Making your home sustainable is a great way to contribute to the environment. Since most things start small, you can make changes that complement an eco-friendly lifestyle. Doing this helps reduce the overall carbon footprint, reduces the dumping and landfills, and helps protect nature.
Apart from the environment-related factors to sustainable living solutions, the overall cost of running your home is reduced. This happens because of a dip in electricity and water consumption bills and energy spent on appliances and general systems.
What Are Sustainable Homes?
Sustainable homes are ones that are retrofitted to optimise energy, respect resources, and reduce overall waste. Sustainable homes last longer than others and leave a lowered carbon footprint. They are usually made from low-impact, high-quality and performance materials. Installations, products, fittings, and more are also ecologically sourced and maintained.
However, to start converting the house to become sustainable in the long term, you do not need to tear it down and rebuild. You can start with a few changes that increase energy efficiency and reduce the strains on natural resources. Small changes around the house can snowball into a steady conversion of your lifestyle.
An excellent way to make positive changes is to involve children and explain the importance of sustainable living. Inculcating interest and propagating a sustainable lifestyle with changes like recycled personalised house signs, reusable coffee cups, planting more trees and plants, and more are great ways to make changes.
Small changes can lead to excellent overall changes in living sustainable lives.
Let us look at some sustainable ideas for your home.
Backyard Garden And Homemade Compost:
Composting and saving food waste contributes significantly to a reduced issue in landfills and dumping. Composting allows nutrients back into the soil. It also reduces kitchen and organic waste and helps recycle the garbage. Composting is an excellent way to ensure less waste going to landfills, which can pollute the air. Compost can be added to plant pots that are eco friendly to add to the sustainable feel of the home. Growing your plants, herbs, and veggies will also encourage a healthy lifestyle and teach your children the importance of eating and living sustainably.
Change To LED Bulbs:
LED lights last longer than regular traditional lights. They also use less energy and are known for their increased efficiency. You would, ideally, use less power for more light, with a reduced electricity bill. LED bulbs come in a range of lights and can be used to create an excellent ambience in homes. The lights can be brighter for living rooms, whereas the study or the entertainment area can have dimmer bulbs.
Renewable Energy:
Switching to renewable solar energy is the best way forward. Renewable solar electricity is clean and affordable. It helps save a huge chunk of energy flowing into your house and helps the entire home become independent. Installing solar PV (Photovoltaic) panels is environment-friendly and a great way to shift to renewable energy. It is also carbon-free, has no emissions, produces no air pollution or water pollution, and reduces the dependency on finite resources. The maintenance costs are low, and the panels need replacement after nearly 20 to 25 years.
Reduce Waste:
Recycling is the best way to decrease the overall carbon footprint of the home—plastics placed in the UK market amount to nearly 2.4 million tonnes per year. Plastic waste is becoming a severe threat to the ecology. While many organisations and businesses are trying to spread awareness about the plastic threat and single-use devastation, there are ways that your home can contribute. It is best to purchase from local stores that sell in plastic-alternative packaging like cardboard and so on. Instead of buying milk in tetra packs, it is a good idea to switch to a milkman and place a milk container near the door each morning. Small changes can make a huge overall effect in reducing waste that goes into landfills and dumps.
Lifestyle Changes:
Apart from reducing waste and recycling, there should be a lifestyle change too. Switching to electric cars or cycling to work (if the office isn’t too far) are great ways to increase sustainable living. Some people have also changed to hybrid vehicles to decrease the strain on natural resources and switch to cleaner modes of travel. Buying second-hand clothes from garage sales, thrift stores, and more that can easily be dyed and fitted can help reduce the fast fashion issue plaguing the world.