Growing a Greener Home
Little things you can do today
By Emma Kirkman
With so much pressure on our time – with kids to get to school to , work to be done, dinner to be cooked, it can become exhausting hearing about the things that we need to do to make our homes and offices ‘greener’. Yes, every little thing counts, but how long does it take to do those little things every week?
Wouldn’t it be so much easier if the easy things at home were simple and didn’t take up your time?
There are a few examples below, but these are by no means an exhaustive list. It would be great to hear your own suggestions on The Planetarians Facebook page or on Twitter.
1) Replacing light bulbs – If your house is anything like mine, a lightbulb seems to blow at least once a week. Instead of buying a bulk pack of your standard incandescent light bulbs next time you are at the supermarket, but a pack of CFLs – or the twisty bulb ones as I like to call them! They are much more energy efficient, and last longer, reducing your waste, and the number of times you have to go up the ladder!
2) Use Green Cleaning Products – available in most supermarkets, brands like Ecover are kind to your home, as well as kind to the environment, helping you to have a cleaner, greener home!
3) Indoor Plants – not necessarily helping you to reduce the energy that you consume, but indoor plants aid oxygenation, help reduce chemicals in the air, and even help you to focus more – meaning you can work for less time!
4) Turn down your A/C and fridge settings – Its something that we have mentioned before, and in a country where we all revel in being able to walk into a nice chilled building after being outside in the heat, it is all the more critical. Even just keeping the temperature at 24 degrees, as DEWA suggests, will help reduce your impact on the environment. Most of our energy usage comes from heating and cooling, so it is the smallest turn of the dial that may make the biggest impact.
These are just four things that I personally have been trying to do around my own home. Although I am in a constant battle with my A/C temperature controls! If you have any suggestions as to what you have been doing in your own home, I would love to hear them and share them online. Find The Planetarians on Facebook, or Twitter at the links below.
