

If we all used just one less packet like that per week, we’d save so many barrels of oil each year that are used to make the plastic and to transport the herbs to supermarkets.

A clothes dryer uses a lot of energy, and in the summer it can make your house hotter and clothes can get wrinkly in the dryer anyway. Instead, just drape wet laundry on a line or drying rack. To help soften clothes after air drying, toss them in the dryer with no heat for a few minutes and you might not have to iron either! By saving energy every time you skip a dryer load, you’ll save money too.

It’s easy to recycle when you have a place to put that bottle you just emptied – such as a simple sorting system right in your kitchen.

You can also put a second wastebasket for recyclables in other rooms, like one in the den for cans and bottles and another in your home office for paper.

Recycle and you help save trees, and keep kilos of trash out of landfills each year.

Running a full dishwasher saves energy and water over hand washing the dishes. Even better - with today’s dishwashers you don’t have to rinse your dishes anymore. Really! To max out your energy savings, purchase an ENERGY STAR dishwasher or stop your dishwasher before the dry cycle and let them air dry. Isn’t it fun when what feels like a lazy luxury is also the best thing all around?

When you put food in the refrigerator, cover it. Get food containers with lids or use matching-sized plates to cover bowls of food.

Why? Uncovered food releases moisture into the air and that makes your refrigerator work harder during the defrost cycle. That uses extra electricity and costs you money. Plus, a lid keeps food fresher and your fridge doesn’t get so smelly.

Every time you open the oven door, the temperature drops, and your oven uses extra energy to get back to temperature. That just adds to your cooking time and means you have to wait even longer to eat. To keep an eye on how dinner’s doing, peek through the oven window instead.

Want to save even more energy? If you haven’t been opening the oven you can turn off the heat 10 minutes before food is done and let it finish on retained heat.