5 Ways to make your home green
Read Time: 2 Minutes
Most of the impact we have as consumers takes place at home, through our shopping choices, how we dress, what we use and how we play. While the focus shouldn’t be on consumers alone to change the climate crisis, we can all make changes in what we buy or how much we use to help bring our impact down. The average British person has a carbon impact of 9 tonnes a year, to keep to a 2 degree temperature rise we need to bring this down to under 2 tonnes by 2050.
Here are 5 ways to get started.
1. Swap To Reusables In The Bathroom
From swapping to a shampoo bar (which saves 2 single use plastic bottles per bar), upgrading yourself to a safety razor (disposable ones can’t be recycled) or ditching facial or wet wipes for reusable make up pads, there are no end of easy ways to lower the impact of your toiletries.
Each wet wipe takes 100 years to biodegrade according to Georgina’s book Is It Really Green?
2. Buy nothing new for a month
A good way to slow down you consumption of more stuff, from clothes to homewares, is to pause your buying habits for a week, month or even longer. Instead of buying new, opt to rent, borrow or swap first, or choose secondhand. Facebook Marketplace, Ebay, Narchie or Ferris are your friends for secondhand stuff.
The carbon footprint of a secondhand chest of drawers is 16 times lower than buying a new one.
3. Think About The Toys
If you have kids, look at how you can reduce their single use plastic or cheap plastic toy consumption. 90% of the average family’s toys are plastic (Is It Really Green? Everyday Eco Dilemmas Answered). Opt for toy rental subscriptions boxes like Whirli to keep toys out of landfill and to cut down on the amount of new toys you’re buying.
Choose eco crafting options, recycling cardboard and paper for creative projects or choosing reusable materials like chalkboard labels that can be rewritten on.
4. Clean Green
Spending more time at home means more cleaning…and there are so many more ways to make this eco-friendly now. Swap to a direct to home concentrated cleaning liquid from Homethings or Clean Living, which come in sachets that you dilute at home and reuse the spray bottles. Even better can you make your own using white vinegar, lemon and bicarb of soda, it might help you save some of the £150 the average home spends a year on cleaning products (365 Ways To Save The Planet).
5. Dress Mindful
Eco-friendly fashion has never been easier. Not just choosing from more ethical brands out there, but secondhand clothes are booming via Depop and Vinted, secondhand kids’ wear from Little Loop or direct from brands like Patagonia and Finisterre. When it takes 10,000 litres of water to make a pair of jeans, we need to keep them in circulation for as long as possible.
Swap, sell, mend, make - just don’t throw them away!
