Winning the lottery is what we all dream of – an incredible amount of money to allow us to retire early and live our dream lives with everything we could every want. But then what? What do you do with the money that is left? Well, there are a lot of people who have gone on to do some really great things with their winnings, such as giving it to charity and using it to help people who really need it.
There are also a lot of lotto winners who have used their winnings to build eco-friendly houses and start eco-friendly businesses in an effort to reduce their carbon footprint and do their bit to help curb global warming. Here, we’ll be looking at those lottery winners and the ways they have used their new-found wealth to help save our planet.
Nigel Page and Justine Laycock
Nigel and Justine from Gloucester, UK, won a whopping £56 million on the Euromillions Jackpot and with their win they purchased a dairy-farm-turned-mansion for £4 million. This mansion has all of the high-end mod-cons, including an indoor cinema and an indoor swimming pool, but most importantly it is almost entirely carbon neutral and only needs 10% of the energy usually needed to power a regular household. It does this by using the ‘solar park’, featuring 20 solar panels which generate energy from the sun and is used to power the indoor floor heating, the swimming pool and other areas of the house. They did this to show that living it large in a luxury home can be environmentally friendly, and boy have they proven it!
EarthEnable
EarthEnable are a Rwandan start-up that won the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge earlier this year with a total sum of €500,000. The founder, Gayatri Datar won the money which will be used to develop her green innovation which aims to help some of the poorest people with a sustainable alternative to using cement on dirt floors. Dirt floors can lead to infections and disease as they breed germs and bacteria, and cement which is often used to cover them is costly and not environmentally friendly.
EarthEnable will use their lottery winnings to make locally produced natural materials which use a plant-based oil to seal these dirt floors and prevent infections and diseases. This material is 75% cheaper than using cement and they also produce 90% fewer emissions. This is a great use of lotto winnings and we can’t wait to see the impact it will have in the future.
Matt and Casey Topham
Matt and Casey Topham from Nottinghamshire, UK, won a huge £45 million in their lottery win back in 2010 and with it they planned to build a £5 million eco-home. The house was designed to have a maze, swimming pool and a secret garage, as well as be as environmentally friendly as possible by covering it entirely with solar panels. The winners stated that they aspired for the house to be “ultra-low in energy use but also high in aesthetic aspiration and quality”. Unfortunately, the plans for the house were scrapped when the couple’s first child came along, but hopefully, we will see further development in the future!
The future for these lottery winners is looking bright as more and more people are turning to a sustainable way of living. You don’t need to win millions to have a positive impact on the planet though, just as long as we are doing our part in ensuring we live as sustainably as possible then we can all do the world some good.
