How to make your home more sustainable

If you’re keen to lower your carbon footprint and do your bit for the environment, your first port of call should be to consider how to make your home much more eco-friendly.As we spend a great deal of time in our homes, we must make these small but crucial changes. Some of the everyday practices we carry out can be extremely damaging to the environment without us even realizing it. 

Some improvements can be made quickly with no cost at all, while others will require an upfront expense but result in long-term savings by slashing energy bills. In this guide, we’re going to look at some of the best ways you can make your home more sustainable.

1.  Consider Solar Panels

A large number of property owners are now choosing to add solar panels to their roofs. These panels use sunlight which is converted to electrical energy and is used as a form of heating or cooling. 

With no mechanical or electrical equipment necessary, the DC energy from the sun is converted to AC energy. This is a sustainable option as it cuts down on the amount of electricity you’ll use on a day-to-day basis. As a result, you’ll be spending far less on your energy bills. You’ll also make your home more sustainable by running it on clean energy. 

2. Install High-Performance Windows

Did you know that much of the heat in our homes is lost through windows? Leaky windows are one of the ways you can spend more on your monthly energy bills than you have to without even realizing it. Cutting your energy loss here could mean sealing window gaps, or it could mean changing your windows completely. 

New forms of technology are constantly being introduced to prevent heat loss from occurring, including protective coatings, double or triple glazing and tighter air construction to prevent heat from escaping through gaps. Although investing in new windows throughout the home can be a costly investment, if your windows are the older, single-pane type, this purchase could pay off in the long-term.

3. Invest in Energy-Efficient Appliances

Consider the number of appliances you use daily and the amount of energy that each takes to operate. HVAC systems are one of the biggest energy consumers in the home, and it is designed to heat or cool the entire home and is left running for hours throughout the day.

Some of the other appliances in the home that you might want to consider swapping for energy-efficient alternatives include:

• Dishwashers
• Washing machines
• Microwaves
• Ovens

While it wouldn’t be eco-friendly to toss aging appliances (or even worth it, in terms of recouping your investment), finding new homes for old appliances when they’ve outlived their usefulness and looking for the Energy Star on your new ones will be an environmentally-savvy decision.

4. Attic Insulation

Many homeowners make the mistake of failing to insulate their loft—and it’s very easy to forget. Hardly any of us regularly go up to the loft, so you may never have considered it; however, a great deal of heat is lost through the roof despite taking other precautions to conserve heat. 

Use this handy checklist on your next project to keep track of all the ways you can go green.

It can be difficult to spot whether you have an attic insulation issue; therefore, if you’re unsure, you can hire a specialist to carry out an inspection and inform you of where improvements could be made to retain heat and make your home more sustainable.  Some of the key signs of a poorly insulated attic include moldy walls, frozen pipes, and drafts.

5. Use Natural Cleaning Products

A simple tactic you should consider is the use of natural cleaning products for the kitchen and bathroom. Most cleaning products on the market are packed with dangerous chemicals. Purchasing more natural solutions will be healthier for you and your family, and less harmful should they enter the water supply. You could also make your very own cleaning products using certain recipes, so you know exactly what is included. 

6. Sell or Donate your Old Belongings

Many of us had a clear out over lockdown to keep us busy during our weekends spent indoors; however, even if some objects are falling apart, it may not necessarily mean that they have to be binned.

Your garbage could be someone else’s treasure, so it’s worth putting items up for sale online, listing them online for free or donating them to a charity that may be able to make use of them. Don’t throw anything away without thought—the object is likely to end up in landfill when it could have had a second life.

There are lots of ways to make your home more sustainable. These 6 ways should get you going, but they’re really just the beginning of a greener way of life.

Feature image: Christian Koch; Image 1: Charlotte May