10 Essential Ways To Go Green At Home And Save Money

Everybody want to go green and save money at the same time.
Living green and save money in the process is not impossible if you know how.

Below are 10 essential steps you can start apply in your daily life to go green and save money.

1. Always turn down the heater and thermostats by one or two degrees in winter, and turn it up by one or two degrees in summer. Doing this looks simple and seems like giving no effects to the electricity we consume.
   You’ll find the truth at the end of the month on your elecrticity bill. This is a great start if you want to go green.
2. The other appliance that could have some of your attention is your washing machine. Stop washing with hot water, and use cold water instead. Modern cleaning powders don’t need hot water, and heating the water is what consumes most of the energy that the washing machine uses.
   By doing this most of the energy that used to go into a hot water-clothes wash can be saved.At the end you will save on electricity, go green and save money too.
3. After washing a clothes, don’t throw them into the dryer. That’s not how to go green. Unless it’s pouring rain, hang them out to air dry. It’s what your grandmother did, and she managed just fine.
   She may have liked having a dryer, but they weren’t around back then, so she just had to go green and save money. Anyway the air is great at drying clothes
4. Do you know that Compact fluorescent light bulbs burn just 15%-25% of the electricity that a standard light bulb? No to say that standard bulb usage times are 10 times then the bulb.
5. So why keep those standard light bulb burns? Change your old bulbs today and save money! And if you want to know how to go green in a bigger way with lights, check out the new LED bulbs. They can be twice as efficient as the CFL bulbs.
6. Be a considerate person. Try to consume a little less of everything, from food, electricity, gasoline and everything you have. We does not always NEED everything we WANTED.
7. Use less water. Check all faucets for leaks and fix any you find. Take shorter showers, don’t bath, and consider getting a new toilet cistern that will use less than two gallons of water per flush. Standard cistern use some three and a half gallons. Using less water uses less energy and saves you money!
8. When shopping, take time to write out a shopping list, and stick to it. If you have the habit of impulse buying, train yourself to hang on and not to buy everything, instead wait for 24 hours and then review it. The chances are you either won’t want it any more, or you will have forgotten about it.
9. Walk rather than drive for very short trips. Use a bicycle for moderate trips, and only use the car if you really have to. Gasoline is expensive and it pollutes the atmosphere. Save on burning it and you will save on your money too, as well as help the environment.
10. When you have to drive, keep your speed down to around 55 miles per hour if possible. Your car’s engine will be running at its most efficient at that speed burning the minimum amount of gas. Practice driving smoothly as well. Don’t accelerate fast from a standing start, and don’t brake hard. This is how to go green with your car, though using public transport, walking and cycling is even better.

Now, it’s not that hard to go green isn’t it? Go green and save money is not hard as you might have imagine. I believe, any of us can do it. You just have to give it some thought.

Get into a habit and before you know it, you will find yourself in the situation where you go green and save money every day.

Go Green On Shopping

Shopping doesn’t have to be an entirely selfish pursuit, contrary to the rather clichéd belief widely expressed in the media. Of course it’s nice to spoil yourself every once in a while (but not every day, or it stops being a treat and becomes an addiction), but in this day and age shopping also offers many opportunities to have a positive impact on the environment. This begins with the obvious – purchasing environmentally-friendly products which have been produced ethically, organic food or energy-saving items, but includes other aspects in terms of packaging, transport and lifestyle.

If you have shopped in a supermarket recently, then it is likely that you have encountered the concept of a “bagless checkout” – where once you have put your items through the checkout you do not put them into readily supplied plastic bags, but into a “Bag For Life” (something which has been around for some time now) or into a bag that you yourself have brought. It is now fashionable to take with you a fabric bag, lessening the need for a handful of plastic bags which don’t biodegrade when disposed of, causing a real problem in the environment. For the shopper a bag like this has the added convenience of being easier to carry – it can be slung over your shoulder, ending the problem of heavily-filled, thin-strapped plastic bags which cut into your hands.

Many people now are doing their shopping on the Internet. This is helpful to the environment in a number of ways, from something as simple as grocery shopping – multiple deliveries in a single van is much better than several individual cars sitting in traffic jams en route for the supermarket – to one-click shopping at online stores which saves the customer a potential wild goose chase to find a single item and may well necessitate them starting and stopping their car several times in a few hours. This also allows the customer time to consider their purchase, being a much less rushed process. While many people complain about the expense of green products, being able to shop around on the Internet allows them to find a better deal – better for them and better for the world.

A Green Style Holiday

When it comes to going on holiday, no-one wants to compromise on comfort. Having worked for months to even afford to go away in the first place, many people will have only one consideration when it comes to setting off – “how quickly can I get there?”

Often this consideration results in getting on a plane and flying somewhere hot. Can you really be bothered with environmental matters when sometimes you’ll only get between ten days and a fortnight off all year? With so little time off, priorities may become skewed, or at least compromised in some way. Obviously sunning oneself by a pool can be a very attractive proposition when you’ve been hunched over a desk for the preceding eight months.  Getting there as quickly as possible is also to be desired.

As our world develops technologically, it is getting smaller by the day. Obviously flying is the quickest way to get to another place.  That it is not an ecologically desirable way is not in dispute, but some airlines are looking at ways to either decrease or offset the impact that the aviation industry is having on the planet. Some remain nakedly unconcerned about their own impact, but negative exposure is leading to these airlines suffering in terms of sales, and will hopefully, eventually lead to them mending their ways.  But the fact remains that flying anywhere, as well as not being cheap, will hurt the environment more than any other method of travel.

Does this mean that you must always holiday close to home if you want to save money and the planet?  Of course it doesn’t.  You can travel long distances at reasonable speeds and in genuine comfort, while saving a little bit of money into the bargain. Coach journeys, if you have a few days extra, are a great way to travel and you’ll see more of the world from ground level than from a plane.  As international rail links improve, the intrepid traveller can go by train from the North of Scotland to parts of Asia, although admittedly you will need to leave yourself a bit of time for that!

Make a Big Difference By Going Green Lifestyle

There are plenty of things you can do as an individual, and a household, that can reduce the damage done to our environment.

The most effective changes you can make to your lifestyle begin, as all the best things do, at home, and the best part is these changes require nothing more than small alterations to your normal routine. The best way to start is to cut down on your energy uses. There are a variety of ways to do this, but start by always ensuring that appliances that are not in used are switched off at the plug – stand-by is not your friend. The same goes for lighting – if you’re not in the room, switch the light off.

You can also save water and energy by only boiling as much water as you need. A good way to do this is to fill whatever mug you’re going to use with cold water, put it in the kettle, half fill the mug again and add this, and boil. You need slightly more than a full cup as boiling produces steam and causes evaporation. On the same water-saving vein, having a bath is far more eco-friendly than using a shower.

Other small changes that will drastically reduce your energy consumption include relying less on heating – if you’re just a bit chilly, put a jumper on rather than reaching for the dial. And for whatever heating you do use, if you foil back your radiators, you will get more heat into the room for the same energy use.

Outside of the home there are still plenty of options. Check and see if your bank or telecoms provider offers paperless billing. This usually means your bill is sent in full to an email account and this is turn really helps the environment. It is also worth investing in some sturdy, long-term canvas bags to use while shopping for groceries – the carrier bag is one of the worst eco-enemies in use today. Complete eradicate it from your weekly shop and your carbon footprint will go into freefall.

The last, and perhaps most obvious, green friendly tip is the three Rs: recycle, recycle, recycle. Separate all your waste products in their appropriate places, so instead of just putting it all in one bin, split it into categories like food waste, garden waste and plastic and then send it to be recycled.

When it comes to being eco friendly, small changes to one person’s habits can make a huge difference to the earth.