3 Ways to Reduce Your Home's Carbon Footprint

From the way you treat your household waste to your laundry habits, how you run your household creates a carbon footprint that impacts the environment, for better or worse. Many everyday tasks you perform in your home create greenhouse gasses that affect our local and global environment, and while you’re just one household, simple choices you make can have a big impact on the world around you.

When it comes to our homes, you can improve the quality of our environment without affecting your quality of life. Making small adjustments that don’t affect our quality of life can create big changes to our carbon footprints. So we’ve gathered the three best ways to implement change in your home that can reduce your carbon footprint and help protect the planet.

1. Adjust Your Energy Usage

The most obvious way to reduce your carbon footprint is to reduce your energy use, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop using your central air-conditioning unit or that you must quit binging your favorite series over the weekend. Instead, you can consistently reduce your energy use in a more sustainable way by doing the following:

• Perform an energy audit. An energy audit will tell you how energy-efficient your home is and will suggest ways you can run your household in equal comfort while consuming less energy and lowering your carbon footprint. Look for a registered energy auditor in your area who will visit your home and suggest improvements to your energy use.
• Use energy-efficient appliances. If you’re in the market to upgrade your appliances, switch to energy-efficient versions. Look for appliances with the Energy Star certification so that you can perform the same tasks with the same high quality of performance but without using as much power and water. 
• Switch to LED lightbulbs. This simple step contributes greatly to reducing your carbon footprint. LED lighting consumes 75% less electricity than regular bulbs and lasts up to 25 times longer.
• Unplug and turn off items when not in use. From phone chargers and computers to TVs and microwaves, many items in your home use standby power that use energy while off and not in use. So unplug these electronic devices when you’re not using them, and when you’re leaving a room, turn off the lights. Even if you’re using LED bulbs, you’re wasting energy by leaving lights on in a vacant room.

2. Reduce Household Waste

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, in 2018 each person created nearly five pounds of municipal solid waste, much of which ended up in landfills, which contribute to the greenhouse gasses in our environment. From food and boxes to bottles and grass clippings, you can keep household waste out of landfills and reduce your carbon footprint by using the following strategies:

• Compost. Food, paper, corrugated boxes, and yard waste are easy components to add to a compost bin. Your recycling effort in and around your home can create mulch for landscape beds or rich organic matter for your garden.
• Reduce food waste. While composting goes a long way to cleaning up food waste, you can prevent waste in the first place by planning meals ahead of time and purchasing only what you need and will use, and be sure to save leftovers.
• Start recycling. Use recycling bins to make it easy to separate food, plastic, and paper, and you can reuse items rather than throwing them away.
• Shop consciously. Whether you’re buying online or in the store, be aware of the waste you create with shopping. Bring your own reusable bags and be sure to use as few boxes as possible if given the option online. You can reduce your carbon footprint further by selecting food and household products that come in recyclable or compostable containers.

3. Decrease Water Usage

Collecting, storing, and treating water all use energy. So by being conscious of how you use water each day, you can do your part to reduce water-related energy consumption as well as your carbon footprint. Think about adjusting these habits:

• Your laundry routine: Even energy-efficient washing machines and tumble dryers consume a lot of energy, but you can reduce consumption by washing in cold water and air-drying your clothes instead of tumble drying.
• Your dishwashing habits: Dishwashers use less water than washing by hand, and you can further reduce your water use and carbon footprint by running it fully loaded and not by not rinsing dishes ahead of time.
• Your shower and sink use: Running water has a direct impact on your home’s carbon footprint. So avoid running the water while brushing your teeth or washing your face, and try taking fewer and shorter showers. Heating water can account for up to 25% of your home’s energy consumption, and showers account for approximately 10% to 20% of a household’s energy bill.

Small adjustments to how we go about our daily lives—how we eat, how we dress, where we shop, how we keep warm or cool, how we keep ourselves and our belongings clean, and so on—can easily become new habits that will reduce every individual’s carbon footprint and serve to protect the planet going forward.

Infographic from - homeadvisor.com