Hello World! Welcome Friends! In a plastic-prone world, creating an eco-friendly home sounds intimidating — but don’t worry. You can start small with sustainable swaps, making minor changes when and where you can. If you do this enough, you’ll slowly build an efficient dwelling that’s as easy on the environment as it is on your wallet.
Check out this list of quick and simple swap ideas to make your home eco-friendly and fabulous.
Swap Standard Light Bulbs with Energy Saving Options
Looking to illuminate your room and save money doing it? It’s easy, with energy saving options! The next time your standard bulb burns out, replace with an LED or compact fluorescent variety — it might be a little more expensive at first, but because they burn smarter, you’ll be thanking yourself in the long run with less purchases and lower energy bills.
Soak Up Spills with Cloth Towels Instead of Paper
While they may be convenient for soaking spills or drying counter tops, single-use paper towels are super wasteful in that they can’t be reused. You can reduce waste by switching to cloth towels, which are washable, reusable, and can make for a sustainable way to add a little decor to your kitchen (pro tip: keep an eye out for unique, vintage finds in cute colors and patterns at your local second hand store.) If you can’t say no to paper towels completely be sure to reuse if you can (when sopping up small water spills, for example), and always recycle what you use.
Tossing Food Scraps in the Trash? Try Composting
It’s easy to throw most household waste in the trash, but you can garbage the green way while simultaneously growing a closer relationship to what you eat, and what you waste, by composting it instead. By composting your scraps, you’ll not only be working to reduce waste that reaches your local landfill, you will also be creating a vitamin-rich, organic fertilizer for anything you’ve got growing in a garden, windowsill, or pots around the house.
Sleep Sustainably with Bamboo Bedding
Did you know you can support sustainable growth and garment manufacturing while you sleep? It sounds too good to be true, but it is a reality when you’re snuggling up in alternative fibers like bamboo! Ditch the cotton and poly-blends for bamboo sheets, which are not only softer, cooler, and more comfortable, but also odor and bacteria resistant, which means less spins around the wash, saving water and energy resources every time you rest your head.
Ditch the Plastic Mini-Blinds for Energy Efficient Shades
Insulate your home the smart way by covering your windows in energy efficient shades. Unlike those plastic mini blinds that tend to break easily, cellular (also known as honeycomb) shades make for a cute way to keep your room at a comfortable temperature, saving on energy use over time. Hoping for a more natural look? Consider flat shades made with sustainably sourced materials such as bamboo, jute, or woven grass.
Invest in a Water Filter and Banish Plastic Bottles
Staying hydrated is incredibly important, but when it comes to the home, there’s really no reason to sip from single-use, plastic bottles. Wasteful, expensive, and a total hog of that precious refrigerator space, plastic bottles are not only harmful to human health for their use of chemicals, they’re awful for the environment as well (those bottle tops aren’t recyclable, and often end up at the bottom of the ocean). Instead, stick to washable glasses and cups and fill them with filtered water. You can opt for a pitcher variety like a Brita to keep in the fridge or counter top, or have a water filter installed directly onto your faucet for an easy-pour option.
Shop Second Hand Whenever You Can
Of all the small changes to make around the home, recycling furniture by shopping second hand may just make for the greatest impact. By opting for pre-loved wares, you can help reduce the cost and resources needed to manufacture and ship newly created items while contributing to your local economy, to boot. Coffee and end tables, desks, and dressers make for great items that hold up over time, and will be sure to stand out and add a stylish touch to any room.
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Toodles,
[…] Switch out light bulbs that aren’t energy efficient for those that are. They’ve been around for a long time, but people are just now catching on. There’s no reason not to use energy efficient lightbulbs if they’re available to you. They use less electricity and last longer, which means less replacing. […]