Eco-Remodelers

I’m still working on the house and getting it ready for the new carpet. I picked up my bamboo flooring yesterday and dropped it off. Hopefully, I can get it installed on Sunday.

In the meantime, I wanted to write a post on something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. Most people hesitate to even think about “going green” because they’re convinced it will cost them a lot of money.

So, I wanted to throw out a few ideas of how you can do your part… even if you don’t have much money to spend on being more green and lowering your carbon footprint on our planet.

Recycle - this is important to cutting down on trash in our landfills, lowering our need for foreign oil, decreasing our use of limited resources, and most areas now have recycling operations. About the only expense you would have would be the purchase of a trash can to hold your recyclables.

Pre-Cycle - Precycling is the act of lowering the amount of resources you use up. It could be a matter of avoiding unnecessary purchases all together. There are other examples, such as buying items in one large package instead of a dozen smaller ones. By precycling, you’re choosing ahead of time to buy less and use less to prevent the need for things to ever be recycled.

Turn Off the Water - drinkable water is a valuable commodity and it’s getting harder to find every year.  Many of us waste a lot of it every day. If you want to cut down on your water bill and help preserve drinkable water, you only have to make slight changes:

• Many people leave the faucet running while they brush their teeth. Gallons of water can run down the drain while you spend the needed two minutes minimum while brushing teeth.
• Turn the water off to shave (or shave at the sink.) Just fill a cup of water and use that to rinse your shaver off.
• Don’t flush your toilet after every single use. There’s an old saying, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.” Words to live by.
• Take a bath instead of a shower every once in a while.
• Turn that 45 minute shower into a 20 minute shower. You’ll save gallons upon gallons of drinkable water.
• Fix those leaky faucets. Even a small drip can add up to gallons of good, clean water being wasted over time. You might need to spend a little for a repair kit at the hardware store, but you’ll save a lot of money.

Turn off the Lights - Every time you leave a room, shut off the lights. Even if you might be coming right back. Leaving most of the lights on in your house can burn electricity and keep your electric bill high. And, you’re not doing much for the planet by wasting electricity. The more power you need the more that coal-burning plant need to send harmful CO2 into the atmosphere.

Shut the Door - Ever stand in front of the refrigerator and wonder what you want to eat? While you’re deciding, all that cool air is falling right out the door. And then your fridge need to kick back on to replace the lost cool air and that kicks up your electric bill. Also, if you’re running your air conditioning or heater and you or your kids leave the back door open? Same thing. All that conditioned air zips right outside costing you money and the planet some valuable time.

Shut off Electronics - Even though your stereo or computer is on “stand-by”, it’s still using power. If you put all your major electronics on a power strip and shut them off completely after each use, you’ll cut down on electricity usage. And it doesn’t cost a dime…

That’s all I can think of for now. I’ll continue to add to this post as ideas come to me. Do you have any ideas on how to go green without spending any money? Let me know.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 11:43 am and is filed under Energy Efficiency, Saving Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.