How to Make Your Home More Eco-Friendly (Without Breaking the Bank)
Many people are concerned about the environment – between climate change, CO2 emissions, and habitat destruction, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of environmental issues and not know how you can make a difference. Fortunately, there are simple changes that you can make to your home that add together to make a big difference.
You don’t even need to make these changes today; consuming for the same of consuming is one of many things that is having a destructive impact on the environment, so waiting until items in your home genuinely need replacement and getting the full life out of each purchase is just one way that you can lower consumption and your environmental impact.
Improve Your Thermal Efficiency
Many homes throughout the UK are using far more energy than they should need for heating. We lose a huge amount of heat through draughts in windows and doors, walls, and through our loft spaces. An excellent way to reduce your home’s carbon footprint is to lower the amount of energy you consume – that doesn’t mean that you have to wear 5 layers indoors though. Reduce draughts in windows and doors by replacing weather seals and letter box covers, or even replace the entire window or door itself if you feel it’s needed. Check your loft insulation as well to ensure that you are keeping as much heat as possible inside your home.
Use Renewable Products
While plastics and concrete are durable and easy to use, they’re not the most eco-friendly alternative. Concrete manufacturing processes create around 410kg of CO2 per cubic metre. Simple replacements, such as using timber gravel boards and fence posts, can have a small but significant impact on your carbon footprint. Likewise, choosing timber for more of your home’s furniture and landscaping projects means that you are using a renewable resource, rather than one that requires fossil fuels to create or produces vast amounts of CO2.
Make Your Garden Wildlife Friendly
Habitat loss is having a huge impact on wildlife populations in the UK. One in ten of our wildlife species are facing extinction, and while manicured lawns and well-fenced gardens are good for us, they don’t help animals that used to live where your house was built. Read our post on how to improve your garden habitat and do your part to help hedgehogs, bees, and other animals in need.
Grow Your Own
Did you know that Britons spend more money on waste food than on international aid? Combine the effect of needlessly growing food, consuming water, and the pollution created by our food miles, and the impact on the environment really stacks up.
Eating seasonably is one step to reducing food miles, since you will not need to ship food in from warmer climates to satisfy your craving for strawberries in October. Another excellent approach is growing your own vegetables – carrots from South Africa travel 5,979 miles to reach your plate, around 66% of tomatoes in the UK are imported and come from as far as Saudi Arabia, and 60% of the UK’s orchards have been destroyed in the last 30 years so we even import 76% of our apples now. All of these could be grown in your back garden and travel just a few metres to get to your plate. It is definitely a commitment, both in terms of time and energy, but can be an incredibly satisfying way of becoming more self-reliant and less wasteful. It also reduces how much plastic you consume, since you won’t be creating beautiful and quickly-disposed packaging for your home-grown produce.
At Lawsons, we understand the need to protect and preserve the environment we live in – both on a local and global scale. You can read our environmental policy here, and rest assured that all of our suppliers are carefully vetted to ensure that all timber comes from well-managed, sustainable sources, and that companies we do business with also follow our commitment to the environment.
