Going Green at Home - cut your carbon footprint and create a green home with our easy green living tips
Our Carbon Footprint - How Green Are Our Homes?
Going Green at home without spending extra money is easier than you think. One person or one family can make a huge difference with small steps! Find out how you can go green at home and reduce your carbon footprint without the need for expensive gadgets or huge investments. Look for the environment icon to see the potential cost and energy savings in numbers for the green living tips below.
- 40% of our energy consumption and carbon emissions come from our buildings - not cars. Buildings produce the most CO2 in the US (1).
- The US contributes 1/5 to the world's CO2 output. We produce 6 billion metric tons of carbon emissions, and this can reach 7 billion by 2030, given our estimated population and economy growth(1).
- The average US household is far from being a green home - it produces about 150 pounds (68 kilos) of CO2 a day by doing normal things like using air-conditioning or driving cars. That's more than twice the European average and almost five times the global average(1).
- Paper takes up 50% of all landfill space. Going green at home means that every ton of recycled paper can save 17 forty-feet tall fir trees.
- The average consumer uses over 700 pounds (317 kilos) of paper products every year. This is almost twice the per capita consumption since the 1970s.
To avoid a critical tipping point in global warming effects, we have to reduce our carbon emissions by 80% (2)
Going Green At Home - Reduce Reuse Recycle
You can create a Green Home with the Magical Three "Rs" - Reduce Reuse Recycle
- You may already recycle your paper and plastic, but for going green at home, also consider buying recycled products to support the process. You can save 2,400 pounds (1088 kilos) of CO2 a year by going green and recycling half of your household waste.
- How do you recycle specific items like cooking oils, batteries, printer cartridges, etc?
- Check out Earth911.com. They offer reduce reuse recycle and proper disposal options at locations near you for more than 250 different materials.
- For further recycling tips and useful information about going green for the different types of waste look at Eartheasy.com
- Recycling Revolution has great facts about specific items and offers a custom search engine for recycling needs at the bottom of their home page.
- Reuse your plastic bottles and glass containers. Going green at home with recycling a single bottle compared to creating a new one saves enough energy to power one 60-watt bulb for six hours.
- Reduce your carbon footprint and reuse your plastic water bottles! Fill tap water in used plastic bottles and refrigerate them to remove the remaining chlorine taste.
- Cut a large plastic bottle in half and fill it with water to freeze into a large ice pack - you will always have ice on hand when you need it.
- Glass vessels can be washed for green living and reused for storing spices, pickles, leftover food, etc.
- Compost Your Food Scraps for going green at home. Food waste stored in landfills without oxygen releases massive amounts of methane gas, which is 21 times more heat-trapping than CO2 and responsible for half of our carbon footprint. Around 3% of methane is released by decomposing bio-degradable waste. By going green and recycling organic waste or composting it you can help eliminate this problem! If every US household would compost their kitchen scraps, the organic waste diverted from trash landfills would cover the entire city of San Francisco within one year.
- Use leftover paper or plastic bags in your trash can for greener living, rather than buying specific trash bags. With reusing one ton of plastic bags, the energy equal to 11 barrels of oil is saved and 17 trees are spared(1).
- Check out this excellent source for going green at home with home-made cleaners and other tips: These green cleaning products are inexpensive, made easily from available ingredients and really work!
Water bottles create 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year. That plastic requires up to 47 million gallons (178 million liters) of oil per year to produce.
These are not your everyday going green tips! Get inspired with some new green living ideas that you may not have thought of before.
You can do more than using fluorescent light bulbs, which is of course a great start. Find out how much energy is wasted in an average household and what you can do to save energy cost and waste.
Did you know that an average shower uses 4 gallons of water per minute? That makes long showers even more water-wasteful than bubble baths! Find out more interesting water usage facts and how you can reduce your water use efficiently.
While paper is the most recycable waste we produce, this should not be a thumbs-up for continuing our paper habits unchecked. The average US household receives 1.5 trees worth of junk mail every year. Find out how you can reduce your paper waste and live with less clutter in your green home.
While keeping your car at home is still the best carbon cutting measure, there are a few very effective steps you can take for the planet while you drive your car!
What Else Can You Do To Go Green?
This is a nice website called Going Green For Life that addresses every going green question you may have. They also offer insight into less common green living topics like green kids and green pets. Start on top and work your way through. Visiting Going Green For Life will be worth your time!
Are you looking for further encouragement to go green? Here are additional good reasons for sustainable living and why you should go green.
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(1) - National Geographic
(2) - Based on Tim Flannery's book "the weather makers: how man is changing the climate and what it means for life on earth".
(3) - The study, by Javelin Strategy &; Research, is called "2007 Online Banking and Bill Payment: Trends, Forecasts, and Strategies for Reinvigorating