Making your home a more sustainable place is as fun as it is important! It does not necessarily require drastic changes or boring overhauls of the way you design your property — in fact, we think it’s closer to the opposite. So, here are a list of small tips that make a big difference in how eco-friendly your property is!
Habits
Ultimately, you cannot change the way your property operates without changing your own habits. And that’s not as hard as it might sound…
It all starts with small, seemingly inconsequential changes, that then accumulate to a healthier home! This can include spending a minute less in the shower (so don’t take the portable speaker in!), drying your clothes naturally outdoors, or even being more consistent with recycling. You don’t need to start with huge lifestyle changes, it’s just about becoming more conscious! In other words, there are people that scold others for not turning lights off before they leave rooms, and there are those that remember to turn lights off before they leave rooms. Make sure you’re the right one!
Greenhouse
One of the most effective ways to make your home more sustainable is to find ways to turn it into a hobby! And this hobby is a winner, because who doesn’t like fresh food and a pretty garden?
That’s right, we recommend investing in a proper glass greenhouse! It may seem a tad lavish, but it is a brilliant way to produce a more efficient yield in your fruit and vegetable output, and can more hastily reduce your need to buy supermarket produce. In turn, you help to reduce the polluting processes that go into the farming industry (pesticides, fossil fuels for travel etc.) More than anything, it is a fun pastime and an attractive way to use up that extra garden space!
Reusable alternatives
None of us realise how casually wasteful our homes can be, especially in the kitchen! One of our favourite kitchen alternatives is a silicone baking mat — a great replacement for tin foil. It can be very easy to lose track of how much tin foil or parchment paper is being wasted on oven chips, so investing in these washable, oven-safe mats can make a drastic change to the sustainability of your kitchen.
We also love beeswax wrap, which is a washable and reusable replacement for clingfilm, with even more benefits. It is sturdy and easy to mould around products, and can be bought in a whole range of colourful designs! It’s a certified way to make your kitchen more eco-friendly and more stylish.
The Ecobrick
One of the more inventive eco-friendly innovations over the past decade has been the ‘ecobrick’ — the idea is to pack a plastic bottle with all the landfill plastic you can (like plastic bags and wrappers) until the bottle becomes compressed like a brick. The plastic will not break down, so the bottles are sturdy, durable, and can be used to help construct a whole variety of structures.
If you head to the website of the Global Ecobrick Alliance, you can find out ways to smartly utilise your ecobricks, or find local facilities that are accepting ecobrick drop-offs! This is a smart and innovative way to safely dispose of your plastics, and ultimately make a huge difference to how eco-friendly your property is!
So, give these a go, and soon you will find yourself hooked on making eco-friendly changes to your property! Sustainable lifestyles create healthy properties, and healthy properties create happy homes!
