How to Make Your Home More Environmentally Friendly

More and more people all over the world are becoming conscious of the environment and their considerable impact on it. Not only would being environmentally-conscious help in preserving Mother Earth, but it also affords you a number of benefits like saving money. Here are several ways to help make your home a more environment-friendly place.

1) Reduce the Use of Electricity

Take a quick look at your home utility bill and you would soon realize that electricity usage comprises a considerable part of it. You may not know but any household appliance that is plugged into a socket is actually using energy, regardless if it is turned off. To best assess a baseline for your electricity usage at home, here are a few things that you can do:

• Take note of every single item that is plugged into an outlet
• Document what time of day these items are being used
• Assess when these items need to be plugged in
• Once you are finished with the assessments, unplug the items that don’t need power
• Turn off any surge protectors that are not being used

Another thing to be wary of when buying any large appliance is to check its energy efficiency. For that, look for the Energy Star logo that indicates it has met the conditions of the government’s Energy Star Program. If you would like to know more about this initiative, head over to this website: http://www.energystar.gov/

And lastly, if you have any incandescent bulbs inside your home, you should seriously consider replacing these with compact fluorescent light bulbs. Incandescent bulbs may be inexpensive but are very inefficient. On the other hand, compact fluorescent light bulbs may cost a bit more when you purchase them but they need far less energy than incandescent bulbs.

2) Raise the heating and cooling efficiency

If you are looking for an efficient heating and cooling system for your home, then you should definitely consider using a geothermal system. This kind of system — which needs a heat pump, a heat exchanger as well as a distribution system installed — might be expensive at first but more than makes up for it when you see the substantial decrease in your electricity bill once it is installed in your home.

In addition to using a geothermal heating and cooling system, you should check to make sure that all the windows and doors inside your home are sealed off properly, or else, a substantial amount of energy would be wasted. There are different tools that you can use to seal your windows and doors. Pay your local hardware shop a visit and check out items such as rope caulk and a window insulation kit.

3) Lessen Usage of Water

Reducing water usage is a challenging feat to pull off but you can start by switching to low-flow nozzles, which is a type of nozzle that lets you get the job done as you would with a normal nozzle but spreads out the stream over a much larger area, which then diminishes the amount of water that you are using.

4) Learn How to Recycle

Recycling is a very popular and energy-efficient technique that people should learn to consistently practice. Waste management centers collect items like bottles, tin cans, and paper. You can do your part by segregating recyclable goods for them to easily pick up. However, the process may vary from one city to the other. To learn more, you should get in touch with your local waste management manager to get the right information on how to best recycle goods

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