20 Ways to Live a Simple Organic Life
Living a simple organic life can give you and your family many benefits—from health benefits, financial benefits and environmental benefits. Living a simple organic life can help you reduce your electric bill and can decrease your carbon footprint in the world.
An organic lifestyle can also keep you and your family healthier by cleaning up the air and by decreasing the amount of pathogens your family comes in contact with.
Here are some simple tips to creating a green, organic life:
1. Plant More Trees
They create an ecosystem that provides a habitat for birds and other animals. Trees also reduce as they create an ecosystem that provides a habitat for birds and other animals. Trees also reduce the load of carbon dioxide and harmful gasses, including, sulfur dioxide, and carbon monoxide from the air and instead release oxygen. One large tree supplies enough oxygen for four people.
2. Plant Bamboo
Plant bamboo in your yard and gardens, which produces more oxygen and absorbs more carbon dioxide than trees, both of which help to prevent global warming. Shop for bamboo furniture to support prevention of logging of hardwood trees that helps combat climate change.
3. Keep Your Home Insulated
Insulation can make your home more energy efficient so you don’t lose cold air in the summer or heated air in the winter. To look for areas where you could use more insulation, get access to a thermal radiometer or to an infrared scanner. This will show you the areas where your home is losing heat. You can even purchase a cheap radiometer from Black and Decker to see where you are letting perfectly good air out of your home.
Good organic insulation includes blown in cellulose, which is shredded newspaper. There is also a soy-based insulation spray called BioBased that can provide organic insulation for your home. Wool insulation and bonded recycled denim insulation works well, too, but not as well as BioBased and shredded newspaper.
4. Energy Efficient Windows
A lot of heat is lost through the windows. Buy energy efficient windows if you can. They should be double paned if you live in a cold climate but super-insulated windows made from three layers of glass and argon between the pains is the best for super-cold climates.
5. Go Solar
Solar roofs generate their own energy using the power of the sun to provide energy for your home. Most states offer a tax break for solar installation.
6. Compost
Start a compost heap in your backyard for all natural organic gardening.
7. Organic Bedding
Organic grown without pesticides 100% cotton bedding and mattresses create a non-toxic sleep environment for you and your family
8. Green Cleaning
Use or make your own organic cleaning products to avoid petroleum-based chemicals found in conventional products like chlorine that harm eco systems. These chemicals have also been linked to allergies, asthma, cancers, and certain heart problems.
9. Energy Star
Use Energy Star-qualified appliances, they cost more, but will save big on electricity bills in the long run.
10. Recycled Glassware and Tableware
Recycled products make less of an impact on the earth and help reduce the burden on landfills
11. Thermostat
Use a thermostat and stick to its guidelines. Ideally, you should have a programmable thermostat that turns down the temperature when you aren’t at home or are sleeping. Try different thermostatic settings in different parts of the house that you don’t have to heat or cool areas of the house that aren’t used as much. You can even use a smart phone app by Honeywell that will make it easier to heat and cool your house from a distance.
12. Conserve Water
Install low flow showerheads and toilets that save water with every flush. There is even a toilet that uses the leftover water that drains out of your sink in order to flush the toilet. Conserving water also applies to the water you use in your yard. Instead of forcing lush greenery in dry climates, put in plants that thrive well in your environment without watering or an excessive amount of landscaping. This is known as xeriscaping.
13. Rake Leaves
Rake instead of using a leaf blower to cut down on emissions that can harm the air.
14. Consider Your Roof
If you have to replace your roof, use white, reflective tiles, green tiles or photovoltaic tiles that will help decrease your carbon footprint. White roofs reflect heat and keep cooling costs down. This can save on cooling bills by nearly 40 percent. Green roofs do the same thing as white roofs and produce oxygen as well. Green roofs can be very heavy so take that into account when deciding what kind of roof to choose.
15. Use Energy-efficient Lighting
Lighting can take up a third of your entire electric bill. Use energy efficient LED lights or make headways in using natural lighting so you don’t need to have lights in your home during the day. LED lighting is found to be more energy efficient and doesn’t contain mercury in the bulbs. Put windows or skylights in your home to keep it light during the day. There are solar tubes and fiber optic sunlight transportation systems that can allow natural light to lighten your home and lessen your energy bill.
16. Manage Air Quality
Use air filters to keep your family from breathing in dust and mites that are ever-present in the air. Have plenty of plants around that can lead to increased oxygen production and decreased carbon dioxide in your home.
17. No News is Good News
Cancel your newspaper subscription and read the news online instead.
18. PaperNapkins
Swap the paper napkins for cloth to save the trees used to make them and to reduce the burden on landfills.
19. Go Paperless
Choose paperless billing for your bills to save trees used to make the paper and reduce the load on landfills.