This week's Website of the Week is The New Home Front (www.newhomefront.org) a campaign group who are exploring how we can learn from Britain’s war time past in an age of dangerous climate change and energy insecurity.

If you would like to nominate a national, regional or local site with an environmental flavour please contact wow@yhref.org.uk.

About The New Home Front

We want to learn from the generation who saved fuel to help the greater good, who knew how to function as communities, from the generation who knew how to work with their hands and make things last. Yes, times were hard. People suffered and endured for a greater good. They were all in it together. But, that is all the more reason not to waste  what they learned. There’s an untapped store of knowledge, creativity, innovation and successful common purpose that we believe could help meet some very modern crises.

Over the next six months we are going to search for, and invite, the best ideas to live better, healthier and less wasteful lives from the generation who remember a time when their nation called upon them to do the same. Their experiences will be collected together and presented as a challenge to the Coalition government. We believe the British public is
ahead of its political leadership in terms of understanding the need to live better within our means – both financial and environmental. We hope this campaign will prove that.

• Download the New Home Front report (pdf)

What did we do in the war? Home Front achievements in the war effort:

• In just 6 years from 1938 British homes cut their coal use by 11 million tonnes, a reduction of 25 per cent.
• By April 1943 31,000 tonnes of kitchen waste were being saved every week, enough to feed 210,000 pigs.
• Food consumption fell 11 per cent by 1944 from before the war, but thanks to a scientifically planned national food policy, the population’s health got better.
• Scrap metal was saved at the rate of 110,000 tonnes per week.
• Use of household electrical appliances dropped 82 per cent.
• A war on waste, new social norms and rationing helped general consumption fall 16 per cent (and more so at household level).
• Between 1938 and 1944 there was a 95 per cent drop in use of
  motor vehicles.

For more information please visit www.newhomefront.org