Sustainability is a hot topic nowadays and everyone is finally starting to catch on to the importance of living a more eco-friendly lifestyle. When it comes to monitoring your carbon footprint, a great place to start is in the heart of your home.
Your home and your daily living can contribute more than you realise to your overall impact on the environment, and it’s important to be aware of your usage and waste. If you want to be more environmentally conscious and live a more sustainable lifestyle, then take a look at these four steps to up-eco your home.
Check Your Insulation
You might not even realize it, but poor insulation in your home could be costing you (and the planet)! If your home isn’t properly insulated, you’ll be losing precious heat in the winter months which will lead to an increase in your heating usage.
You might need to have professionals come in and check the insulation in your home and assess whether it needs to be maintained. You can even check your garage door seals to see if they need to be replaced too.
Improve Energy Efficiency
When you know your home is properly insulated, you can start considering how to make it more energy efficient overall. You can make small changes like changing your lightbulbs to energy-saver options, and installing a programmable thermostat. You could upgrade your home appliances (like washing machines and dishwashers) to more energy efficient ones too.
If you’re willing to go big, you can even install solar panels to get yourself off the electrical grid. This will be a big expense upfront, but it will save you money in the long run and it’s much kinder to the planet. Similarly, you could consider making your next car purchase electric!
Conserve Water
Most of us take our water for granted – it comes out of our faucets at will and we never really think about how much we use, or what we would do without it. However, water is a precious resource that shouldn’t be wasted. We all need to be paying closer attention to our water consumption and taking steps to reduce it.
Fortunately, there are loads of tactics you can use to help reduce your water usage at home and they don’t even need to make much of an impact on how you live your life. Start by closing the faucet when you’re brushing your teeth, and using leftover pasta water to feed your plants. Baby steps count!
Reduce Waste
Finally, if you want your home and lifestyle to be more sustainable, start paying attention to how much waste you create in your home. Consider this when grocery shopping and replacing broken items.
Try to avoid plastic where you can, and plan your grocery shopping in a way that helps you avoid wasting too much food – a meal plan is a good tool here. Utilise your leftovers (or donate them) and start recycling if you don’t already. You can even reuse old items in new ways to reduce your waste, such as old peanut butter jars to store stationary.
