Green Day: Easy Ways to Make Your Home Eco-Friendly
INSIDE EDITION: Make Your Home Eco-Friendly and Energy Efficient
With Earth Day just around the corner (April 22), it’s time to evaluate how green and energy efficient your home is. Simple changes can be friendly to both the environment and your wallet. Here are a few big and small ways to make your home eco-friendly.
1. Improve your home’s energy efficiency by sealing any leaks or cracks. If you have an older home, check to see that it’s insulated properly. If it isn’t, look for eco-friendly insulation that can be blown in to walls through small holes instead of ones that require complete wall demolition.
2. Install Energy Star appliances, which use 10 to 50 percent less energy and water than standard models. Also, consider how you use your appliances. Don’t run the dishwasher unless it’s full, and if you have a small laundry load, consider air drying it.
A unit Leed-certified Pembroke North in Wayne.
3. About half of your home energy use goes to heating and cooling—making some easy changes can help your wallet and the environment. Install a programmable thermostat to better control temperatures whether you’re home or not—68 degrees or lower is a good baseline in the winter, 78 in the warmer months. Reduce the need for air conditioning in summer months by keeping rooms dark, shades low and ceiling fans on.
4. Swap out incandescent bulbs with energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs. They may cost a little more upfront, but they’ll save you in the end on your electric bill—and they last up to 10 times longer.
5. Conserve water by installing low-flow shower heads, faucet aerators and low-flow toilets, which only use 1.6 gallons of water per flush (standard toilets use 3.5 gallons). If you need a new water heater, opt for a high-efficiency one. Heating water constitutes 15 percent of your home’s energy use, according to Energy Star, and newer, energy-efficient models use 10 to 50 percent less energy.
For more tips on improving your homes eco-friendly quotient, visit EPA.gov.
