From auditing your home’s current efficiency, to shopping sustainably, here are eight steps you can take to create a more earth-conscious and eco house. Blinds, curtains and roller shades How to make your home more environmentally friendly are also a great way to keep cold and heat out of your home. Choose natural textiles and products without harmful chemicals to spruce up your decor and create a more eco-friendly home.
Energy Monitoring and Management
‘Making a home energy efficient and all-electric (e.g., converting from natural gas and fuel oil) is a great step and also improves indoor air quality.’ says Whitman. With air source heat pumps, heat from the air gets absorbed into a fluid, https://ecosoberhouse.com/ which causes it to become a gas, which is then compressed, raising its temperature, and this is transferred into the heating system. Bear in mind that a well insulated, air tight home is required if you’re to use an air source heat pump.
Meeting People Where They Are
- Refinish rather than replace old hardwood floors, or if they’re too banged up, consider painting them for a Scandinavian-inspired look.
- Once you have information about any energy issues, you can go into your eco-friendly home improvement plans knowing you’re making the most impact with your efforts.
- For those living with mental health conditions, it is one tool of many that can be used to improve and support your mental well-being.
- Take care, stay safe, and let us all work towards building a greener, happier home, and earth.
- Organic foods are grown without the use of synthetic chemicals like man-made pesticides and fertilizers, which makes them not only better for you but also better for the environment in which they are grown.
There are a number of ways you can cut down on the energy you use to heat your home. Once you have information about any energy issues, you can go into your eco-friendly home improvement plans knowing you’re making the most impact with your efforts. A home energy assessment, or a home energy audit, is done by a professional and will explain exactly where your home is losing the most energy. Energy assessment companies will typically use things like blower door tests, gas leak detectors, and moisture meters to evaluate various areas of your home.
Easy Ways to Make Your Home More Eco-Friendly
By implementing a few easy changes in your home, you can create a positive impact on the environment. In this post, we discuss some of the best ways to create an eco-friendly home. Recovery stories are important because people need choices that work for them, he urges. A faith-based approach in conjunction with medication may resonate with one person, whereas someone else may prefer behavioral therapy and a different type of medication for opioid use disorder (at least three are available and effective). This group of people with lived experience advises the NIH HEAL Initiative on research directions and ensures that research takes into consideration input from people and communities the initiative aims to benefit.
Repurpose old towels and t-shirts and cut them into small cleaning cloths. Research whether you can sign up for local renewable energy from your utility company. Therefore, the smaller the house you build, the more efficient and less wasteful it will inherently be. It may not be practical or desirable for everyone to live in a super small house, but the more you can keep the size of your new home down, the more eco-friendly your house is likely to be. Grass may be a popular lawn option, but it is also water-intensive, difficult to maintain, and can cause allergies.
Make your next mattress organic or sustainable
- Transitional housing and halfway housing are other, alternative names for sober living homes.
- Plus, a right-sized (versus oversized) home saves on building materials and energy upfront.
- According to the Energy Saving Trust, they can reduce carbon emissions by up to 40kg annually.
- Your home can also impact your mental health based on colors, natural light, and set-up.
- Most people end up wasting precious resources during cooking without realizing it.
- “For every text message, for every phone call, every video you upload or download, there’s a data center making this happen… [and they] consume a lot of energy to serve you,” said study author Lotfi Belkhir.
Nurture your garden with repurposed rainfall from a backyard barrel instead of cranking up the hose. Purchasing produce that’s in season and locally sourced helps curb emissions by shortening the distance food has to travel. Choose fruits and veggies with minimal packaging, and bring your own reusable mesh bags when grocery shopping. Avoid fast fashion, which contributes huge amounts of pollution and chemicals. Keep clothes longer by washing them carefully, purchasing quality goods, and not buying items on a whim. And if your favorite hoodie has a hole, consider mending it yourself instead of tossing it.
- Choosing a fuel-efficient car for your daily trips to work or the grocery store will also help you save money on gas while also reducing harmful emissions.
- Opt for solar panels on and around your house to efficiently make use of natural sunlight.
- A study by the Rocky Mountain Institute showed that not only are all-electric houses more economical than mixed-fuel homes, but they also have significantly fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
- Residential geothermal heating systems take advantage of the sun’s radiant energy that has been absorbed by and stored in the ground near your house.
- If you cannot find recycled materials, try to go for those that are recyclable, to minimize their long-term impact on the environment.