Seeing Green: 4 Changes We Can Make for a More Environmentally-Friendly Home

A great example of a non eco-friendly incandescent bulb. Photo Credit: Pixabay.com

The following is a guest post from Neil Stawski with Climate Wise…

There are nearly 7 billion humans on the planet, with more being born every day. And each person comes with their own ecological footprint. When you add up the ecological footprints of 7 billion people, you begin to understand the enormous environmental effect we have on our planet.

The good news is that with our combined efforts, we can begin to turn our negative impact around and become a force for positive change. If you want to play your own part in helping our planet, here are four changes you can make to your home and community to help the environment and stop climate change.

Change Your Bulbs
Ever since Thomas Edison introduced the first light bulb, electricity has become an integral part of our homes and communities. Right now, we’re benefiting from a world that always has a light on, but at what cost? Today, the primary fuel power plants use to keep the lights on comes from burning fossil fuels. But countries like the United States continue to find better sources of renewable energy, such as solar panels.

Solar panels are becoming more and more accessible to modern households, with the average cost to install solar panels around $19,510. If adapting to solar energy is out of your price range, the next best thing you can do is reduce the amount of electricity you regularly consume. The easiest way to achieve this is by simply turning the lights off when not in use and unplugging electronics when they’re not in use.

To take things another step further, we can change the kind of bulbs we use altogether. Thanks to new, energy-efficient bulbs, we can also reduce the amount of power we consume while enjoying the same level of brightness in our homes. This is an easy switch to make our homes greener.

Get Creative with Recycling
We’ve all been taught the importance of recycling, and we’ve learned that there are many ways to implement recycling. To make the biggest impact and cut down on our ecological footprints, we need to recycle as much as possible, all the time. Some recycling tips are fairly common sense: cut out plastic bottles, switch to reusable grocery bags, opt out of paper mail and go fully electronic. There are other strategies you can take on too, like composting your food waste or switching to cloth diapers.

Conserve water
Water is one of our most precious resources and vital for all living things on our planet. Therefore, it’s important that we do our part to conserve water in our homes. Switch to eco-friendly sinks and washing appliances, and turn off your water whenever you leave for a family vacation. If you ever find stale water lying around, don’t pour it down the drain. Use it to water your plants or save it for cooking dinner.

Switch Up Your Transportation
Finally, the biggest step we can take to reducing our ecological footprint is by reducing our dependency on fossil-fuel burning vehicles. The easiest way to reduce our use of these vehicles is by simply keeping them in the garage. Public transportation, bicycling, or even walking are great eco-friendly alternatives when they’re available. But if these don’t quite work for you, you can always increase tire pressure, or find strategies to improve your fuel economy.

These are just a few ways we can adapt our homes, and our communities to better suit our environment. And it’s important to share these eco-friendly practices with our friends and family. While reducing our own ecological footprint may just be a small step in solving the greater challenge of climate change, it’s an essential step in the right direction.

Neil Stawski
Climatewise.co | [email protected]

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