Living a green and sustainable lifestyle does not mean having to move to the woods in the middle of nowhere or shelling out millions for a complete house overhaul. Making a few tweaks to your lifestyle, such as using sustainable alternatives for everyday appliances, can help reduce your carbon footprint and your impact on the environment. This is particularly true for inefficient appliances dubbed as “energy vampires”, which continually use power for as long as they are plugged in, as well as for devices that use more water and other resources than necessary. Here we have listed four of our favorite green home technologies to switch out some of the big time wasters in your house!
1. Instead of an electric water heater, try solar water heaters
Harness the planet’s biggest energy source in a most efficient manner by using it to heat up your water! Solar water heaters can be installed for less outlay than solar arrays for electric power. They come in different types and models for active and passive heating, depending on your household’s daytime and nighttime hot water needs. Solar water heating systems can be installed with storage tanks or be made to interface with other water heating systems to augment your hot water supply. The return of investment on a solar water heater can be made in as quickly as two years!
2. Instead of a garbage disposal or mulcher, try a Bokashi Bucket
Like it or not, that nifty appliance that crunches up your food waste still does use power. Deal with food waste, and have a lovely garden to boot, by using a Bokashi Bucket! The Bokashi Bucket is a compact home composting system that can be used to break down vegetable wastes as well as meat, dairy, and other food items that would normally be malodorous in a composting system. It uses a special starter to begin the composting process. The bucket can be filled up at your convenience and then sealed when full, in order to promote fermentation of the food waste. In less than a month, you can have a bucket full of rich compost material that can be mixed with soil to enrich it.
3. Instead of a conventional toilet, try a dual flush toilet
Flushing the toilet is a necessary evil, as far as water consumption is concerned. However, there are ways to ensure that less water is used to get rid of liquids or other wastes that are easier to dispose of. One of these is the dual flush toilet, which employs two flush settings. The first is akin to a conventional toilet, powerful enough to deal with solid waste, while the second uses a weaker flow to wash away liquids. Many newer toilet models have dual flush systems, so these should not be too difficult to introduce to your household.
4. Instead of a sprinkler, try a drip irrigation system
Oftentimes, water from a sprinkler system is wasted since it evaporates before it has a chance to even reach the plants’ roots. Using a drip irrigation system helps deposit water as close as possible to your plants, thus reducing the need to water them excessively. Traditionally used on a large scale for crops in dry areas, smaller systems can now be adapted for home use. They can be employed for a wide range of garden setups such as plant boxes, flower beds, herb gardens, and even potted plants. An additional plus of drip irrigation is that it can be tailored for the individual needs of your plants and can be left to run efficiently throughout the day while you are busy with work or other tasks. Drip irrigation systems can be purchased from specialty stores, or even improvised from piping and other simple materials.
There are many other ways to improve our homes and make them friendlier to our planet. What is important is committing to a sustainable lifestyle, which requires using new technologies as well as changing many of our habits. Although these little alternatives may seem to give “small” contributions to reducing waste, an en masse move for green lifestyle changes will surely work wonders.