8 Ways to Green Your Home
This story is part of Earth911’s “Green Eight” series, where we showcase eight ways to green your life in various areas.
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 scrap metal.
2. Recycle Smarter
Once you’ve grouped out what you want to get rid of, figure out how and where to 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.
7. 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 Club Earth 911 at their school.
8. 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.
bravenewleaf
posted on January 4th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
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.
Earth911’s “Green Eight” Series « greener loudoun
posted on January 11th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
[...] 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. [...]
easy ways to go green around the house
posted on May 19th, 2008 at 8:09 am
[...] Ways to Green Your HomeHere are eight easy ways to be eco-friendly around the house.http://earth911.com/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. [...]
water tanks
posted on September 9th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
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.
jeremiah buckley
posted on March 19th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Need instuctions on how to recycle at home not that much income
Raquel Fagan
posted on March 19th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Hey Jeremiah,
Great question! Check out our How-To Guide for Home Recycling. I think that would be a great asset!
Good Luck!
Keeny D
posted on April 13th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
On #3: Traditional fluorescents (”tubes”) have the advantage of higer surface area (generally higher lumens/W) & also that option of replacing the lamp independently of the ballast. On average, a ballast lasts 4 lamps.
On #6: Check your appliances’ energy use before replacing. Some things (like stoves & clothes dryers*) have minimal, if any energy benefit from replacement. I put my mid-80’s “Energy Saver” (Energy Star didn’t exist yet) refrigerator on a “Kill-A-Watt” in Summer `06, & found that it uses about half the kWh @ 80-90°F than a new (same size & features) model Energy Star does (I believe the test is @ 70°F room temperature).
* Newer dryers usually have a moisture sensor, but they still use more power than air/sun drying.
On #8: Beware organizations that claim to plant trees that (insert lumber company here) was going to replant anyhow.
Donny
posted on April 23rd, 2009 at 10:58 am
Green Cleaining Products is definately a transistion everyone should do. I recently became educated in how harmful the cleaning products can be in your home. After I researched this, I tried several products and tried making some of the homemade products but what I found was many of them did not work as well as say Windex etc. After some research and a recommendation from a friend I found one that works well and is Greener than most products. In fact it contains 100% enzymes which can be found in the human body and are completely non-toxic and safe near children and pets. Check it out http://www.wowgreen.net/Default.aspx?ID=12541 Hope you like them! Look foward to hearing how people liked them.
Rich
posted on May 4th, 2009 at 5:24 am
On saving water: we keep a five-gallon bucket by our shower. When running the shower to get the water warm, we save it in the bucket (about 2 gallons per shower!). When the bucket is full we use the water on our plants or pour it in the washing machine for clothes. We do the same thing in the kitchen, pouring the water in a plant watering can as we wait for it to warm up. We’re saving around 20 gallons of water a week this way.
GreenHome23
posted on May 18th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
I got some of those cleaning products, thanks DOnny for posting that. They work great and after reading up about them on the site it definately looks like it is the best way to go for Greening your cleaning products. I definatly recomend these products to everyone. If you missed his message goto http://www.wowgreen.net/12541
If you have been there before clear your browser data beause they made some good improvements to the site including a shop online function. I had a problem at first because I could not see the changes and once I cleared my internet data, it worked. Hope you guys like these products as much as me.
Lastly, if you have any questions for them, make sure you click the “Contact Sales Department”, this is how you talk directly with the Sales Team. The “Contact Us” button on the main bar takes you to the corpotae info contact.
Chris Moline, LEED AP
posted on May 21st, 2009 at 8:04 am
Nice job. Can’t get enough tips.
James
posted on June 11th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
#3. CFLs are a joke. I replace a number of traditional bulbs in my house to CFLs. After about 2 years I’m having CFLs go out left and right while the traditional bulbs keep working. I found NO place that has honored their 5 or 10 year warranty on the bulbs. I do have a number of the traditional florescent bulbs and they continue to work great.
#4 I installed rain barrels for my garden and plants. I bought used plastic food grade drums for $5 and some miscellaneous hardware for a total of about $50 and have about 100 gallons of rain water to use. It’s great.
#5 is wonderful. Between this and recycling we throw out so little now. If you have no place to use compost some people may pay you for yours or you can give it to a gardener needing more. But it would do wonders for your lawn. In the fall you aerate and sprinkle compost on top. Great stuff.