What is Green Living?

Green living encompasses nearly all aspects of life. This lifestyle prevents environmental harm, helping to ensure that humans and animals can safely live on Earth for centuries to come. In some cases, it can offer supplemental benefits, like saving money or protecting your health.

Live Green To Conserve Our Planetgreen-living

To live in an eco-friendly manner, it’s important to avoid unnecessary consumption. For instance, you could conserve plastic or cardboard by purchasing a large package of rice rather than several small bags or boxes. You can also forgo disposable goods that you don’t really need, such as paper cups and plastic shopping bags.

Renewable Energy

Renewable energy is another important aspect of green living. People can cut pollution by installing wind turbines or photovoltaic panels on their homes. If this isn’t an option, it’s best to find ways to conserve electricity by using more efficient devices or turning off electronics when they aren’t needed.

Other Ways To Reduce Consumption

Transportation plays a major role as well. Although it isn’t always possible, people can greatly reduce their environmental impact by walking or using bicycles. Trains, buses, and car-pooling also save considerable amounts of fuel and minimize air pollution.

Water Consumption

Saving water is crucial, especially in arid climates. This type of conservation also reduces the consumption of the electricity that homes use to pump water. Sometimes this task is as simple as taking a shower instead of a bath. It may also involve more complex efforts, such as repairing leaky faucets or replacing inefficient fixtures.

Green Shopping

Green living often prompts careful shopping choices. For example, you might choose to buy an Energy Star appliance, rechargeable batteries or unbleached paper goods.

And while it’s not always a realistic option, buying used merchandise can also reduce a person’s carbon footprint in many situations. For instance, a tremendous amount of used clothing remains in excellent condition. These items don’t need to be shipped across the country or around the world before someone buys them.

You could also visit a restaurant that uses biodegradable containers rather than foam take-out boxes or coffee cups.

Small Decisions Make a Big Impact

These tiny decisions don’t only affect your personal impact on the environment. They set a positive example for other individuals around you.

This encourages businesses to supply more eco-friendly products and services. If most people refuse to buy bleached coffee filters or inefficient appliances, manufacturers will need to make improvements and suppliers offer better products.

Green living enthusiasts frequently check ingredient lists when they purchase household supplies. Numerous cleaning products contain harmful toxic chemicals. They can trigger health problems and contribute to water pollution. Fortunately, safe natural alternatives are available.

People also protect the environment by forgoing various chemicals that aren’t really necessary. They let harmless dandelions grow in the lawn rather than spraying weed killers. Others prioritize non-chemical ways to keep pests at bay, such as caulking and weather-stripping.

Not everyone can afford to eat exclusively organic food, but most people have the ability to buy at least a few of these products. Farmers grow organic crops without spraying pesticides or other chemicals, so they’re less likely to harm human or animal health.

Taking Out the Trash

Think twice before throwing any significant item in the trash. Ask yourself if someone else could make use of it in some way. Consider donating it to a thrift shop, offering it for free in the classified ads, or conduct some more research to find out if it could be repaired.

Recycling is also a very important part of living green. You can buy products with packaging that can be recycled, such as cardboard instead of styrofoam or hybrid materials. After using these items, bring the materials to local recycling centers.

Get Your Priorities Green

Green priorities will incentivize you to learn new skills or techniques. You can reduce packaging waste, get better nutrition, or even make a difference with something as simple as learning how to make a printer use both sides of the paper.

Eco-friendly living certainly takes extra time or work in some situations. Nonetheless, it’s worth the effort to gain the priceless benefits of this lifestyle. Green choices can help make it possible for a person to live a long, healthy life while working to preserve what’s most beautiful in our world.

6 Reasons Why Solar Power Is Awesome!

Interest in solar energy today is growing more rapidly than ever before. Green properties have been on the radar for some time now and modern homeowners all over the world have started seeing the value of converting to solar power.  Not only is solar a clean and environmentally safe energy source but in addition to all the good that can be done for our planet, making the switch to solar power can also help you save money.

Solar-Panel-installation

Here are 6 reasons why converting your home is the best way to go:

1. Solar Increase Your Property’s Value

If you’re looking to sell your home, being set up for solar energy is a smart investment for homeowners.

In fact, a study done by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that homes equipped for solar power, on average, sold for around 17% more than homes without panels on the roof. Homes running on this type of energy also sold 20% faster than those running on electricity.

2. Lock In Your Energy Rates

No matter what happens with electricity costs, going green with solar means that you’re always locked into an energy supply at a fixed rate.

3. Get Credit For Excess Power

Whenever your home is generating more power than you need, your meter will begin running backward. When that happens, the utility company in your area will credit you for the power you’re producing. You can then use this excess electricity during evening hours without running up a bill. This is a grid-tied system and known as net-metering.

4. Very Little Maintenance

Since there are no moving parts on solar power panels, they’re very durable and there’s really very little to maintain.

Rain will wash off any dust that collects on the panel’s surface, and even if you’re in the desert where it never rains, spraying the panels down once a year should be all that’s required to keep them producing like new.

To keep the panels functioning optimally they should be 100% clean, but even when they are really dirty they only lose about 5-7% of their efficiency.

5. Helpful For the Environment

Solar panels are a clean and reliable source of energy, and this eco-friendly solution doesn’t place unnecessary strain on the planet’s resources. There are no air pollutants, toxic run-off, or other issues associated with running converting your home to solar power.

6. An Example To Those Around You

It feels good to be a leader, especially in an environmentally-friendly way where you can be sure you’re doing something good for the future of our planet.  So whether you are ready to get actual solar panel installation estimates or just planning on getting your home more ‘greenly’ themed we salute you.

Green living starts at home, find trusted tradesmen costs and adopting clean energy sources early on is a crucial part of the process for anyone who wants to adopt a greener lifestyle.

What Is Energy Efficiency?

The term “energy efficiency” often emerges when alternative power sources are discussed. This applies to electronics, appliances, cooling and heating equipment and so much more. Unfortunately, this phrase is misused in ways which only confuse its actual meaning.
 
Energy efficiency isn’t the same as conserving energy. Efficiency relates to the specific ways by which power is produced and consumed.

Efficiency Simplified

 
An energy-efficient device gets the most out of a certain amount of fuel or electricity. The formula to determine efficiency is output divided by input.
 
For example, a car that travels 210 miles on six gallons of gas receives a fuel economy rating of 35 miles per gallon (mpg).
 
Avoiding the trip is “conservation”. Taking a shorter route to get to the same place is “efficiency”. Basically, energy efficiency enables you to get the same results with less sunlight, fuel or electricity.

Energy Efficiency Rating

Many appliances, electronics, some building products, and many other modern amenities all have a rating which reveals how efficient they are.
Renewable-energyA solar panel, for example, is more efficient if it produces extra power from the same amount of sunlight when compared to another type of solar panel
It could, therefore, receive a higher efficiency rating.
 
This rating will differ from one manufacturer to another.
It’s always a good idea to look for the Energy Star Rating if you want to ensure you’re getting the most efficient product.

Global Energy Crisis

Energy efficiency is on top of our global conservation list. Currently, we are striving to find the quickest and least costly way of addressing our planet’s energy security.
 
The world continues to face environmental and economic challenges, and limited energy sources such coal and gas continue to be exploited as demand increases, regardless of the effect it has on the environment.
 
However, there still remains an abundance of untapt natural and renewable resources. Tapping into the Earth’s renewable energy is the only answer to the mass destruction caused by the endless over-consumption and exploitation of natural resources. 

Renewable Energy Sources

The sun is only one renewable energy resource that every country possesses in abundance. Yet the possibilities that solar power can provide is only in its relative infancy – with massive strides taken in the last few decades alone.
 
The same can be said for hydroelectricity, wind power, and other forms of renewable energy as well.
 
It’s important that we apply energy efficiency at home first, in our daily lives. Green living always starts at home. This will ensure that we serve the needs of the present without compromising future generations and their energy needs.

Power of the Future

The energy crisis is a broad and complex topic. Most people don’t feel connected to its reality unless there is a power failure for a few hours or even a line at the gas station.
 
However, as energy efficient policies and other government solar panel incentives have makes an impact on the global energy market, renewable energy has finally started playing a key part to address the ongoing energy crisis.
 
Energy efficiency is key to ensuring a safe, reliable, affordable and sustainable energy system for the future.