Eco Friendly Homes

If you’ve just been rescued from a deserted island in the Pacific where you’were marooned for the last twenty years, you might think “Going Green” means planting a new lawn or repainting your home in bold colors.  In time you’ll learn the world is becoming increasingly concerned about preserving the environment.  “Green” is “in” and wasting natural resources as though they were unlimited is “out.”  

In the earliest days of the “Green” movement, conservation efforts in the home were aimed at reducing your “carbon footprint” -- the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the energy usage in your home.  Hence, “Green Homes” began to include energy reducing systems like solar heating and solar water heating.  Energy conservation improvements centered on better home insulation and windows and doors with greater insulating properties.  Few people today buy a major appliance without comparing energy efficiency ratings.  Decades ago, no one bothered to rate the energy efficiency of appliances since no one cared enough to factor that into the purchase decision.

While these types of energy saving improvements generally involve major renovations to the home, there are smaller, less costly steps that can be taken as well.  Energy saving light bulbs are a prime example.  In addition, there are water saving faucets and shower heads and low water consumption toilets.  

But today we have evolved a bit beyond concentrating on energy saving devices to the concept of the Eco-Friendly Home.  Simply put, this means everything in your home should ideally be friendly to the environment.  

On a personal consumption level, you can make your home more eco friendly by recycling waste and even water.  Rain water tanks can capture enough water to irrigate your garden and lawn.  Some people use rainwater to wash their clothes!  More and more communities are offering recycling services with waste collection to reduce the amount of plastic bags, Styrofoam, and metal cans dumped into our landfills.

Next, there’s the matter of the building materials you use in your home.  You may be aware that some studies have found the air inside some homes is actually more polluted than the air outdoors, and much of that is due to the use of building materials which include toxic chemical compounds.  More and more people are discovering the paint in their homes includes VOCs (volatile organic compounds) which continue to leach toxins into your indoor air for years after the paint has dried.

Today, major paint manufacturers are offering non-VOC paint.  Most homes are filled with a variety of building products that use toxic glues.  More and more manufacturers are switching to non-toxic adhesives.  As a means of improving air quality in a home where a large scale replacement of existing building materials is impractical, go green, literally, with large indoor house plants.  

Perhaps the best example of an eco friendly building material in use today is bamboo flooring.  If you’re never seen one, you’ll be happy to know bamboo looks very similar to traditional wood flooring and is extremely eco friendly in that it is highly renewable.  Bamboo is very easy to grow and it grows extremely fast.

In reality, all attempts to create a more eco-friendly home begin with you, the homeowner.  It’s a mind set that says make use of recyclable and reusable materials.  It’s a mindset that says look for grass seeds and plantings that require less frequent watering.  It’s a mindset that says maybe you don’t need to wash that pair of blue jeans after one wearing.  It’s a mindset that says turn off the lights and turn off the water.