No Waste Like Home will hit the airwaves in August and will follow eight households as they turn their back on a throw-away, wasteful lifestyle and take simple measures to become armchair eco-warriors.

The series is produced by Celador, the company responsible for Who wants to be a millionaire and You are what you eat.
Self-confessed eco-dominatrix Penney Poyzer will be presenting the show and told edie she was hoping the message would well-received and taken up by viewers.

She said the G8 summit and barrage of news reports on climate change meant concern for the environment was in the zeitgeist at the moment and people could convert their concern into positive action.

“People feel extraordinarily dis-empowered because they really don’t see how they can apply measures to help the planet to their ordinary lives,” said Penney.

“All the households we hit were extremely wasteful but no more so than millions of others in this country.

“During the filming we talked to such diverse families we’re hoping there is something for everyone to identify with in there.”

Seeing the formerly-wasteful having their own green epiphanies and becoming environmentally aware was an amazing thing, she said.

She described, for example, a gay couple living in swanky London flats in who had come round from being largely dismissive of green concerns.

After being made aware of the issues they became committed edco-activists, arranging for all 360 bathrooms in their block to be fitted with water-saving devices, on-site recycling facilities and set up a waste management group with its own website and message board.

People often needed little persuasion to change their ways, said Penney, and once they had started down the right track seemed to quickly gather momentum.

“Once people are involved they tend to get more political and demand change,” she told edie.

She said that if we waited for Government to tell us what to do the environment was in trouble, but if people got active things could be achieved.

“It only takes 100 people to call up their local authority and say something like ‘we really need a nappy recycling facility here’,” she said.

“Then things can start to happen.”

  • No Waste Like Home begins at 8pm, August 25 on BBC2.

    By Sam Bond

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