How to make your home Eco-Friendly. Adopting a green lifestyle at home has tremendous effects on your home, your bills, and of course, the environment. There are several ways to make your home eco-friendly, many of which are about reducing energy and waste.
That said, let’s get into how to make your home eco-friendly.
Ways to Reduce Waste
First and foremost, you must recycle. It’s the most basic tip for living an eco-friendly lifestyle because it works. Here are a few ways to incorporate recycling and reducing into your life:
- Get a reusable water bottle. Unfortunately, most of the recycled plastic bottles still end up in landfills. So, try reusable bottles instead.
- Try to purchase products with recycled materials only. Bonus points if you can find items with little to no packaging!
- Use kitchen scraps in the garden. They’re great for composting, and if you don’t have a garden, still throw them outside—you’ll feed the wildlife at the very least.
- Try to go digital with documents. Printing is wasteful, and ink and toner cartridges are expensive. So, we recommend printing as little as possible to reduce paper use and try remanufactured ink cartridges; they’re just as good at a fraction of the cost.
Ways to Reduce Energy
Energy usage is one of the major concerns when it comes to being eco-friendly. Here are some ways to reduce your energy use:
- Keep the lights off as much as you can and utilize natural sunlight. Another way to reduce energy from lighting is by using LED bulbs throughout your home.
- Consider investing in solar panels, it’s an upfront cost that repays itself over the years to come.
- Make sure the appliances in your home are energy efficient. One way to do this is by looking for the Energy Star® logo on appliances; some appliances will simply have Energy Efficient on them as well.
- Lastly, reducing water use is one way to make your home eco-friendly. There are several ways to do this. First, you could get what’s called a low-flow showerhead, which reduces the amount of water used during showers. Here’s a tip to reduce water use when shaving or brushing your teeth: fill a glass of water and use that water instead of leaving the tap running like many of us are guilty of doing.
There are several ways to have an eco-friendly home, but it comes down to reducing waste and energy. For many of us, reducing waste requires effort until we build the habit. For example, many of us don’t think about using kitchen scraps for composting; we unconsciously throw them away. Luckily, there’s been technological improvements to help us reduce our energy use. For example, there are energy-efficient appliances, low-flow showerheads, and more. So, now that you have some ideas to start, go and improve your home while improving the environment!
Read more – How To Make Your Home More Eco-Friendly – Part 2
