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This week’s Green Piece is about washing machines. We all use them but could we be investing in greener options?

LG’s recent Steam Direct Drive washing machines claim to be the greenest. They use 35% less water than other machines and 21% less electricity. Thanks to these stats, they’ve earned a rare A++ energy efficiency rating.

The steam also reduces creases so you will have little or no ironing to do after your wash - another energy saver and particularly fab if you have no time and hate ironing!

These have been out for a while but we wanted to wait until we had LG Steam reviews so that we could tell you what others thought of them. And, much to ours and the planet’s relief, they’re a big hit with their owners. Here are some reviews for the steam driven LG WM1437:

Jason, London:

“It’s looks are great, very easy to use, you can select standard programmes then ‘tune slightly’ e.g. spin speed, rinse cycle etc. It weighs the washing automatically first then calculates cycle times. It is very quiet and has a great estimate to complete timer. It also turns itself off when done to save power.”

Angela, Aberdeen:

“The load size at 8kg is brilliant and the steam option is very useful for engrained dirt. It is a very quiet machine and easy to use and it looks really good.”

“Looks good. washes and rinses extremely well. Very quiet. Environmentally sound.”

It all sounds great but what’s the catch? Well, as you may have guessed, all this washing brilliance comes at a cost. This model is currently around £500 but with your water, energy and ironing saving, it will work itself off pretty quickly.

If that all sounds a bit too much, there are plenty of other washing machines out there. Check out these A-rated washing machines so that you can still do your bit for the planet.

This week’s Green Piece sees three handy gadgets that will save you money on heating, electricity and batteries and will help the environment too.

First up is the wind-up remote control. It spells the end for those awkward sized batteries that nobody ever stocks and for that crucial moment when you go to use your remote and discover that the aforementioned batteries have run out.

According to WRAP, around 600 million UK household batteries (22,000 tonnes) – the equivalent weight of 110 Jumbo Jets – are sent to landfill unnecessarily every year, so this remote is definitely something to take seriously. It needs 30 ‘winds’ which will then last for seven days, which is pretty good going. It’s £24.95 but if you think about how many batteries you would go through, it’s not so bad.

The next product is something you can use in every room in your house to save you money on heating. It’s called a Radiator Booster and was once on Dragon’s Den. It sits on top of your radiators and takes all of the heat that gets released at the back of the radiator and uses clever fans to redirect it back into your room. It means that your house gets heated faster and that the heating can be switched off sooner.

At the moment, they’re £14.99 over at Nigel’s Eco Store and best of all, running costs are only about 30p a year.

Last is the waterproof torch that is charged up by shaking it. You shake it on down for 45 seconds and then you get five whole minutes of light…it does seem like a lot of work for five minutes but I guess it’s all part of the fun…and the energy saving, of course.

If you’re into science, the torch works with the help of a magnet. As you shake the torch, the magnet moves back and forth and generates an electric current. This current is then held in a holding cell so that you can still use the torch even if you haven’t wiggled it for a while. It’s a bargain at £5.99 and it has some good reviews too.

So there we have it, three great ways to help the environment and your wallets, especially useful now that energy costs are on the rise.