How to Set-up a Green Home
Due to environmental concerns, many wonder how they can live greener at home. As people learn ways of conserving and recycling, they are amazed to discover how easy it is to go green. Not only does a green home support a better environment, but it can also be cost-effective. With a few adjustments, everyone can enjoy the benefits of green living.
A good portion of a home’s costly energy consumption relates to cooling and heating. Setting a home’s thermostat to below 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) in the winter and at 25 degrees Celsius (78 degrees Fahrenheit) in the summer will save money on energy bills and conserve energy at the same time.
You can also save energy costs if you can create shade in the summer at the west and east ends of your home. This can keep your indoor temperature several degrees cooler while the sun is at its hottest in the morning and afternoon. If you cook early in the day before the temperature is at its hottest or late in the day after it has cooled down, this will also reduce your energy needs because heat won’t be trapped inside your home, thus reducing your dependence on air conditioning. You can also use ceiling fans to circulate the air and help keep it from becoming too hot.
Reducing our use of plastic bags is another way we can have a positive impact on the environment and go green. Polyethylene plastic bags like those that are commonly offered by grocery stores are made with petroleum. 100 billion plastic bags are thrown away every year, and their disposal creates a significant hardship on the environment. Buying reusable cloth grocery bags for just a few dollars each can have a very positive impact on the environment because you reducing your use of plastic bags and therefore their impact on global warming.
Plastic water bottles increase the level of greenhouse gases as they languish in landfills. To reduce this impact, every member of the family should have their own re-usable water bottle to carry with them when they are away from home. Filling bottles before leaving home also saves money.
Travel, too, is another thing you can easily adjust to help reduce your fuel costs and reduce carbon emissions, which negatively impact the environment. Use public transportation or carpool to get to work, and walk or bike shorter distances whenever you can. Reducing the number of cars on the road makes the air cleaner and also saves you money, because it’s much cheaper to take public transportation, to carpool and/or to ride a bike or walk where you need to go. In addition, walking or biking provides you a very effective form of exercise that’s easy to do.
When remodeling a home, opt for bamboo flooring instead of hardwood floors. Bamboo is an environmentally friendly, high yielding, self-replenishing flooring material. It only takes bamboo between 6 and 8 years to mature, compared to the 50 to100 long years needed for hardwoods. When installing bamboo flooring, only use glues that do not contain toxic formaldehyde.
Finally, opt out of paper bills and opt in to electronic bill payments instead. Many companies even encourage this by offering discounts to customers who receive and pay their bills electronically. To further help keep paper waste products out of landfills, purchase recycled paper products and make sure they are unbleached since the bleaching process is environmentally toxic.
Though some believe that going green is a painstaking process, the truth is that consciously doing so isn’t as difficult as it sounds. People who go green can feel satisfied about doing their part to nurture the earth and will find it rewarding to save a few pennies in the process.