Fight Climate Change By Reducing Your Carbon Footprint At Home
No matter where you look, there is always a big story on the news about climate change. People try to deny this as much as they want, but there’s no hiding from the truth. Our planet keeps heating up, and we must do something to stop it. You might feel helpless, but you can do plenty of things to reduce your carbon footprint at home.
What does this mean? It means your house produces fewer carbon emissions, so you’re doing your bit for…well…humanity! Significant changes aren’t even necessary; here’s what you can do:
Install energy-efficient lighting
LED lights are more energy efficient than halogen ones, so there’s an instant switch you can make to your lightbulbs. Also, consider installing dimmer switches or smart bulbs in your home. Why? Because you can turn the brightness down and use less electricity when necessary. It sounds like a tiny change, but it can have huge consequences!
Read: 4 IDEAS TO ADD “SMART LIGHTING” TO YOUR HOME
Let in the natural light
Staying on the lighting topic; open your curtains/blinds and let the natural light in. You shouldn’t have any lights on when the sun is out; it’s a waste of electricity, and your carbon footprint grows bigger. Only turn lights on when there’s no more natural light to brighten your interior spaces.
Insulate your home
Too many homes are improperly insulated – which is one reason your home feels so cold. It keeps letting heat out and allowing cold air in from outside. As a result, you turn your heating up as high as it can go, wasting energy and burning fossil fuels. Instead, focus on insulating your home to trap heat inside. Start with your windows; they might need an upgrade. Look for brands like Renewal by Andersen, with excellent energy ratings showing they trap heat in the home. Then, get more insulation for the walls or attic as yours might be old and ineffective. Just like that, your home retains heat, reducing the need for your heating to be on.
Read: ELIMINATE COSTLY ENERGY BILLS IN YOUR HOME
Dress for the season
If you wear shorts and a T-shirt during winter, you’ll feel cold at home. Likewise, if you’re constantly wrapping up in jumpers and thick fleeces during summer, you’ll feel too hot inside. What happens in these situations? You’re inclined to turn the heating or AC on. As such, energy is wasted when you just have to dress for the season. Dress to stay warm or cool; your home will consume less energy, reducing its carbon footprint.
Reduce, reuse, recycle
It’s a classic mantra that people have been banging on about for ages – but it’s super important. Reduce the amount of waste produced by your home by reusing as much as possible and then recycling what you can’t reuse. It’ll mean you don’t have bags full of non-recyclable waste that goes to a rubbish dump and gets burnt.
At the end of the day, these changes don’t feel like they’ll have a big impact. But imagine everyone did them. Imagine everyone started lowering their carbon footprint at home; it would make a huge difference to the planet. As demonstrated above, the changes don’t need to be extreme! If you wanted to go a step further, you could invest in things like solar panels to use renewable energy in the home. That’s entirely up to you and depends on your budget.
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