Going Green Inside Your Home

Going green is defined as making more environmentally friendly decisions such as to "reduce, reuse and recycle."

“Going Green” offers an array of benefits and it’s the best thing that you can do for your family and for the world. By living green, you don’t only save money - you also help save our environment.

The choice of going green inside our home always starts within ourselves. The fact that our environment is dying really calls for all to start saving today and help tomorrow.

Good news is that, when adapting to the Green Living lifestyle, you are taking an initiative to help promote a cleaner and greener environment and as well saves you money.

Going green is not a very hard thing to do actually. You all need is to embrace that what we are doing is for the greater good of everybody.

What's important is, going green inside our home won’t stop only on our thoughts, but it needs actions to be able to live a healthy and greener life.

Changes will not happen overnight but as long as we do it every day and on the right way, these changes we longed to have will sure be ours.

It is a lifelong process but it’s all worth it at the end. Think of the future generations to come.

Here are some tips and ideas on how we can go green inside our home:

SAVE ENERGY

• Replace your incandescent light bulbs with CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Light) bulbs.
  
  
  CFLs only uses about 75% less electricity and even lasts 10x longer that the standard incandescent light bulbs. More savings, right.
  
  
• Turn off your lights when not in use. Using less energy is very essential to green living. The easiest way to save energy comes from the energy you never used.
  
  
  When entering a room, think first before you switched on the light; you might opt to opening the blinds or windows instead to let light comes in. Not only you save energy, you also save money for electrical bills.
  
  
• If you're not in a hurry and the sun is shining outside, choose to dry your newly washed clothes in an open clothesline or rack instead of using your washing machine's dryer.
  
  
• Always turn off air conditioners when not needed. Did you know that air conditioners use 150x more power than lights?
• Turn off your electrical appliances when not in use or at night. Computers in sleep mode also draw a lot of electricity.
  Unplug your appliances after using and much better at night before going to sleep.
  
  
  For example: television, cable boxes, video/audio input, computers/laptops, stereos, etc.
  
  
  Other than it saves electricity, it can bring a peace of mind to you for the whole night since you won’t be worried that it might catch fire or burn. These appliances are vampires of the night - they sucked electricity and leaves you frown-faced when you received your bill.
• Walk instead of riding your motorcycles or cars if your destination isn’t far away. In that way, you reduce the emissions of harmful chemicals and gasses that contribute to the depletion of our ozone layer.

SAVE WATER

• Turn off your faucets/taps when you're not done scrubbing the utensils or anything that you're washing. Easiest way! Also when brushing your teeth, washing vegetables or shaving.
• Make sure that you only have the right amount of water when washing your clothes. Too much water will only go to waste.
• Repair your leaky faucets, pipes and toilets. When everything is okay, try to check it from time to time for possible damage. You never know that this could lead to a substantial loss of water.
• Choose toilets with small amount of water per flush thereby saving 70% of water. For example, a toilet with an 18 liter/flush can be substituted by 6 liter/flush. An amazing save!
• Use the shower on a fixed amount of time and just use only a fair amount that you need. Make it a habit to close the shower while you're shampooing your hair and scrubbing your body.

VEGETABLE GARDENING

Who doesn’t love to eat fresh vegetables straight from your own garden? If you love gardening, then use this hobby to save environment.

By making your own vegetable garden, you are not only enjoying your hobby but also you are teaching your kids about nature. Besides, fresh vegetables with no pesticides are a good choice to go green.

For some who lives in an apartment or loft with no backyard to create a garden, try using your empty cans for small vegetables like tomatoes, chilies, onions, bell peppers, gingers or other spices.

REMEMBER THE 3Rs: REUSE-REDUCE-RECYCLE

Always remember that it’s better to reuse old things first before buying new ones such as:

• Old Newspapers
• Unwanted CDs and DVDs
• Styrofoam
• Cans: For planting seedlings, storing any applicable things
• Old worn-out clothes: Can be used as Rags

Recycling and reusing old things before properly disposing it has many important benefits like it saves more money, energy and decreases the demands for production for such things thus lessening our carbon footprints.

ALWAYS SAY NO TO BOTTLED WATER

Plastic bottles with water inside, when gone stagnant for a long time may leach a carcinogenic chemical which can harm our health. Not only that, plastics are non-biodegradable and may fill our landfills rapidly. Most plastics are petroleum-derived and it cost energy to produce them.

However, almost 80% are not recycled. Instead of opting for bottled waters, always bring your reusable water bottle, preferably made of aluminum.

Use water filter or install home purification system to purify your tap water instead.

EAT SMARTLY

Eat a healthy and balanced diet, by going meatless at least twice a week. Meat is very expensive to buy and the production of it greatly contributes to environmental and health problems.

Go for organic food instead, eggs, dairy products whenever possible. Also don’t forget sea foods!

CHOOSE TO BUY IN BULK

Buying in bulk can save a lot of money.

Large quantity of kitchen and other products may be bought in bulk - but make sure that these things would not spoil and everything will go to waste.

For example: soaps, shampoos, cooking oil, canned goods, breakfast cereals, toothbrushes, dishwashing liquids etc.

Mother Nature is crying in pain and begging us to do our fair share on what she has offered us.

Yet, people just ignored it and continue to carry the everyday habits that they love to do never knowing that these 'simple' things to them would really have a great impact on our environment and would lead to destroying the future.

Let's adopt a sustainable healthy lifestyle of going green inside our home.

It will help us stall the threat of environmental problems such as pollution, climate change and other issues that may occur.

It may not stop all the problems completely but then at least in substantial extent we can minimize these issues. Anyway, it can benefit a lot of people living in this planet.

There's no better time to start than today.

Let us live a healthy green lifestyle inside our home and help save tomorrow and our future generations. We owe this to them.

This content reflects the personal opinions of the author. It is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and should not be substituted for impartial fact or advice in legal, political, or personal matters.