Making Your Home Eco-friendly: A 2021 Guide
With more and more of us aware of the negative impact our behaviors are having on the planet, 2021 is the year for change.
Change often starts with individuals so what better place to start than our homes?
Contents
Use Eco-friendly Items
Our homes are inundated with items that are wasteful, single-use or overall polluting through their mere production.
This might come as a surprise to some but there are many companies already coming up with viable solutions. For example, goBambu recently brought a range of eco-friendly products to the market such as bamboo toothbrushes, beeswax wraps and vegan soap.
Items such as plastic toothbrushes, cling film and liquid soap (with their plastic containers) are having an incredibly damaging impact on the environment.
Their impact is prominent in two ways:
- The production of plastic takes an immense amount of energy and natural gases & oil to create. It’s said that a plastic soap container can take as much as 20x more energy to create than a simple cardboard storage box.
- Microplastic pollution. As per National Geographic, there are trillions of pieces of plastic currently in our oceans. This is decimating marine life and entering food chains across the animal kingdom.
Bamboo in particular is a sustainably grown and biodegradable material which you should use in any household products you can find.
Choose Eco-friendly Materials For Home Improvements
If you’re thinking of making home improvements in 2021, it’s important to consider the materials used.
For example, if you’re thinking of extending your home, weigh up your options first. Whilst a brick extension might seem like an obvious choice to some, brickmaking is one of the most energy-inefficient processes in the construction industry.
Add on top the sheer amount of coal used in the process and you can easily see why this might not be the option for you.
Instead, consider using a timber frame extension. Timber has the lowest CO2 cost of any commercially available building material.
On top of this, timber is much cheaper per m² and takes far less time to build. You can use a free estimation tool such as Price This Please to find out timber extension costs in your area.
Choose A Green Energy Supplier
With more and more green energy suppliers popping up in the UK, 2021 is a great time to think about switching from your current provider.
Out of the current big six energy suppliers in the UK, British Gas supplies the highest percentage of renewable energy with just 43% of their energy being green.
Whilst green energy in general is slightly more expensive than energy offered by the big 6, customers usually believe it’s a price worth paying.
Sometimes you can even find a deal which is competitive with your current provider – don’t forget to shop around for quotes before making a final decision.
Other Ways to Make Your Home Eco-friendly
There are plenty of other ways you can make your home eco-friendly in 2021 including:
- Reducing, reusing and recycling
- Focus on making sure your home stores energy efficiently – think loft insulation and double glazed windows
- Look into composting your newly adopted eco-friendly items
- Investing in solar panels if viable
By following this guide 2021 will be your most sustainable year yet.
