Home and Garden

How To Lower Your Carbon Footprint With A Sustainable House

When designing a house, there are a lot of important factors to consider to make sure you will get as much out of living in it as possible. You need to figure out the best way to lay out the rooms so living in it has a good flow. And you also need to consider how it can impact your well being so that needs to be considered in the plans.

Possibly most importantly, you’ll need to make sure that it is sustainable and can lower your carbon footprint considerably. There is a huge push with non profits to find green alternatives when it comes to building so there are plenty of resources out there to help when it comes down to the planning and eventual building of the house.

Once you build a green house that is sustainable and doesn’t impact the ecosystem, then you will be very happy that you did. Lowering your carbon footprint will help you sleep much better at night.

How To Lower Your Carbon Footprint With A Sustainable House

Focus on mixed use

One way that a building can be green is to concentrate various uses under one edifice. This way everything a community needs can be found in one place. It benefits the environment by requiring less resources and it also helps the community so people have what they need nearby without needing to travel far.

There are many ethical property developers focusing on these types of buildings for the benefits they provide a community. If you live in an urban environment, then take a tip from their playbook and build a house that solves a few other problems as well.

The best part is that if you build yourself a home within that mixed use complex, you can end up living essentially mortgage free by charging rent to the businesses on the ground floor.

Use sustainable materials

There are a number of ways to use materials that have a low impact on the environment. First, look into upcycling materials that would normally be going into a garbage dump or destroyed. They may not be made of natural materials, but you are helping to keep them out of a landfill.

Next up is to source materials that are made with a very low impact and will do little damage to the environment when they are disposed of. It should be quickly renewable like bamboo which grows very quickly. And it should be locally sourced when available.

Focus on energy efficiency

Buying Energy Star appliances will reduce your energy bills but also reduce your consumption. However, if you are able to build your building in a south facing way, and use wide windows, then you can capture the heat from the sun and use even less energy in heating your home.

Insulation and drapes can keep the heat of the summer out of the house and naturally cool without needing an air conditioner running all day, as well.

And, if you feel that you are using a lot of energy that can’t be avoided, you can donate to offset your carbon footprint.

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