Make Your Home a Green Energy Advocate: 5 Ways

All around us, we see posters, signage, advertisements, and other blatant admonition for us to start thinking green, and make your home a green energy advocate. Today, more than ever, various government and non-government entities are encouraging us to start taking care of the environment. They tell us to do it not only for ourselves but for our children, too. In an ironic turn of events, a child is leading that initiative recently.

 

With the rate the destruction of the environment is going, it’s only right for people to double their efforts in salvaging and preserving what’s left of it.

Nevertheless, you don’t have to be part of an institution or a group of green advocates just to go green. You can do little steps to be sustainable in your own little way, it is possible to make your home a green energy advocate.

Committing to Becoming Green

Of course, you need to understand that once you commit yourself to it, there is no turning back. It’s a very important decision that would require your undivided dedication. Apart from that, you need to be armed with the right knowledge to make sure your efforts don’t go to waste. You also need to set aside a budget if you truly want to go green at home.

Reduce Single-Use Plastics

Whether at home or as a responsible tourist, lessening single-use plastics can have a big positive impact. Some of the ways we can reduce single-use plastics is by bringing reusable bottles instead of buying bottled one. This will also save you money in the long run.

Using bar shampoos and conditioners, for example, reduces the use of bottles which can reduce this kinds of trash significantly. 

Use edible straws if available, if you do not have a condition that makes drinking difficult, then there’s no need for a straw. Segregate your garbage properly. By placing trash in their rightful disposing areas, recyclables will be used sorted, biodegradable ones used well, and so on.

Energy Efficient Appliance

Check your household appliances and see if any of these were produced during the early 2000s or beyond. If they are, it might be a good idea to discard these or use them sparingly since they aren’t as energy efficient as newer appliances. In addition to this, if you experience limescale build-up in your home from being in a hard water area, appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers, kettles and your boiler can be heavily compromised by the limescale build-up greatly reducing their efficiency.

For example, just 1.6mm of scale can result in up to 12% more energy needed to heat water. A way to make these more energy efficient and save you money is to install a non-electric water softener that will remove the minerals that cause limescale. 

Upcycling

Some of the ways you can go green at home is through recycling and upcycling. Of the two, the latter is easier to do at home since it merely involves turning one useless object into another useful object while the former often involves a chemical process.

Smarter Use of Lights

Another way you can go green is by using dimmers for your lights. With a dimmer, you can easily control the brightness of your light fixtures. We all know that these permanent light fixtures consume a certain amount of electricity in order to produce light. It’s safe to assume that the higher the wattage of the bulbs and the fixtures hardware, the more energy it consumes. With a dimmer switch, you can control the amount of electricity that these light fixtures use.

While on the subject of light fixtures, it might also be a good idea to use LED lights and lights with the Energy Star seal. That way, you can be sure that these lights do not generate much heat, which could do severe damage to the atmosphere once released.

 

Solar Panels

Finally, you might want to consider setting up your own solar panels as another means to conserve energy. While this is an expensive option, using solar power you generated on your own can cut down your consumption by half. Hence, even if you shelled out a big amount of money to set it up, in the end, you would be able to save more and get back the amount of money you invested on the solar panels to make your house a highly efficient green energy home.