FEATURES: GREEN LIVING TIPS
Greening Up Your Home - Ten Simple Tips To Make Your Home Greener Even If Disposable Diapers Are A MustWhen you have young children it can be hard to even think about making your home greener. Unless you have already embraced cloth diapers, you probably have an uncomfortable feeling that it isn’t possible to be truly green with a baby in the house and a busy lifestyle. But disposable diapers aren’t the beginning and end of an eco-friendly lifestyle. There are still plenty of small measures that we can all take to help the environment, increase the efficiency of our energy use and to raise our kids to be aware of green issues, without adding too much stress to our lives.
1. Use both sides of the paper
Kids love drawing. Before you know it they can have accumulated a stack of artworks equivalent to a small tree. Encourage them to use both sides of the paper. Give them office scrap paper that has only been printed on one side to draw on. Let them decorate used paper bags, paper packaging, boxes and any other scrap paper that comes into the house.
2. Switch to cloth table napkins
Disposable paper table napkins not only use up a staggering amount of trees and energy to produce, if you count up how many each household can get through in a year, but they also end up in landfill sites aggravating the problem of waste disposal. Get your family a bunch of colorful cloth napkins, make some from leftover fabric scraps or old soft cotton shirts, or ask your parents or grandparents if they have some tucked away in the linen drawer, and use them at family meals. They can be used several times before washing, with each family member having an individual napkin ring to roll theirs into (except perhaps for messy eating toddlers!) and they take up very little space in the laundry, so they work out as a very green alternative.
3. Cloth bags for grocery shopping
Start collecting sturdy cloth bags to take when you are grocery shopping and reduce the amount of plastic bags you need to a minimum. Your cloth bags can be used again and again, be washed when necessary and will save you perhaps 500 plastic bags a year, making a huge difference to the environment.
4. Turn off the water as you brush
Something so simple shouldn’t be so hard to do. We’ve all grown up letting the water run as we clean our teeth for one whole minute twice a day. Turning off the faucet while we brush can save 5 gallons of water per person every day, but we have to re-train our subconscious from the habits we’ve grown up with. Teaching your kids to turn off the water now will save that amount of water effortlessly every day for the rest of their lives.
5. Share baths or shower instead
Young kids love sharing baths. It’s another form of play time and saves water when all the kids can use the same bathwater. As they get older and no longer want to share, introduce them to taking short showers instead.
6. Hang out your laundry
Whenever the weather allows, hang out your laundry on the clothes line rather than using the dryer. Your clothes will last longer and you’ll save on your electricity bills again. Older kids can help with the pegging out and folding of clothes.
7. Use energy efficient light bulbs
Replace your light-bulbs with the curly energy-saving ones, as the old ones give out and you will save on electricity. Teach your kids to switch off lights when they leave a room and make sure any lights left on at night to keep the monsters away are of a low wattage, energy saving variety, so you minimize your use of light bulb energy.
8. Switch off TVs and computers when not in use
TVs and computers use energy all the time when they are switched on, not just when you are in front of them. A TV on standby is still using energy, so switch it off completely, not just with the remote control. Put your computer in standby mode if you are leaving it for more than 15 minutes and shut it down completely at night. Make sure that your kids also learn to switch off their computer and TV too.
9. Re-use old T-shirts as cloths
Instead of throwing out those scruffy, stretched old T-shirts, cut them up into squares to use as dusters, polishing cloths and general cleaning cloths. You’ll save money on buying new cloths for cleaning, can wash and re-use them many times and can even use them as disposables for really greasy messes, without a bad conscience, since they were about to be thrown out already.
10. Recycle
If you’re not already re-cycling find out about options in your area. There may be a local pick-up scheme if you separate out your garbage or you may have to find a drop-off point. If you do, then find one near your supermarket to combine the journey and make it worthwhile on the green front. You’ll be amazed at how much this reduces your weekly amount of garbage. Kids will catch on quickly if you have separate bins for re-cycled paper, glass and plastics and it’s a great start to educating them about the environment.
These may seem like small measures, but if every household in the US were just to switch to cloth napkins for a year, millions of trees would be saved, as well as all the energy and water used to process them into paper.
Remember the green mantra: Reduce, Re-use, Re-cycle and try to think of green measures in that order. First of all reduce consumption wherever possible, then re-use paper, plastic and cloth in any way you can. Only then recycle what is left. That way you get the maximum use out of each thing you buy and reduce the environmental impact it has.
Each small measure adds up and once you have incorporated some of these green energy tips into your lifestyle you could gradually introduce a few more, greening up your home one small step at a time and saving money too.
Copyright 2010 - Kit Heathcock
