Make Your Home Eco-Friendly
How eco-friendly is your home?
You can make all sorts of changes to adapt to your home and make it kinder to the planet. Choosing suitable materials and considering how we use resources can make a difference. Not only that, it can save you some money and, if you’re looking to sell your home, add some value to your property.
Are you looking to make your home a little bit greener? Then you’ve come to the right place. This is the Bedstar guide to making your home more eco-friendly.
Getting eco-friendly with your living room
The living room presents stellar opportunities to show the environment you care about and infuse your home with eco-friendly intentions. Here are a couple of tips on how to bring some eco-friendliness to your living room:
Keep your décor green
The walls and flooring are significant features of a living room, so you’ll want to use greener materials and avoid using any harmful products in your living room. When going green, many people forget about the décor and focus solely on the furniture. Use eco-friendly adhesives, coatings, and carpeting to reduce your carbon footprint (releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through your activities).
Refinish and repurpose your furniture
Making your furniture reduces your carbon footprint because you’re not using the same chemicals and processes that large manufacturers use to make their products. Of course, it takes a little more skill, but it’s not entirely impossible, especially if you repurpose furniture rather than build new furniture from scratch. For instance, if you plan to get rid of a wooden bed, stop for a moment and ask if you could use the wood for anything else. Is there potential for a shelf, perhaps or even…?
Giving your bedroom the eco-friendly touch
A bedroom is a place for rest and intimacy, but while you rest, the planet struggles. It doesn’t have to be this way. Rest in your bedroom and lend the earth a helping hand with the measures below:
Choose an eco-friendly mattress
Your bedding can make a difference. Some firms make their linen from organic cotton and treat it with non-toxic dyes, which means they’re a viable option for anyone who cares about the planet. However, it’s not just in terms of bedding that some manufacturers in the sleep industry are trying to meet environmentally conscious consumers’ demands. Did you know, for instance, that the brand Silentnight has produced its Eco Comfort range with recycled plastic bottles? That’s right. The brand has used the bottles in its fillings.
Add some drapes which are eco-friendly.
Make the most of your curtains to leverage heat from the sun. Natural and eco-friendly curtains are made from linen. In the summer, they block heat, whereas in winter, they trap it. When the warm season comes, you close them in the morning but open them in the evening. In the colder season, you do the exact opposite. Drapes are handy if you have draughty windows but don’t want to replace them or can’t replace them.
Show some environmental consciousness in your kitchen
A kitchen is a busy place where we can lessen the planet’s impact with eco-friendly materials.
Read on and find out how in this section:
Eco-friendly units, Birch plywood, consists of several sheets of birch veneer glued together with a resin, making it a much more environmentally friendly solution.
Birch plywood is a superb material for eco-friendly units and is a trend in sustainable kitchens. The wood is made from thin sheets of wood sandwiched together for strength but little waste. Other eco-friendly materials include melamine-faced chipboard (MFC) and medium-density fibreboard (MDF) if they use recycled timber or chipboard. Ideally, the wood should comprise a high proportion of the final product. It may be a little bit more expensive, but it’s a small price to pay for the planet’s good.
Floors and walls: Bamboo is a natural and ecologically friendly material.
Bamboo and boards made from ethically sourced timbers are widely available, but there are other options if these don’t grab you. Resin is a fantastic covering for walls and floors but doesn’t recognise some feel it deserves. Made from natural polymers, the resin can replicate the appearance of polished concrete but takes fewer chemicals and water to produce.
If you paint your kitchen with low-volatile organic compound (VOC) paints. VOCs are the chemicals behind the fresh paint smell we get when decorating. Unfortunately, they’re neither good for ourselves nor the environment. Rather than painting the kitchen, another option is to tile it, and you can do this sustainably by purchasing from tile manufacturers who use recycled materials to make their tiles.
Making your bathroom eco-friendly
A bathroom is a place for washing, grooming, and, generally, helping to maintain your hygiene and visit the toilet. As you’d expect, you’ll be using water for this, which makes saving water a significant focus when it comes to improving the eco-friendliness of your bathroom. Here are a few tips to make that happen:
Fit a recirculating water pump
A recirculating water pump beneath the sink is handy to have. As well as saving water, the pump provides convenience because the tap instantly delivers hot water. You can save 3 to 5 gallons of water every time you use it.
Install low-flow facilities. Lowering your water bills is easier than you may think.
It’s a bathroom, so, of course, you’ll run the taps a lot or use more water than in other rooms of the house. For instance, did you know that a toilet uses around 27% of your home water? That’s a significant opportunity to add an eco-friendly touch to your bathroom. Think low-flow and install a low-flow toilet. Some models have a dual flush, which allows you to cut back on the water and flush in line with the type of waste you need to get rid of.
Think low flow for your shower, too. A low-flow showerhead will let you stay under the warm water longer but have a less detrimental environmental impact. A standard showerhead uses around 5 to 8 gallons of water per minute, whereas a low-flow one can reduce this to just 2.5 gallons per minute. Not only do you save water, but you’ll also save heat energy, which means lower energy bills and more money in your pocket.
Getting green in the garden
In a garden, you can relax and soak up the sun. Perhaps you’re more the green-fingered type who finds doing a spot of gardening itself relaxing. The garden is another fantastic place to do your bit for the planet. Follow these suggestions to make it happen:
Make your compost. Composting is a practical and environmentally friendly way of caring for your
Making your compost allows you to recycle green waste for the purpose and, as a side benefit, saves you money on bagged compost and soil conditioner. Teabags, lawn clippings, hedge trimmings, shredded newspapers, vegetable peelings, leaves, and vacuum cleaner contents are all good to go into your compost.
Improve your soil
Adding compost to soil improves its water-holding capacity and provides it with organic matter, helping the plants grow and stay healthy. A wealth of essential microorganisms will populate the soil. The soil will develop the strength to fight off disease rather than succumb to it. It would help if you dug in a bucket full of compost every few feet when you’re planting, or you can spread some compost around plants as a mulch every spring. This latter measure will stop the rain from washing away lighter soils.
Permeable paving
Run-off from concrete paving can contribute to flooding and damage local wildlife significantly. According to the law, you should now use permeable surfacing materials for paving in front gardens. If you plan to build a more than five m² driveway with impermeable materials, you must request planning permission first. Crunchy gravel and slate chippings are fine alternative materials to paving, but you can also get porous paving or grass reinforced with recycled plastic grids, depending on your preferences.
Heating and insulation
When we don’t insulate our homes well enough, we walk over to the thermostat and turn the dial-up higher than necessary. In some cases, we might not even be heating our homes sustainably in the first place. This section provides you with some tips on how to change all that:
Upgrade your windows. It has already been determined that timber frames typically have a longer lifespan than PVC-U frames.
UPVC is a common material for window frames, but it emits toxic compounds, so opt for wooden window frames instead. They’re long-lasting, insulate better, and do the environment a greater favour. Order double glazing instead of single glazing to protect your home better. You can reinforce the insulation by adding thick curtains to conserve energy.
Use heat control technology to help manage your heating more effectively
A remote control heating system such as Nest can help you manage your heating more effectively. The system allows you to heat your home when needed and from wherever you are. You can control the temperature and the time from your phone. The wonders of technology!
Be wary of fires and the environment.
Wood-burning fires are a disaster for the environment. Use wood that hasn’t been painted or treated if you have one. Don’t burn any rubbish or packaging. They may release harmful substances into the atmosphere. If you must have a wooden fire, choose a low-emissions one and get a HETAS-approved chimney sweep to inspect your chimney and clean it regularly. This will allow fewer dangerous chemicals to escape into the atmosphere.
Getting serious with water
Water is a precious resource, one we take for granted. Thinking about how we use water and making efforts to consume less of it can benefit the environment. Here are a few tips for conserving water, plus considerations for other ways in which taking water into account can make your home greener:
Fill your dishwasher
Dishwashers — sometimes, we bang our dishes in and switch them on without thinking about it. Dishwashers provide scope to save a little water and energy, however. It’s a simple question of only turning on your dishwasher when it’s full. Don’t do a full cycle if you only have a few dishes. Some dishwashers have a top-rack only setting. Please make the most of it.
Cold water for washing clothes
Did you know that washing clothes with hot water can actually set stains, making them harder to get out? Washing your clothes in cold water can be just as effective for stain removal.
It’s worth noting that many cleaning product manufacturers have launched washing powders for example that now claim to wash clothes just as well on lower heat settings, so it is worth scoping out these in the supermarkets.
Water the plants with rainwater.
Set up a rainwater tank in your garden. The tank will collect rainwater with which you can water the plants. When watering your plants, water them at the end of the day or early in the morning so that the heat doesn’t cause the water to evaporate. The water around the soil so that the water goes to the roots easier.
Gardening tasks aren’t the only way to make use of rainwater. Different types of tanks are available, and you can incorporate a water tank into your house’s system for flushing the toilet.
Energy
It’s no secret that if we become more efficient with energy, we do the planet a good turn. There are so many different ways to approach energy usage. Some are so simple, too. Try these suggestions for a greener approach to consuming energy:
Switch to renewables
When it comes to energy, switching to a renewable energy supplier has to be one of the most environmentally friendly things you can do! It’s easy to do, and because the energy is 100% renewable, you’ll have a virtually zero carbon footprint as far as your energy usage is concerned. Nice!
Turn things off
This should be so obvious that we don’t need to say it, but leaving appliances on standby unnecessarily consumes energy. What a waste! Switch off your devices if you’re not using them and see your energy bills fall.
Check appliances
Maintenance of appliances is an important way to save energy. They can consume more energy if you don’t keep them in good condition. Check your boiler. If it’s not an energy-efficient model, upgrade to one (you should change your boiler every ten years anyway). Other appliances to watch out for include ovens, fireplaces, and heaters, all of which can emit pollutants if you don’t look after them.
Use CFL light bulbs.
Did you know that compact fluorescent light bulbs use more than 75% less energy than incandescent ones? Not only this, they last up to 10 times longer, which makes them a welcome addition to any home. You’ll trim down your energy bills by using them, too. The only issue is that CFL light bulbs aren’t always as bright.
You may prefer LED light bulbs if you want brighter lights in your rooms. Unfortunately, these light bulbs can be expensive, but if you’re using them where energy is costly, you’ll see you gain back the money you spend in savings as time goes on.
Caring for your home and the planet
Energy and water consumption are significant concerns when transforming your home into a more eco-friendly property. These materials go into our furniture and the chemicals they contain. Focusing on these aspects in your home can help the planet to breathe slightly easier.
When cleaning and caring for your home, use eco-friendly/non-toxic cleaning products and check appliances. It’s a question of not releasing anything harmful into the atmosphere and, in the case of the devices, ensuring they’re not consuming more energy than need be.
Remembering the planet’s wellbeing doesn’t just do the environment a favour but also your wallet. Adapting your home and lifestyle to consume fewer resources keeps more of your money in your pocket, so if not for the environment, then hopefully, you’ll do it to save some coin. Ideally, though, the planet should come first.