Five Ways To Make Your Home More Eco-Friendly

Lots of people are using extra free time to have a spring clean and redecorate the house (or just watch Netflix- which is totally fine too). But if you're feeling extra motivated to changes things up around the house, why not make some changes for the good of the planet too? Here are 5 easy ways to make your home more eco-friendly... 

1. Get serious about food waste.

Via Unsplash

It's become pretty common to have a food waste bin now, but we should still be trying to put as little in it as possible. When you chuck out food, you're not only wasting money, but also wasting all the energy and resources used to produce and transport it. Even if you're pretty good at not letting the edible parts of food go to waste, there are lots of ways to reuse food scraps. Potato peelings can be baked with a little oil, salt and pepper for some zero-waste crisps, coffee grounds are a great fertiliser for your plants, and you can regrow loads of fruits and vegetables from scraps (here's 10 to get you started).

2. Turn off electronic devices at night.

Before you go to bed tonight, go round the house and count how many devices are switched on at the wall- you might be surprised how many there are. In our house, there were 20 different devices I found that were being left on standby overnight- things like the microwave, radio and computer. Even if they don't appear to be doing anything, if they've got a light on (like the clock on the radio), then they're constantly using electricity. Obviously don't unplug things like the fridge (that won't help with reducing your food waste), but if it's not needed overnight, turn it off! It doesn't even take two seconds to flick a switch. Set a reminder if you keep forgetting, but soon you'll find it becomes second nature. 

Torsten Dettlaff ~ Unsplash

3. Save water in the shower.

This idea came from the book Every Woman's Guide To Saving The Planet, which is now being passed around the household so my whole family can read it (including my dad if I can persuade him!). It's only available to pre-order in the UK at the moment, but you can download an e-book version here. Put a small bucket (or whatever you have on hand- a saucepan or bowl would work just as well) in the bath/ shower and shower as normal. Then, use the water wherever you need it- we water our vegetable patch. The bucket mostly gets filled up with the cold water whilst waiting for the hot water to come through, which we isn't actually used to wash ourselves so is a even bigger waste. Using this water for another purpose saves you pouring money down the drain, literally.



4. Switch to natural cleaning products.

When we use products that are full of chemicals, these get washed away into the water system. Instead, use things you're likely to already have in the cupboard, such as vinegar and lemon juice. Mixing bicarbonate of soda with a little water to form a paste is great for cleaning stains, such as tea stains in mugs, and I use it to clean our oven (with a bit of elbow grease too). If you're struggling to remove dried on dirt in your microwave, put some lemon juice or half a lemon in and microwave it for 30 seconds. This will make the stains much easier to wipe off. To descale your kettle, pour a couple of centimetres of vinegar and the same of water into the bottom and boil (not too much as it will froth up) and then leave it for an hour before boiling again. Pour out the solution and flush out the kettle with clean water a couple of times to make sure the vinegar's thoroughly removed.

5. Cook more plant-based meals.

Ella Olsson ~ Unsplash

Studies have shown that if everyone in the UK swapped one meal a week from red meat to a plant-based alternative, it would have the same impact as taking 16 million cars off the road. There's plenty of meat-free meals you can make with the ingredients you're likely to already have in your cupboard (like vegetable fried rice or lentil curry), which means you don't even have to do any extra shopping. If you want a challenge, why not start eating veggie throughout the week and keep meat as a treat on the weekends? Check out this Ted Talk which is all about why you should become a weekday vegetarian- I cannot recommend watching it enough if you want to lessen your meat intake.