Tricks to help make your home Earth-friendly

This week marked Earth Day — a day we are supposed to think critically about the choices we make and what environmentally friendly adjustments we can make in the coming year. To me, this is something we need to be thinking about year-round. After all, we’ve only got the one planet, so we need to make conscious use of our resources to ensure there’s still plenty left over for our children and grandchildren.

This concept extends to your home. The construction choices we make, as well as how we use the home day to day, can have as big or as small an impact on our planet as you choose. I think it makes sense to make choices that have as small an impact as possible. In my own home, I’ve set up solar panelling on my garage, I’ve made my home as efficient as possible and I’m careful about the water that I use.

Here are some earthfriendly tips for your home in honour of Earth Day.

RECYCLE, REUSE

This is something that really gets my goat. When I go past a construction site and I see the workers tossing old cabinets and other materials that they smashed the heck out of into a bin, rather than carefully taking it down to get a second life out of the materials.

For those of us lucky enough to be able to renovate, often when we’re upgrading our spaces, it’s not because the materials are past their lifecycle, it’s because we wanted to make some esthetic changes to make the space more personal.

That means that a lot of these materials, if your contractor takes the time to carefully remove them rather than destroying them, can often be donated to furniture banks and other stores to get a second life out of them. Just because you don’t need that old stuff doesn’t mean there’s not a family somewhere who could.

REDUCING WATER USAGE

Leaky faucets can waste upward of 21 litres of water per day. That constant drip, drip, dripping might not seem like too much at first thought, but over time that adds up, so address any leaks. The most common causes of leaks come from defective parts — usually O-rings, washers or gaskets. You could probably replace those yourself pretty easily and see if that solves your issue.

When it’s the fixtures themselves that need replacing, don’t buy the cheapest model available. They tend to be inexpensive for a reason and won’t last very long. Opt for name-brand, quality fixtures because they will last longer — and are less likely to leak.

If you’re going through your home and replacing things such as shower heads or toilets, I’d go with more efficient models that use less water overall without sacrificing quality. Efficient shower heads us about four litres less water per minute than a traditional shower head. This stuff does add up over time, so don’t overlook it when you’re making some changes.

GREENING YOUR HOME

For most of us here in Canada where it gets really cold in the winter and really hot in the summer, where we’ll see most of our home’s energy usage is in its heating and cooling.

When your home is full of gaps and cracks and holes, it makes keeping your home a comfortable temperature all the more difficult. So it makes sense that the best way to heat your home efficiently is by shoring up those weak spots around your doors, windows and in your insulation, right?

Replacing any worn or missing caulking and weather stripping is such an easy thing that any homeowner can do to prevent air from leaking out of your home, while still having a huge impact. A drafty home can account for about 30 per cent of your home’s heat loss, so make sure that every spring and fall, you’re taking a walk around your home to do this important job. Adding some lowexpansion spray foam in gaps around your exhaust pipes is a key part of this job, too, so keep that in mind. Finally, head into your furnace room and tape up any exposed duct line joints — this will help air move through your system more efficiently.