Wondering how to green your home when it isn’t technically yours?
Green your rented space with these simple ideas that add up to big results.
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1. Share the Green Love With Your Landlord.
Show your landlord the energy-efficient light – pass on some eco-tips that speak to their bottom line, like energy-efficient appliances, eco-options for floors, countertops, and paint, and efficient windows. If 10,000 landlords of high-rise apartment buildings make Energy Star-suggested changes, the energy saved could power their each of their TVs for 1,640,625 years.
MORE INFO: Share the Green Love With Your Landlord
2. Use Power Strips to Avoid “Phantom Load.”
A phantom load is the energy sapped by appliances when they are plugged in but not turned on – in the average home this accounts for 40% of the energy bill! Plug your appliances into power strips to turn off your TV, DVD, stereo, and cell phone charger in one fell swoop. If 10,000 people plug their cable boxes into power strips that are turned off when not watching TV, we’ll save about $300,000 per year. MORE INFO: Use Power Strips to Avoid “Phantom Load.”
3. Go Soy With Your Candles.
Looking for a cleaner burn? Soy candles are free of petroleum, unlike conventional wax candles, and are nearly soot-free so they won’t pollute the air in your apartment or leave those nasty smoke marks on your walls. They burn up to 50% longer than wax candles and cost about the same – good for those of us who don’t exactly have money to, um, burn.
MORE INFO: Go Soy With Your Candles
4. Plant an Indoor Lawn for Your Pet.
Many pets graze on grass for digestive reasons. Since apartment living often means living without a lawn, provide your pet with their very own patch of grass suitable for nibbling. It will give them something to eat besides the houseplants, and ensure that they aren’t consuming fertilizers or pesticides.
MORE INFO: Plant an Indoor Lawn for Your Pet
5. Get a Green Shower Curtain.
And get rid of the one that’s green from mold! Go natural with a hemp or organic cotton shower curtain paired with a nylon liner. It’s healthier than a PVC-coated curtain (PVC offgases potential hormone disruptors) and can be tossed in the washing machine for easy mold-preventing cleanup.
MORE INFO: Get a Green Shower Curtain
6. Kick the Bottled Water Habit.
Americans use 4 million plastic bottles every hour – but only 1 in 4 is recycled. Instead of reaching for bottled water, use a water filter and fill up a non-leaching, lined aluminum SIGG bottle (like the one the Bite team uses – available from Ideal Bite’s website) with filtered tap water. If 10,000 gave up their daily bottled water habit for a year, we’d keep the weight of a small elephant in empties out of the waste stream.
MORE INFO: Kick the Bottled Water Habit
7. Purify the Air.
We’re not talking about plugging in those noisy and energy-sucking air purifiers – get the right plants to do the dirty work naturally. One plant for every 10 square yards ought to do the trick. If 10,000 people unplugged their 24-hour electric air purifiers in favor of air-filtering plants, the resulting 860,000 kWh could power a 29-story office building for a month.
MORE INFO: Purify the Air
8. Ditch the Sleeping Partners You Didn’t Even Know Were There.
Next time you’re in the market for a mattress, spring for an organic one. They’re made from pesticide-free materials, and wool ones are naturally fire and dust mite resistant. They’re pricey, but if 10,000 people opt for an organic mattress instead of a conventional one, we’ll avert the weight of 783 king-sized mattresses in pesticides.
MORE INFO: Ditch the Sleeping Partners
9. Just Say “No” to Junk Mail.
Junk mail is more than just annoying, it’s wasteful. If everyone in the US was able to reduce the junk mail they receive each week (average 10.8 pieces per person), we could save nearly 100 million trees each year. Check out the link below to get to online forms to remove your name from junk mail lists.
MORE INFO: Just Say “No” to Junk Mail.
10. Give the Gift of Experience.
Need a gift for your “has-everything” friend who happens to have a tiny, elfin apartment? Give “experience” gifts, like massages, iTunes gift cards, carbon offsets, or free them of their junk mail for a year (see #9). Beats giving tchotzkes that will end up at Goodwill, and hopefully they’ll return the favor when it’s time for them to get a gift for you.
Reprinted from: http://www.idealbite.com/
