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“We need to do more and use less,” says Penney. “It’s like kids in a sweet shop with so much to choose from. We are seduced by the choice and we lose our sense of responsibility along the way.” Many ecologists think it will take a major calamity before we all buckle down. But Penney, 45, is more optimistic. She has been saving the planet since the dawn of the Green Age in 1972, when the Club of Rome think-tank said the Earth would run out of resources within a century. “I remember images on telly of the Torrey Canyon (1967), all those birds stuck in oil, and thinking our need for energy was such a bad deal for the rest of nature.”

So far, environmental activism has been a posh thing. According to polls, 15 per cent of us claim to have adopted an eco-lifestyle, and most are from professional households. From sales of Ecover to the boom in farmers’ markets, we are becoming ethical consumers. And now ITV’s This Morning, which regularly features topics such as disposable nappies and organic cooking, has appointed Joanna Yarrow, a London eco-consultant, to present items on greening the home and garden.

Despite our pretentions to eco-living I confess that it was a huge relief when we read an Environment Agency report last month saying that disposable nappies are not much worse than washable ones. Penney disagrees with the report’s key finding because it has left out of its calculation the means of disposing of disposable nappies. I try to picture the 4,000 nappies that my baby daughter will use before she is toilet-trained. If my sums are right, the space needed to bury the nation ’s disposable nappies each year is equal to at least 50,000 houses.

“Washable nappies can be sold on or passed to someone else,” Penney reminds me as she finds an unwashable one in our rubbish. “Go to a website like the National Childbirth Trust’s. Ask around to find the best nappy.”

Next, she finds a plastic bottle with a spray-head top. It had contained cleaning fluid and Penney points out the instructions, with explicit warnings about health risks to children. Now I have the container I should fill it with tap water and a solution of 5 per cent vinegar, she advises. I would then have an insecticide for the garden, or an old-fashioned domestic cleaner I could spray without harm to the environment or my eight-week-old baby. I try it on the stainless steel kitchen counter top — as good as Mr Muscle.

Our electricity bill reveals that we use most during the day, when it is most expensive. Using night electricity (about a sixth of the cost) helps the environment by smoothing the load on the power grid. Of course, only put full loads in the dishwasher and washing machine. And switch off appliances on standby — the electricity used by all our standby equipment could power a town the size of Basingstoke.

“I have to say, ‘Could do better’,” Penney concludes. “Especially the amount that has to go to landfill. It shows the improvement that you still have to make.”

After she has gone we agree we could do more. When the next delivery from Waitrose arrives I hand the driver our empty plastic bags and packaging material from the previous visit. He takes them without a murmur. I ring the central phone number. “It’s no problem,” says the operator. “There’s a recycling plant at the warehouse.” I take more bags and wrapping to the general store across the road, where the proprietor points at a cardboard box on the floor containing an ice-cream wrapper. I ask about their recycling policy and receive Bengali laughter and jokes in reply.

A week later, I have reverted to my pre-Penney state of being. Plastic pizza wrappers stuffed with junk mail are in the same compartment as old batteries and light bulbs, which have not been replaced with low-energy equivalents. I have found a company that sells letterbox insulators, but have not yet ordered them, or the stick-on strips for the windows.

The difference is that now I feel guilty.