Many students using our footprint calculator said that they could not pledge to reduce their home footprints because they were not making the decisions for the household. Here is your chance to design your own sustainable virtual household!
If you had your own home, what would you do to make it more energy efficient? Where would you get your electricity from? Where would your house be? Would you live near to your school or work or local transit options? Where would you get your food from?
MY Family Footprint >
If I had my own home
If I owned my home, here are some of the things I would do to keep my carbon footprint low.
1) Try to buy a house that’s well insulated. This means that less energy required to heat the house, as the heat would stay in the house longer.
2) Use LED bulbs. They are more energy efficient, they’re just as bright, and they last way longer.
3) Install solar panels. This is expensive, so I may be living in that house for a long time before I install them. Nonetheless, I would like to install them at some point, so that I would use more clean energy.
4) Live close to the place I work. This means that I would drive less on an average day, which means I would use less fuel.
These are just some of the things that I would try to make sure I do if I owned my own home. They are better for the environment, and most of these things would cost less for me as well.
These are excellent energy-saving tips. Would also add into prospect the fact of how you heat your home. Whether it is gas, electric, wood, or coal, there is always a better way to harness energy. Solar panels are a wonderful idea, although was you mentioned quite pricey. They have a lot of positive feedback. Meaning, over long periods of time from the money you are saving not paying for gas and electric, the solar panels “pay it forward”. Also when you are talking about well insulating your home, make sure to look up convection currents. When there are cracks in insulation hot air gets sucked out of the home as well as action of cold air being reciprocated alike the first current. Also windows are a very weak point in building a house. They allow a lot of cold air into a house or hot air depending on the outside environment. Good luck developing more ideals!
Even if you didn't live relatively close to your work place you could still either bike or use public transportation depending on the distance.