tips for greening your home or office

Easy Ways to Make your Home More Eco-Friendly

We all want to do our part to protect the environment, and doing your part doesn't have to be hard. Small steps add up to a big difference, you just have to know which ones to take.  

Use less water. 

Saving water is all about small steps, here are a few that will help save big.

- Shut off the water while you brush your teeth

- Take showers that are a minute or two shorter

- Only run full loads of laundry and dishes

- Buy from sustainable producers. These are farmers, ranchers, and other producers that use techniques that pollute less and use less water. You can do some research online or ask at your local organic market to find these products.

Use less energy. 

If you don't have the ability to buy a hybrid car or convert your house to solar power, you can make a big difference with small changes.

- Buy energy efficient appliances.  They may be more expensive, but make up for the increased cost in lower energy bills.

- Unplug chargers when they are not in use. Cell phone and other chargers use up power even if there is nothing attached to them, and leaving them plugged in is a fire hazard.

- Put devices with remotes, like T.V.s, VCRs, and stereos, on a power strip and turn it off when you are not using them.  These devices use a lot of power to run the remote receiver even when the device is off.

- Walk or ride your bike for short trips.

- Grow herbs, flowers and vegetables on your balcony, window sill, front/back steps and in your house. 

-  Buy local products. It takes energy to transport food and other products across the country. Buying local not only supports your local economy, it helps them use less energy.

When it comes to saving energy and water, it's a great idea to get the kids involved. You can even make it a game. Have them track how much water and electricity everyone is using. You can compete to see who uses the least water.  You can often count on your kids to help keep you on track when given the task.  

Reuse.  

Most of us know the three r's: reduce, reuse, recycle, but when we work on conserving, we often leave reuse out of the picture. While you can often find tips on how to reuse common products from other people, what you need most is creativity. With a little thought there are many items around your home that can be reused -  toilet paper rolls can be used to start garden seeds, the compostable paper roll is left on when planting your seedling outside. Old yogurt containers can be cut into strips to make plant labels; these can often be reused several seasons and when finally done, can be recycled. Old food jars can be refilled with homemade foods or can make great impromptu vases. 

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Use environmentally friendly products. When you go to the grocery store, you probably see more and more natural or eco-friendly products.  There are generally two big problems with these products: 1. Just because they state that they are more natural than regular products, doesn't mean they're entirely natural. 2. They can be expensive. However there are numerous brands out there (like 7th Generation) on store shelves that offer a great alternative to chemicals. The bottles are recyclable and there are reuse options for those as well (see our Trash Talk book series).

Cleaning supplies are easy to make at home using just vinegar, dish soap and some essential oils. Regular white vinegar (diluted 50% with water) is a great way to clean and disinfect glass and other surfaces. Need to remove stubborn stains? Just add some baking soda to the stain and your vinegar cleaner. Some quick searching online will lead you to hundreds of natural home-made cleaning products. Be sure to reuse those empty cleaning spray bottles or purchase reusable ones... you'll find that you can reuse those bottles for many years and that alone can have a big impact when it comes to the amount of plastic bottles your home/office tosses into the system every year.

We all know that going green in any little way is good for the environment, but it is also better for you.  Conserving resources also helps save you money, which is something most of us are happy to live with.  

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