IN times of recession, when people are trying desperately hard to save every penny, saving the environment slides down their list of priorities.

Yet it may be “green” ideas that are the making of us after this recession. There is new green technology, such as carbon capture and storage, that could be the future of the regional economy if our businesses are able to seize the moment.

Even while we’ve been putting this supplement together, a really exciting development has been given the go-ahead in Chilton, County Durham. This former mining village is not noted as a community of leading eco-warriors, but the proponents of a £40m biomass power plant say it will create nearly 30 full-time jobs and cut local fuel bills by 20 per cent while preventing waste wood from being dumped in the ground.

What more could you want?

Of course, this sort of green initiative is on a scale – £40m – that most of us can’t imagine.

But it doesn’t have to be on that sort of scale.

While researching the green tips in the central pages, ecoballs kept cropping up time and again. They are balls filled with pellets that go in your washing machine and do away with the need for detergent. Green websites are abuzz with word that these balls actually work.

And they do. The Lloyd household has been using them for a month now. No white shirt has turned a grubby grey; no item of clothing has needed a second wash – even the six-yearold’s trousers after he ground ketchup into them while trying to eat fish and chips on his lap.

While it may be necessary to keep a box of oldfashioned powder on hand for real challenges, the only difference we’ve noticed is that our clothes have no smell at all – a smell, even if it was of spring or wild meadows, that was created by chemicals.

Washing powder – one of the heaviest items on the supermarket shop – costs about 35p-a-wash. The ecoballs, which cost £26, are about 3p-a-wash. They save electricity because the washing machine doesn’t need a rinse cycle, and they don’t sluice chemicals into the environment.

What more could you want?

(Actually, the dryerballs we bought to improve the performance of the tumble drier don’t seem to have had a similarly positive effect, and the worry is that they crash around the drum, possibly shortening its life.) So, hopefully, there is something inside this supplement that you can pick up on.

You don’t have to be an enviro-activist. You don’t even have to believe in global warming. You may just think it’s not right, after a single use, to toss something into landfill where it will stay for thousands of generations when, with a little effort, we could turn it into something worthwhile.

Or you may just fancy saving a few pennies in these recessionary times.