Global warming is a reality, so being responsible for the environment is a task that is up to everyone and that you can start at home. Today, there are many ways to turn your home into a sustainable place, which can also help you save on electricity costs.
Here you will learn some practical ideas to optimize how your house works and turn it into an eco-friendly and sustainable place. Do not forget that small changes are powerful.
Use Solar Energy in Your Home
At home, you should take advantage of sunlight as much as possible to illuminate and heat your home and use it to heat water or generate electricity.
Solar panels are a helpful alternative to reduce electricity costs and create your own clean energy. Installing them could be expensive, but you will enjoy the ecological and economic benefits in the long run.
Purify the Air with Plants
According to a NASA study, the best plants to clean the air in your home are spatifiliums, bamboo palms, tiger tongues, and ficus, so try buying one of them.
You can create a genuine green lung by gathering several of the mentioned plants in a corner. Make sure this corner is bright but without direct light so the plants are more effective.
Having plants in your house will not only fulfill an ecological role, but also a decorative one. Place your plants at various heights and play with their sizes.
Shop Smart
Choose very well each time you make a purchase and stop to think for a moment when you feel tempted to buy something that you really do not need.
Before buying something, take the 24-hour test to find out if it is a necessary purchase. If after a day, you are still thinking about that garment or object, go ahead.
When it comes to clothes, always check at home if you already have something similar. Reducing the number of purchases you make each month will lessen your negative impact on the environment and will also help you take care of your finances.
Buy the Right Bulbs
Changing all your light bulbs to LED bulbs is one of the easiest ways to save electricity. A 14 W LED bulb is equivalent to a 20 W low-consumption bulb and a 100 W incandescent bulb.
One LED bulb lasts approximately 70,000 hours, and although its price may be higher than regular light bulbs, they do not contain toxic agents that low-consumption ones do.
Adjust the Degrees of Your Artifacts Well
Did you know that one degree less air conditioning represents 10% more energy consumption? The same happens if you have the heating very high.
In winter, do not put it at 25 degrees to wear short sleeves at home. Leave it at 20-21º, the ideal temperature according to experts, and put on a sweater. If you program the hours of ignition and turn it off at night, you will save money on energy costs.
Use Chemical Free Soaps
More and more cosmetic products have the “bio” label. This testifies that they are made with organic ingredients from biological cultivation, are perfect for sensitive skin, and do not contain paraffin or petroleum derivatives.
If they also have the image of a bunny on their packaging, that certifies that what you buy has not been tested on animals.
Fix Leaks in Your Home
Do not let any faucet in your house lose water. Fix it ASAP! One drop per second is 30 liters of water per day, and the same goes for the WC cistern.
Just one trickle of water is a waste of 12 liters every hour. Losing this amount of water impacts the environment and could be very expensive.
Reduce Waste
It is estimated that a person can generate 150 kilos of discarded packaging per year. If you buy products in bulk – from food to detergent – you reduce the number of containers that enter your house. Choose online invoices and ask your bank to send you all notifications by email.
Say goodbye to plastic bags and always carry a tote bag to store your purchases. Making these small changes will transform your lifestyle into one that is more environmentally responsible.
Do You Have an Oven? Optimize Its Use
The oven is the electrical appliance responsible for 8% of the consumption of the house, therefore, when you use it, it is worth getting the most out of it.
How? By cooking the greatest number of dishes at once, taking advantage of the residual heat to finish cooking and avoid opening and closing the door repeatedly, since it is estimated that this action causes it to lose 20% of the energy it accumulates inside.
Use Green Home Cleaning
When it comes to cleaning your home, you probably have many products and chemicals that promise to disinfect your house. What many people ignore is that these products can be very polluting.
On the other hand, companies also tend to use a lot of plastic to store these liquids. Today, there is an option known as Green Home Cleaning. You can hire this cleaning service and they will take care of leaving your house neat using products that are eco-friendly.
Separate Your Trash
Allocate a kitchen module to recycling. Recycling well is not just putting everything in the container of its color: blue for paper and cardboard; yellow for plastic; green for glass; and brown for organic. To recycle well is to do it without making mistakes.
The most common error is to throw the papers with staples into the blue container. In the glass one, you should never throw light bulbs or mirrors, and in the plastic one, you should never throw away aerosols or rubber gloves.
Conclusion
Here you have many accessible and simple ideas to start saving resources in your home. At first, these tasks may seem tedious, but remember that over time you will notice and enjoy the results.
Make the changes that are necessary for your home and start contributing to the conservation of the environment.