How to create a sustainable and eco-friendly home

Given the fact how difficult it is to minimize carbon emissions, you might feel that your every day efforts are a drop in the ocean. On the contrary, every effort counts – each recycled plastic item, every website made greener, contributes to this worldwide struggle. Organic farming helps to create healthy living soil that is more resistant to drought, floods and consequently the impacts of climate change. Similarly, farmland provides essential habitat for wild plants, which offsets the loss of biodiversity.

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Radiator foil is a thin sheet that reduces heat loss into external walls by reflecting heat into the room. Gaps between older floorboards are inevitable as the wood expands and contracts due to varying air humidity levels. This causes avoidable draughts, which waste your home’s heating energy. Double-glazed windows have two sheets of glass panels with a gap, and triple-glazed windows have three sheets with two gaps. The gas prevents heat loss since it is a poor thermal conductor, so heat cannot easily pass through it. However, new regulations from the UK government mean that fixing faulty appliances is much easier because suppliers must now offer spare parts for products.

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• Building materials can be harmful to the environment in a variety of ways, from the air, water, and land pollution they generate in production to the energy required to create them.
• The goal isn’t perfection but consistent effort in promoting a sustainable living space.
• This ever-evolving technology remembers your home’s heating patterns and knows when to heat or cool down your home based on outside temperatures.
• Because of bamboo’s high growth rate and sustainability, bamboo-made toilet paper is a greener alternative in the field of personal hygiene.
• When it comes to furniture, going for designs made with reclaimed materials, or picking upcycled pieces is one option.
• When it’s not possible to avoid packaging, reuse containers, polystyrene (styrofoam) fillers, and bubble wrap, or see if your local shipping service can use them.

The Energy Star label was created to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pollutants caused by inefficient use of energy and is backed by the U.S. An Energy Star certified dishwasher can save almost 5,000 gallons of water annually. Other Energy Star certified appliances that use from 10% to 50% less energy include washers, dryers, refrigerators, boilers, furnaces, office equipment and electronics. On its face, implementing sustainable solutions can sound onerous, not to mention expensive. The good news is that creating a healthy oasis at home (and one that’s gentle on the planet, too) isn’t out of reach at all—and oftentimes, comes with a hefty cost savings thanks to reduced water and energy consumption.

Low-VOC Materials

These use pipes buried in the ground to extract energy, which is amplified by a heat pump into heat that’s useful in a home. A backyard that’s large enough for the pipes is required, which may rule it out as an option for some homes. The amount of insulation your home needs will vary depending on where you live, with homes in the south requiring less insulation than those in the northernmost parts of the country. The U.S. Department of Energy offers a handy map that color-codes each state based on the recommended R-Value (a measurement of a material’s resistance to heat conductivity) of attic, floor, and wall insulation.

• Most smart home systems also allow you to monitor the amount of energy you use, helping you to live more efficiently and use less electricity.
• This reduces reliance on pharmaceuticals and their environmental impact.
• In addition, plastic bottles can take 450 years or more to decompose.
• Installing solid-wall insulation could save a gas-heated, semi-detached home around 930kg of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

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These prefabs are made from sustainable materials and partially built offsite using environmentally-sound practices, and may also incorporate eco-insulation. One fantastic example of sustainable heating is geothermal heating, sometimes also called geoexchange, earth-coupled, or earth energy systems. 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. This should start with the design of the building and the heating and cooling systems. For example, breaking your home into zones which can be heated or cooled when you’re using them means you’ll use much less energy than trying to control the temperature of the entire home.

These improvements not only reduce your carbon footprint but also lead to long-term savings by helping you cut energy bills. The UK produced 9.5 million tonnes of food waste in 2018, the equivalent of 25 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. This raises emissions through increased industrial production and transportation. You can limit your household food waste by portioning How to make your home more environmentally friendly your meals reasonably, only buying what you need and using food waste as fertiliser for soil and plants. Air travel represents a growing percentage of the world’s greenhouse gases. (The average European generates 10.) In business, you can reduce your company’s flights by sending fewer people to events, using video conferencing, and communicating using a variety of online tools.

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