8 Ways to Green Your Home
by Earth 911 on January 3rd, 2008
Here are eight easy ways to be eco-friendly around the house.
1. Clean Out Your Storage
We all have a closet or garage full of items that aren’t used anymore. An easy way to organize these areas is to group the products and decide what to do with them accordingly. Some sample groups could include electronics, household waste (paint, pesticides, motor oil) and scrap metal.
2. Recycle Smarter
Once you’ve grouped out what you want to get rid of, figure out how and where to recycle these products or donate them for reuse using Earth 911. Another way to recycle smart is by closing the loop; buy items made from recycled content and with limited packaging.
3. Use Energy More Wisely
Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) use 20 percent of the energy of incandescent bulb, and they also last 10 times as long. Keeping your thermostat at reasonable temperatures in both the winter and the summer is also a good energy saver. Finally, read your energy bill and check for trends from month to month, and ask your energy company about renewable alternatives.
4. Use Less Water
Whether it’s taking shorter showers or putting a bottle in your toilet tank, saving water is important because it is a limited resource. You can also reuse water around the house, such as using cooking water for plants (the nutrients from the food will benefit the plant).
5. Start Composting
Composting is hip again, and it’s a great way to reduce your waste and help your garden at the same time. You can include most food scraps and material like cardboard, which will biodegrade in your yard and produce nutrient-rich fertilizer. A cubic yard of compost is worth $80 in dirt costs.
6. Invest in Energy-Efficient Appliances
If you can afford it, start replacing older appliances in your home with more energy-efficient ones. These products will reduce your energy output and save money on your electricity bill. Buying a hybrid car is also an eco-friendly investment.
Start a Green Group
Plenty of green activities are meant to be a shared experience, such as carpooling. Talk to your friends about the importance of conserving, and develop programs and activities in your neighborhood for others to get involved. Students can also start a Club Earth 911 at their school.
Plant a Tree
It may seem cliché, but planting trees was the original carbon offset. Not only do they reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, but they can provide shade for your home (reducing energy costs) and produce fruits that you won’t have to buy at the store.
Share your own green tips with others by commenting below. Print the list to post on your refrigerator!
This story is part of Earth 911’s “Green Eight” series, where we showcase eight ways to green your life in various areas. Click here to see Earth 911’s “Green Eight” archive.
6:13 pm on January 4th, 2008
Good starter list. I would add a series of hot water related items:
-wash your clothes in cold water. There’s no real reason to use hot water
-turn down your water temperature to 120 F
-insulate your hot water heater. It’s easy to do, and makes your hot water heater 8% more efficient.The importance of recycling can’t be emphasized enough. Keeping goods out of landfills isn’t just about how quickly things biodegrade. What’s more important is how much *energy* recycling saves, and how much greenhouse gas it reduces out of the air.
As garbage decomposes, landfills create extraordinary amounts of sulfur dioxide emissions, which is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2.
And reusing materials, like the aluminum in cans, means we don’t have to go get more from the Earth, which takes enormous amounts of coal and gas-powered energy to achieve.
1:31 pm on January 11th, 2008
[...] 8 Ways to Green Your Home Here are eight simple activities around the house to reduce your impact on the environment, courtesy of Earth 911’s Green Eight series. [...]
8:09 am on May 19th, 2008
[...] Ways to Green Your HomeHere are eight easy ways to be eco-friendly around the house.http://earth911.org/blog/2008/01/03/eight-ways-to-green-your-home/The Home Know-It-All: Easy Ways to Go Green Around the HouseEasy ways to Go green around the House. [...]
10:57 pm on September 9th, 2008
Just on point 4: We all would like to use less water but it sometimes be a bit unrealistic and can be false economy. (Those water saving shower heads just make people take longer showers). It should really be ‘Don’t waste water’. Use as much water as you need providing you are doing something to make up for it, like storing rain in water tanks, or recycling your grey water. Then you can have a decent shower! If you can’t do any of those things THEN use less water.
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