THE AVERAGE family has three arguments a week about being green, including leaving the lights on, forgetting to switch off the TV and only half-filling the washing machine.

A study of 2000 adults, who live with a partner or children, found that families frequently argue about devices being left on all night, putting too much water in the kettle and taking too long in the shower.

What a load of tosh. I won’t dispute the arguments - they certainly take place, and my home is no exception. But they are not about being green. They are more about saving cash.

Why don’t people admit that this is the driving force behind all those arguments, not reducing their carbon footprint?

Such arguments are far from new. Families were bickering over stuff like this well before someone spotted a hole in the ozone layer.

My parents used to lecture us about leaving lights and radiators on in bedrooms all the time, and that was 50-odd years ago.

We are now even more paranoid about such things, thanks to smart meters, raising people’s stress levels to near-heart attack every time they make a cup of tea.

I refuse to have a smart meter but as costs rockets, like the majority of the population, I try to keep tabs on how much power we use.

I spend half my life going around the house switching things off: the cooker, the radio - always left on in the kitchen - the toothbrush charger, the phone charger. The list goes on.

It’s not my kids - they live 200 miles away - it’s my husband. I take no pleasure in telling off a grown man for these minor domestic offences, and know full well that he will snap back at me and it will build up into an argument.

But I feel the need to remind him, as my parents did me all those years ago, that “we’re not made of money.” Not once have I said: “Turn off that hot tap, we need to save the Earth.”

Let’s face it, the way we live in the developed world, few people put planet before pocket. You only have to take to the roads to see that - just about every other car is the size of a Sherman tank. Fridges are larger than cricket pavilions, TV sets rival the screens of Cineworld and our homes are crammed with sockets bursting with chargers for this and that.

It's somewhat farcical that families go around telling each other to turn off lights when they’ve got 30 electronic devices sucking energy from the National Grid round the clock, but that’s what happens.

We all half-heartedly try to save the planet, sticking empty cans, wine bottles and newspapers out for collection. But if we really cared about green issues we would make radical changes and live simpler lives with far fewer consumer goods.

The study, commissioned by the British International Education Association (BIEA),

also found that third of adults admitted to having been 'green-shamed' by their partner or children, who tell them off for bad habits that aren’t eco-friendly.

How children are qualified to green-shame anyone beats me - they are the ones with devices coming out of their ears. Smartphones, gaming equipment, you name it, they’ve got it plugged into a socket.

The average UK teenager owns six digital devices - they have all got to be manufactured, shipped and goodness knows what else. Not to mention disposed of a few months later when they are replaced by the next best thing.

Do they really care? Do any of us? Sadly we don’t.