Green Technology

Easy Ways You Can Lower Your Home’s Carbon Footprint

Lower Your Home Carbon Footprint Solar Panels
Lower your home’s carbon footprint with solar panels. Image credit: Adobe Stock.

Almost everything today emits some form of pollution, but you can go out of your way to minimize your contribution to this pollution. Many people follow the reduce, reuse, and recycle mantra, but the average consumer isn’t polluting all that much. Instead, it’s their homes that are the bigger polluters. Fortunately, there are easy ways you can lower your home’s carbon footprint. Not all are the same, and some are more difficult than others, but you’ll do the earth good when you implement these changes.

Use LED Lightbulbs

One of the worst ways your home builds its carbon footprint is through incandescent light bulbs. It’s one way your home uses energy you don’t often think about. And when people do, they don’t think about switching the lightbulbs. Instead, they simply try to turn their lights off more than normal. If you want to lower your home’s carbon footprint, you should switch to LED bulbs. They’re long-lasting, use much less energy, and help reduce your carbon consumption drastically. This is one of the easiest ways to lower your carbon footprint, so get yourself some new bulbs instead of waiting or just turning your lights off more often.

Install Solar Panels

This option may seem extreme to some, but the actual purchase and implementation of solar panels is quite easy and can do a lot to lower your carbon footprint. These solar panels capture the energy of the sun and make you less reliant on other, more harmful sources of energy, such as the following:

  • Oil
  • Coal
  • Natural gas

In addition to curbing the use of these nonrenewable, pollution-causing resources, other benefits to installing solar panels on your home exist. They help you save money with your utility bill and are reliable in case the grid goes down. If you want to bring more green energy into your life, look no further than a solar panel!

Become Less Reliant on HVAC

For some homeowners, this is a big ask. People love their ideal temperatures, so getting them to go outside them is like talking to a brick wall. However, it’s one of the better ways to lower your home’s energy use, and you don’t even need to be too drastic with it. Simply keeping your thermostat two degrees higher or lower than normal can save you money and greatly lower your energy usage. Instead of having it super hot in the winter, just wear a jacket and a blanket inside. In the summer, open some windows and let the breeze cool you off.

If you want to contribute to a greener and more sustainable world, you need to find ways to lower your home’s carbon footprint. Not all of them have the same environmental impact, but as long as you recognize your home’s impact and make those necessary changes, you’ll put the world on a greener path.

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Paul Tomaszewski is a science & tech writer as well as a programmer and entrepreneur. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of CosmoBC. He has a degree in computer science from John Abbott College, a bachelor's degree in technology from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, and completed some business and economics classes at Concordia University in Montreal. While in college he was the vice-president of the Astronomy Club. In his spare time he is an amateur astronomer and enjoys reading or watching science-fiction. You can follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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