One of the biggest problems in the world is climate change. As carbon gets pumped into the atmosphere, the climate warms. While we all need to do our part to mitigate our impact on the environment, the best place to start is with your home. There are so many ways that your property uses energy and a wide variety of products you can choose to live more sustainably.
With so many methods to decrease your home’s impact on the environment, you can save a lot of money and do your best to minimize your carbon footprint. Read on to find out how you can improve your home by decreasing your use of power and minimizing your effect on the environment.
Buy a Smart Thermostat
One way that you can improve the efficiency of your home is to purchase a smart thermostat, which enables you to control the temperature from wherever you are. Using an app, you can turn off the heat or air conditioning anywhere. Not only does this give you the power to control the thermostat more effectively, it will lower your energy costs and negatively affect the climate. Your home will be at once more comfortable and efficient.
Invest in Insulation
Beyond your ability to turn your thermostat on, off, up, or down, you can also invest in insulation so that heat doesn’t leak out. Insulation can also include any additional structures you might have in your yard, as insulating a pole barn can result in saving energy and improving your budget in the near future. Insulating your attic keeps the warm air from leaking out the top of your house and insulating your windows ensures that it doesn’t make its way through the small cracks. This will decrease the amount of heat and cold air you use, decreasing your power usage and making your home more sustainable.
Turn Down your Water Heater
Your water heater could also be set too high. Don’t know how to figure it out? You can simply turn on the hot water tap and if the water is too hot to touch, you may be able to turn the heater down. Typically these heaters are set at 140 degrees. Turning it down to 120 will lessen the amount of energy you use and lower your bills. When you use less power, your carbon footprint will decrease.
Buy Sustainable Products
There are many household products that we all need to buy. A lot of them are wasteful and bad for the environment. Luckily you can look into a zero waste store for household products that provide the peace of mind that you are doing your best to minimize your carbon footprint and do your part to mitigate climate change.
Online stores that commit themselves to zero waste have bamboo paper products, bamboo toothbrushes, rose quartz roller, wool dryer balls, plant-based cutlery, and much more. When you commit yourself to buying sustainable products, you won’t just be able to reuse the bamboo paper, you’ll be able to cut down on your energy use to make everything more efficient.
Switch to LED Lights
Another way to save money and lessen your impact on the atmosphere is to switch to LED light bulbs. These bulbs not only last longer, they are cheaper and more efficient. In fact LED lights use 75 percent less energy than your standard bulb. LEDs will stay lit for years and provide cost-effective and energy-efficient lighting throughout the house. It may sound like a small improvement to your home and a small impact on the environment, but you’d be surprised about how much switching to LED lights helps you do your part and lower your power bills.
These are just some of the ways that you can improve your home and make it more sustainable and eco-friendly. Chances are, you can do more to do your part to mitigate your effect on the changing climate and planet overall. Our homes can be quite wasteful. It is absolutely integral to make the right choices, purchase sustainable products, and modernize to make your home more efficient. As technology evolves and new products come onto the market, we will be able to change our properties and work towards becoming more eco-friendly. Climate change is an existential issue and changing our habits to lessen its warming isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s inevitable.
Ryan Beitler is a writer, journalist, and blogger who has written about environmentalism and sustainability for a variety of publications.
