Sustainability is driving many conversations, with terms like circular economy and renewable energy becoming increasingly familiar to residents. One such term that has made its way into common parlance and the home is carbon footprint.
This measure is often used by homeowners to see exactly how their lifestyle and property impact upon the planet. Most will start out as carbon positive, adding carbon to the atmosphere, before looking at features, assets, and designs that can mitigate this cost, moving their home toward carbon neutrality or even carbon negativity.
There are a number of ways in which a resident can transform their home, embracing different designs that reduce their emissions, with some becoming particularly popular for their effectiveness. We’re sharing some of the best below.
Build A Compost Bin
Food waste is one of the biggest contributors to global carbon emissions and if a property is able to reduce the amount of food that ends up in the trash, they can drastically reduce their own carbon contributions.
Building a compost bin in the garden, one that can be used to collect food waste, is a fantastic way to bring sustainability into your home. While there is a small learning curve associated with their development, once you have your pile established, the compost produced can be used on your home’s soil to enrich it with nutrients.
Go Solar
Changing your home’s energy supplier to a company that can offer renewable energy is a great way to improve your property’s footprint. However, with solar panels, a homeowner can take matters into their own hands.
Panels are becoming increasingly more affordable and efficient, with some residents even installing only a couple of panels to offset a portion of their home’s energy consumption. These can be added to a home’s roof but can also be as effective in gardens, on the lawn or atop outbuildings like sheds and log cabins.
Insulate Inside
Insulation within the home reduces energy costs drastically. Even improving the quality of your windows or ensuring that minor fissures are remedied can make a dramatic difference in the need to heat your home, keeping it warmer and less dependent on central heating systems.
While the initial costs might seem high, especially when considering high-quality insulation features, the savings over the long term will be much more favourable, making it a great return on investment.
Get Smart
Smart home features are not solely focused on making a living space more luxurious, although they do have that potential. They also support a greener home by better managing energy consumption. Lights and devices can be programmed to detect when you leave the room or home, turning themselves off, while assets such as boilers can be controlled more precisely through mobile phone applications allowing homeowners to control their home’s heating even when elsewhere.
Other devices, such as robot vacuum cleaners, can consume little energy and clean more efficiently than handheld alternatives, with robot mowers even being designed with solar panel chargers, meaning that chores can be dealt with discretely and sustainably.
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