Going green has many positive side effects. It helps keep water and air clean, it reduces the effects of global warming, and it encourages and supports the global sharing of scarce resources. In addition to these benefits, going green reduces your electric and water bills, and it improves your overall health and productivity!
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Check your insulation:
Ensuring that your home is well insulated can “improve your home’s energy consumption by up to 30%”. Conserving that much energy can save you a lot of money, which is why it’s recommended that homes are thoroughly “insulated from the roof to the foundation”. Being energy efficient lowers your electric bills, helps preserve our finite natural resources, and helps reduce the amount of CO2 that is emitted into the atmosphere. CO2 emissions cause temperatures to rise, which in turn causes ice caps to melt. Melting of the ice will largely increase the amount of ocean water, resulting in additional hurricane threats and flooding to low lying areas like Holland and New Orleans, and even causing other lowing lying areas like the Maldives to disappear. With these areas disappearing under water, the rare and endangered species will disappear as well. It’s important to check that our homes are well insulated, so we can lessen the amount of CO2 being emitted, and thus lower the likelihood of this potential damage.
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Fix leaky faucets:
Fixing leaky faucets will not only save you a lot of money, but it will also help conserve large amounts of water. Saving water is crucial because water is a scarce resource that’s diminishing because of pollution and drought. It’s predicted that water will be critically limited for many regions in the near future, because while the demand for water is increasing, the supply is decreasing. This is why we have to conserve water, and fix leaky faucets!
Running the dishwasher:
It’s better for the environment to run the dishwasher, as opposed to hand washing the dishes, because “dishwashers use half the energy, one-sixth of the water, and less soap”. This means we should be running the dishwasher, full loads of course, and not hand washing the dishes.
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Doing full loads:
It’s smart to load the washer fully when washing clothes, because it saves water, power, and money. Washing clothes in cold or warm water as opposed to washing in hot water is even better for the environment, because hot water wastes more energy. This means that doing full loads saves your money and helps the environment.
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Rely on natural light, replace your bulbs and unplug appliances:
The way we create electricity causes pollution. We use coil, oil and natural gases to generate it, which leads to excessive amounts of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. Wasting energy is detrimental to humans, animals and our planet, which means we have to conserve energy by turning off lights, by replacing bulbs with compact fluorescent lights, (which use less electricity) and unplug unused chargers and appliances.
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Use microwave:
Use a microwave when you can, because it uses “50 per cent less energy than a conventional oven”.
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Recycle your electronics:
It’s very important to recycle your electronics, because they contain toxic materials “like mercury, lead, cadmium, and chromium,” which can be dangerous to us if they spread into the soil and water. In addition to that, by recycling electronics we can recover valuable recourses from which they are made of and reuse them, and not waste them.
Use all natural household cleaners:
Using all natural household cleaners is better for your health, because regular cleaners often contain toxic chemicals that can trigger allergies or asthma if exposed to the fumes often, or for a longer period of time.
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