7 Easy Tips to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint at Home

Reducing your energy usage, and as a result your carbon footprint, should be a thought on everyone’s mind in the current climate. Not only does it help to save the environment, but it also helps save you money.

You might be wondering how you can most effectively reduce your carbon footprint at home, especially if you’re already quite energy conscious, so here are some tips to help get you started!

1. Turn off Electronics in Standby Mode

Televisions, computer monitors, kitchen appliances, and more often enter a standby mode when they aren’t currently being used. While this drastically reduces energy consumption, it doesn’t cut if off entirely, which can total a significant amount of energy usage come the end of the year.

Consider unplugging or switching off any devices that have a standby mode at the wall to help reduce your total energy usage over the course of the year!

2. Ensure Your Bulbs are Energy Saving or LED

You might not have thought twice about the lighting fixtures within your home, but you may be burning far more electricity than you need to just to light it. Older, halogen bulbs are far less energy efficient than modern LEDs and other energy saving alternatives.

By replacing these bulbs now, you could save a significantly amount of energy and money come the winter when evening comes much earlier.

3. Compost Your Food Waste in the Garden

While not directly saving you energy, a compost heap in your garden could greatly reduce your carbon footprint by preventing food waste from ending up in landfill and by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere directly.

If you’re a keen gardener already, the compost you create will also provide several benefits for plant growth, including additional nutrients, discouraging disease, and balancing soil.

4. Look to More Efficiently Insulate Your Home

One of the more expensive but most effective ways reduce energy usage is to ensure the efficient insulation of your home. Installing double, or even triple glazed windows along with insulation material in your loft or extensions will help prevent the amount of heat you lose during the cold winter months.

Checking for broken seals in your doorways and opening windows can also help prevent airflow and cool breezes entering your property in the winter too. By stopping cold air from entering, and warm air leaving, you will be able to keep your boiler and central heating system on a lower temperature throughout the colder months.

This will help save gas or electricity, depending on the type of boiler you have, and reduce overall costs and your carbon footprint.

5. Ensure Your Boiler is Regularly Serviced

To keep your boiler operating at peak efficiency, which is the best way to guarantee you aren’t wasting energy unnecessarily, you should ensure that it is regularly serviced.

You should also consider regularly checking whether your central heating needs to be powerflushed, which will remove impurities and solid materials in your radiators to improve heating efficiency.

Ensuring that you have boiler and heating cover that includes regular engineer visits is key to keeping your boiler operating at maximum efficiency.

6. Upgrade to a New Boiler if You Notice Issues

Newer boilers are far more efficient than older models because the technology within them has improved drastically over the years. The average lifespan of a boiler is between 10 – 15 years, meaning that if your boiler is coming to the end of its lifespan, it would be cost efficient (and safer) to get a new one.

Older boilers are far more likely to suffer from an issue that could result in a boiler emergency and breakdown than newer ones, which could end up being more expensive over a few years of engineer callouts.

Plus, older boilers are more susceptible to carbon monoxide leaks, which could be a danger to you and your family.

7. Get in Touch With Butco

Butco are the go-to specialists in the West Midlands for new boiler installations, 24 hour boiler repair, powerflushing services, and more to ensure that your heating is operating as efficiently as possible.

We provide emergency callouts, new boiler installation, consultation, and more to ensure that our clients are as carbon- and cost-efficient as possible.

Send an email to info@butco.com or call the office on 0333 0366 1121 to get started.