Collaborative Post
Whether you live in a caravan or a state of the art house, there are always ways you can make your home more earth-friendly. By doing so, you will be supporting future generations and the future of the planet. This is so important, especially now, after centuries of absent-mindedness. There is much at stake if we don’t choose to change our habits and lifestyles. We may lose some of our natural environment, cause species to go extinct, and contribute to irreversible climate change. The good news is we can act now, and it isn’t even very hard.
Start Saving Water
Sometimes we hear that other good to save water, but we may not know why. Doesn’t water just go back into the ground, get evaporated, then rain down again in the hydrological cycle? This is true, but since only 0.5% of the world’s water is consumable, our water conservation can protect this precious resource.
Reasons to protect our water resources include minimizing the effects of drought and water shortages around the planet, protecting us against water shortages that can lead to rising food prices, and reducing our carbon footprint. The less water used, the less needs to be generated and supplied.
So we’ve convinced you to start saving water, but how? You can start by turning off the taps when you brush your teeth or shave, use septic tanks in the garden, and use a low-flow showerhead that can save up to 160,000 litres for water for a family of four.
Install a Smart Meter
A Smart Meter is one of the most modern and efficient ways to reduce your carbon footprint in your home as well as your energy bills. You can usually get Smart Meter from your energy supplier who can supply and fit it in your home. It doesn’t take long, and it can be very effective, especially in the winter.
A Smart Meter is connected to your home’s mains supply and can be programmed to switch on and off whenever required. If you want the house a bit warmer when you wake up or before your kids go to class, you can program it to come on. Conversely, when you leave the house, the Smart Meter will switch off the power for you.
That’s not all a Smart Meter can do. It also gives you relevant information about your usage patterns so you can monitor them and change them as necessary. This is an excellent feature as it trains us to break bad habits and to live a more energy-efficient lifestyle.
Use Energy Efficient Light Bulbs
Lighting is essential in the home, as essential as heating and gas, but it no longer has to come from ineffective energy-sapping incandescent light bulbs. These are costly to produce and require more energy to use; they also don’t last as long as earth-friendly CFLs – but energy-efficient light bulbs are different.
CFLs, as they’re sometimes known, are made using LEDs. These lights use a fraction of the electricity of incandescent bulbs. They are also very easy to install and outlasts traditional bulbs easily. If you don’t think these new bulbs will fit in your home, then think again. They come in all shapes and sizes and are designed to fit in common sockets.
It’s easy to make the switch to LED bulbs but don’t replace all of them at once; that would be wasteful and inefficient. Instead, replace them one at a time as your incandescent bulbs go out. The new LED ones can be warm or cold light and will last twice as long. Don’t forget to recycle the old ones.
Install Solar Panels
One of the best ways to make your home earth-friendly is to install solar panels. You might think that solar panels are expensive, and maybe they are at first, but when you consider the great benefits they offer to your home and to the planet, it suddenly becomes a price worth paying.
Solar panels are a completely free and direct energy source for your home that doesn’t require any dirty energy to produce and doesn’t create any pollution that might contribute to runaway global warming. They can be installed discreetly on your roof and support your home’s electricity supply. What’s more, if you overproduce energy, you can sell it back to the grid and earn some profit.
Although solar panels can be expensive to fit, and it may take up to 20 years for you to break even, they do so much more for your home and earth-friendly lifestyle than anything else. The key to saving the planet for future generations is understanding our energy needs and being sustainable. Solar panels are a gateway to this future.
Use Natural Cleaning Products
The world has grown up considerably in recent decades; we now have more conscious consumerism, more electric cars on the road, and more vegans. This can only be a good thing for the planet, but natural cleaning products are also on the rise, with more supermarkets stocking them along with traditional brands.
Using natural cleaning means you are not flushing chemicals into the water supply to be taken up again in the hydrological cycle. This is very toxic for our bodies and the planet. In most cases, the house can even be cleaning without expensive products; all you need is vinegar, citric acid, and bicarbonate of soda.
Insulate Your Home
Around half of your home’s heat is lost through walls, windows, doors, and the roof. Protecting your home from this heat loss is not only energy-efficient, but it is also great for your pocket. If you don’t want to buy expensive windows and insulation, there are other .ore budget-friendly ways to insulate.
Especially in the winter, you should minimize your home. Choose rooms that you will use and turn the radiators off in all the others. They can be off-limits until the good weather arrives. If you don’t have double or triple glazing, then use heavy curtains, and buy some draft excluding doors.
