How Matthew Lodge helped renovate the planet, and his house too      

When Matthew Lodge, a civil servant, moved into his Victorian mid-terraced house last year, he set about improving it - and his carbon footprint - with the help of Green Homes Concierge Service.

"The brilliant thing about Green Homes Concierge is that while I knew a few things about being greener, I didn't really know where to start," said Matthew. "They've been steering me in the right direction from the word go. They've shown me what I can do to improve my house's energy rating as I renovate it, and exactly how to do it. They've also revealed things I wouldn't have thought about, like sealing draughts under built in cupboards. They've also cleared up misconceptions, showing me that in my case, it's my home that is the biggest contributor to carbon emissions, so it makes sense to take care of that."

Matthew was encouraged not to rip everything out and start again with greener products, since scrapping working products simply causes problems elsewhere along the CO₂ chain. It also costs more. Instead, he was advised to replace things only when they needed to be renewed.  "So I only insulated the roof because I needed to put in a new one anyway," he explained, "and replaced the boiler with a combi-boiler as the one in the house was old.  Now I'm slowly swapping all my light bulbs as they go. All these changes really helped make the house warmer and reduced my bills, and the advice they've given me on how to make more minor improvements as I do the house up over the next few years will come in incredibly useful."

The changes Matthew has made will help Green Homes Concierge to reduce London's annual CO₂ emissions by more than 17,000 tonnes over the next three years and, in turn, help save the planet.