Making your home eco-friendly is something that you’re going to want to do more and more to help the environment. We all have an equal responsibility to do our best when it comes to reducing our carbon footprint where possible. So with that in mind, here are four ways to make your home more eco-friendly.
1 – Use Recycled Furniture Or Materials For Decor
A lot of the materials and furniture we buy are likely to be mostly mass manufactured and made from scratch. That means that it’s all-new materials and new manufacturing processes, which both have an impact on the environment. There are lots of ways that you can change this so that you’re instead, re-using old furniture or recycled materials. You could look at where to buy wood pallets and create your own bed frames from it. Why not pop to your local second-hand store and see what furniture or soft furnishings they have available?
You’d be surprised at what other people might throw out. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, after all, so look at how you could give something a new home, and it not have any further effect on the environment in the same way that buying brand new would.
2 – Grow Your Own Food
What about growing your own food? There are lots of benefits that come from growing your own food in the back of your garden. Firstly, it can help provide extra food where needed, for your meals on a weekly basis and it also can stop you from spending too much in the local grocery stores. It’s helping the environment in a big way because it’s one less person needing to pay fruit and vegetables that are usually packed in some form of plastic wrapping.
3 – Be Sparing With Plastic Usage
Plastic is one of those materials that is the worst thing to use, and it’s pretty much used on everything we buy nowadays. From shampoo bottles to cleaning products and storage containers, it’s plastic everywhere. It’s important to try and reduce your plastic usage as a household and this can be easily done. Look at how you could re-use any plastic and how to avoid buying any more plastic. Bringing your plastic usage down could definitely help benefit the environment, and to encourage manufacturing companies to find alternative storage and packaging solutions instead of plastic.
4 – Recycle, Recycle, Recycle
Recycling is something we can all do more of. It’s important to educate yourself on what you can use and what you can use when it comes to your recycling. It’s a good idea to look online and with your local governing body to find out what can be recycled and what can’t. That way, you are utilizing the opportunity you have to recycle as much of your waste as possible. It’s better than just throwing things away because you don’t think they can be recycled when most of the time, they can be.
The Bottom Line on Making an Eco-Friendly Home
Making your home more eco-friendly is important, so make sure you use these tips in order to help yours become greener.
She has a B.S.Ed. in Secondary Education/English and a Spanish Minor. In addition, she holds a Certificate in Natural Health from a fully-accredited program and is a Certified Herbologist. She pursued these natural wellness certifications due to her love for herb gardening.
Despite freelancing to make a living, her love is "all things home."
Deborah grew up in a family that grew a large vegetable garden and a fruit orchard, helping her parents pull weeds and can home-grown foods as part of her childhood. In fact, she had no idea that she could purchase veggies and fruits in pre-packed steel cans until she went to college and made a food run.
Today, she lives in Bertie County, North Carolina, an agricultural rural area with more chickens than people. She lives with her husband and two rescue pets a sweet toy fox terrier and a cat who showed up one day and moved into the house. Together, they enjoy DIY projects, furniture refinishing, gardening, and canning.
