A BRIGHTON mother has saved about £14,500 after completing a year of eco challenges.

Zoe Morrison set herself the challenges after giving up her comfortable job as an internal auditor for the NHS to become an eco money-saving blogger.

The 35-year-old married mother of sons aged six and four tackled one challenge a month, including quitting toilet paper, buying no new or even second-hand clothes and instead making her own, mending clothes or swapping with friends, cutting out shampoo for a year and using olive oil soap, and starting a Facebook group that shares all leftovers.

The only challenge she couldn't quite pull off was an attempt to cut out single usage plastic during 'plastic-free July’.

Zoe said: “I gave up trying to be fully single-use plastic-free part way through the month as it was just too hard.

“To do it properly, you need to give up teabags (most contain plastic), jars (lids contain plastic), tins and cans (they are plastic-lined), wrappers that contain plastic layers and glass bottles with plastic pourers or plastic in their lids.” Her final challenge of the year last month was ‘zero waste week’, in which she didn't throw anything away.

She recycled and composted everything she could and put to one side anything she couldn’t.

At the end of the week, she could fit most of the rubbish saved from the week into one ice cream tub.

“It's been an amazing year, full of adventures, changed habits and money saved,” said Zoe, whose challenges have been featured in The Guardian online. “I’ve pushed myself to the limits.”

Even part of the way through her year of eco challenges, Zoe worked out she had slashed the family’s yearly expenditure by more than £11,000. She said: “Over the last year, I made around £3,500 from other sources of income, such as our solar panels, which is around £150 a month, from renting out a room to students, between £110 and £125 a week before costs such as food, and from renting out part of our garage, £65 a month.

“The savings we have made and the passive income we are generating totals around £14,500 a year, which I think is pretty fantastic and more than replaces the salary I was earning while I had to pay childcare fees.”

Read Zoe Morrison’s blog at ecothriftyliving.com.