Green Home Tips

• Compost your kitchen vegetable leftovers (no meats) and use them as fertilizer.
• Sealing air leaks in your home results in quick paybacks from energy savings and greater comfort indoors. Fringe benefits are less dust, less noise, fewer bugs and pests.
• Instead of an aerosol air freshener, douse cotton balls with oils, such as lavender, citrus and rosemary, and tuck them around the house.
• Baking soda and lemon are natural alternatives to chemical cleaners.
• Avoid using non-native plants that may be invasive in your area.
• Plant bamboo. Bamboo produces more oxygen and sequesters more carbon than trees. Non-invasive types from Florida are available.
• Consider cloth diapers for less environmental impact than disposables.
• Bamboo provides another alternative to traditional clothing materials. It's 100 percent biodegradable, super-soft and antibacterial. Another bamboo bonus: no dry-cleaning necessary.
• It takes about 80 gallons to clean a patio with a hose. Instead, use a broom and get some exercise at the same time.
• Have your family establish one day each week as Energy Savers Day. Turn off TVs, computers, video games and any other electronic gadgets. Use the time to read or play games.
• Have your children research ways to reduce, reuse and recycle. Many organizations feature Kids Pages on their websites.
• Have a family picnic to avoid using the stove or microwave.
• Bike to the park instead of driving.
• Buying locally grown or produced foods, whether organic or not, is a boost to local farmers and it saves on gallons of transport fuel.
• Cook in bulk. If you have to heat up the oven, do it for more than one dinner and freeze meal-sized portions. This saves energy and frees up your time.
• BYOB - Bring your own bag to the store.
• Upgrade to a low-flow toilet. Old toilets use 5 to 7 gallons of water per flush. New ones use 1.6 gallons. Figuring that each person flushes five times a day, that's a savings of 27 gallons per day, per person.
• Upgrade your washing machine. Old washing machines use 50 gallons per cycle. New ones cut it almost in half, to 27 gallons.
• Upgrade your dishwasher. Old dishwashers use about 16 to 20 gallons of water per cycle. New ones use 11 gallons.
• Upgrade your refrigerator. A bottom-freezer refrigerator, for instance, is not only cheaper to operate (a refrigerator is a major power eater for houses) but provides more interior room in a better configuration than a side-by-side.
• Put in a hood fan and vent to avoid heating up the kitchen and making your AC work harder.
• Redo the kitchen smartly with alternative materials. New kitchen cabinetry, floors and utensils are being made out of sustainable products like cork and bamboo, or recycled old wood or scrap wood.
• Renovate your home with recycled and reclaimed materials. Use reclaimed flooring, vintage light fixtures and products from recyclers.
• Grow your own food in a home garden. Even if you've only got a little space, you can grow tomatoes or green beans.
• Use a hose with an on/off nozzle. One unattended hose can pour out 600 gallons of water an hour. Twenty unattended hoses can spew out enough water in an hour to fill a small swimming pool.
• For a green lawn, try applying iron sulfate or chelated iron before using a full-spectrum fertilizer. Iron may be all that is required to green-up your grass.
• Mulch that's two-to-three inches thick greatly reduces plants' water requirements.
• Redirect gutters to spill water away from paved areas to where its needed, on flower beds, trees and shrubs.
• Avoid fertilizers that contain weed killer or insecticide. Instead, diagnose the problem and apply a targeted product, or simply pull weeds by hand.
• Try using half your usual amount of fertilizer. Many plants will respond fine and you'll be reducing the amount that runs off into streams and the ocean.
• Don't fertilize your grass until the rainy season begins. A fertilized lawn grows more vigorously, which requires more water. When you do fertilize, use a slow-release, water insoluble fertilizer that isn't washed away in rain or irrigation.
• Ditch the heavy-duty bug killing sprays in favor of insecticidal soaps, horticultural oils and products containing Bt, a bacterium that deflects chewing insects.
• Consider manual food-prep techniques to reduce energy use. A hand-grater works even better than the food processor for most foods.
• Instead of using storage bags to keep opened cheese and cold-cut packages, re-use firm sturdy plastic boxes with lids.
• Skip pre-packaged items for school lunches and cut up your own cheese, meats and veggies to cut down on wasteful packaging.
• Use "green paints" at home. These are Low VOC (volatile organic compound) or Zero VOC paints.
• Repainting and refurbishing old items from yard sales reduces waste.
• Use distilled white vinegar in place of chlorine-based cleaners. Distilled white vinegar contains about 5 percent acetic acid, which makes it a great stain remover.
• Hybrid chargers let you enjoy your gadgets courtesy of the sun's power.
• Install a rain switch on your sprinkler system, which shuts off the system after a certain amount of rain.
• Reduce your junk mail stream by joining a no-send list.
• Unplug unused appliances. Electronics use 40% of their full running power when left on standby. Annually, this translates into an energy loss equivalent to the output of 26 power plants.
• Use compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. They use 2/3 less energy than standard incandescent light bulbs and last up to 10 times longer. If every household in the U.S. replaced one light bulb with a CFL, it would prevent enough pollution equal to taking more than 800,000 cars off the road for an entire year.
• Use outdoor lights with a photocell unit or a timer so they will turn off during the day.
• Turn off the water while you are brushing your teeth or shaving. This can conserve 150 gallons of water each month, which is 1,800 gallons in a year.
• Opt for a shower over a bath. Filling the tub for a bath can use as much as 50 gallons of water.
• Use low-flow showerheads. They save 350 lbs. in CO2 emissions and $150/year. They also use less than 2.5 gallons of water per minute, about half as much as traditional showerheads.
• Trade your hose for a watering can to conserve water.
• Taking your thermostat down 2◦ in the winter and up 2◦ in the summer saves 2,000 lbs. in CO2 emissions and $98/year.
• Trees that lose their leaves in the fall (i.e., deciduous) are the most effective at reducing heating and cooling energy costs. When placed around a house, they provide excellent protection from the summer sun but permit winter sunlight to reach and warm your house. If only 5% of the U.S. population planted a tree, there would be about 15 million more trees.
• Cover liquids and wrap foods stored in the refrigerator. Uncovered foods release moisture and make the compressor work harder.
• Use electric griddles or toaster ovens for small meals rather than your large stove or oven. A toaster oven uses 1/3 as much energy as a full-sized oven.
• Buy products in the largest size you can use. A family of four can save $2,000/year in the supermarket by choosing large sizes instead of individual serving sizes. This also reduces production of plastic wrappers and boxes.

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