Our Mother Earth is overstressed. The burden of human population and its absurd activities has taken a serious toll on the Earth’s condition and the result is – change in weather conditions of the places, disgustingly polluted cities having unhealthy air and melting of glaciers due to over-heating. All these changes have propelled the environmentalists to create awareness about the importance of green buildings and to have more of green home for all. Human beings are doing every bit to make their homes as comfortable for living as possible. But, their madness to cut themselves off the natural environment has made environmentally friendly home something difficult to achieve.
What is a green building? It is a house that employs environment friendly ways of décor, energy usage, appliance use, living methods etc.
If you observe closely and take a cognitive look at the houses, you will stumble upon a number of issues that contribute to global heating, depletion of ozone layer and increase of carbon emissions. If the industries are bigger villain, the houses are not far behind. Moreover, the number of houses being built in astronomical figures is another matter of concern and so, green building methods should be adopted. As they say, ‘charity begins at home’, it is advisable to look for ways to make green buildings, and find out how any apartment or house of other type can be transformed into an eco-friendly house.
Eco-friendly home ideas worth considering
- Use of energy-saving bulbs: LED lightings and CFL’s are good to use in order to reduce energy consumption. These lights do not get heated up as incandescent lamps and therefore, reduce the cooling requirements of home to an appreciable extent. Also, these light up larger spaces and emit more light at much less wattage than what is consumed by old types of lamps.
- Recycling of plastic jars and batteries: Plastic deposits produce one of the most disgusting sights and are responsible for massive polluting of rivers and cities. If the jars and other plastic materials of the house are put to recycling and only after washing properly, this can help in managing plastic waste better.
The best products to use for storage are glass, porcelain, wooden, or such.
Similarly, batteries contain heavy metals and corrosive substances that can get mixed in usable water when the trash is dumped carelessly. So, help in recycling of batteries by not throwing them off in trash bags. Instead, search online for the agents who take batteries for recycling and send your stuff to them.
- Cut on the paper napkins and tissues use: Cloth towels need to come back in the cleaning material regime for homes. Habit of cleaning the household items and countertops with paper napkins adds to the paper waste that ultimately becomes instrumental in increasing pollution levels. Micro-fiber cleaning clothes that produce minimal lint are ideal solutions for achieving environmentally friendly green home.
- Use of lighter colours: Homes painted with lighter colours get less heated up as compared to those with darker walls. Thus, use of lighter shades of colour can help in reducing the cooling requirements, which ultimately help in achieving eco-friendly house.
Simple Ways To Make Your House Into A Green Home - Employing solar panels for energy generation: If your home is situated in a location where you get sunlight in plenty, then you must invest in solar panels for trapping the solar energy for generating electricity. A number of devices such as geysers, lighting the common areas, outside areas etc can be operated with solar energy, allowing you to switch to a greener source of electricity for meeting the energy needs of home. Solar panels help you become energy-independent too, and by connecting the excess supply to a grid, you can help in increasing the production capacity of public grids too.
- Using thermostat conservatively: If you do not wear proper warm clothes and rely more on thermostat for achieving comfortable temperature at home, then you surely are being culprit of excess energy consumption. Devising ways to rely on natural methods of keeping houses warm/cool instead of cranking up the devices is one of the wise ways of making houses green. Open up the blinds of curtains and other drapes to let sunshine in. It not only kills the germs of various kinds, but also keeps your home cozy without relying too much on electricity consuming appliances.
- Keeping appliances completely off: You do have ample time to add greenness to your way of living. It is just that you are not aware of it. Like, keeping appliances in standby mode is a common malpractice. Standby mode does extract energy and so, to implement green building methods, you must take the plug off the socket whenever you switch off the appliance.
- Bring nature indoors: Growing plants inside the house is brilliant idea to clean up the air. Plants with aesthetic value such as climbers, small palm trees, rubber plants etc. add to the beauty of the house and also give us environmentally friendly home. Planting trees and plants in the home premises increase the happiness too and promoted mental health, many experts have proved this through their research.
- Check on all cracks and holes: These small cracks and holes on the doors or windows, and sometimes walls too, are responsible for sabotaging the functioning of temperature regulating appliances. If these leaks are plugged properly, the energy consumption in running air-conditioners and thermostats can be reduced to a healthy low. So, maintaining the goodness of doors and windows is appliance-free way of keeping houses at habitable temperatures.
- Grow food organically in your personal open spaces: Why not enjoy the health and nutrition of organically grown vegetables and have a supply of your own? Convert the unused open space into a kitchen garden and have pesticide-free foods at your disposal always. This prevents the pesticides from entering into the environment’s food-cycle too.
Making an eco-friendly and green home is certainly not a rocket science. Paying attention to such small issues as mentioned above can help you enjoy benefits of green home. The way we live and improving it for better, i.e. in an environment-friendly manner can be a big contribution to protecting the planet Earth and keeping it healthy as well as maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Live wisely today for a better tomorrow!
