Green Living: Eco-Friendly Products For Building Green Homes

By Arun Chitnis

Giving your home the ‘green’ advantage preserves the environment and saves you money. There’s a lot you can do yourself, and there’s no need to call the experts in.

Thanks to growing awareness about the need to conserve the resources of our planet, a number of eco-friendly products are now on the market. Here’s some advice on how to put them – and your concern – to good use.

If you consider your home, you can roughly identify four areas to focus on – plumbing, electric lighting, painting and flooring.

We all know that conserving water is important. You can do your bit by upgrading your water dispending facilities. First, install a low-flow toilet. You will save approximately 12-15 liters of water with every flush.

Second, have an aerator fitted to your faucets – another great water-conserving method that will save your up to half of the typically used amount of water.

As for lighting, wake up to the fact that more than 80% of the energy generated by most incandescent light bulbs is heat – a waste of electricity, since the heat is of no use to you.

You can overcome this limitation by using compact, energy-efficient bulbs that last a lot longer and can save you as much as two-thirds of normally used electricity.

Give your home the 'green' advantage

There is more to paint than meets the eye. The fact about typical paints used in American homes is that they invariably include volatile organic compounds and other unhealthy ingredients that are slowly released into the air. The result is low-grade toxicity in your home’s indoor air and a high risk of allergic reactions amongst family members.

If you have noticed an unaccountable level of allergies or even asthma amongst them, switch to environmentally friendly water-based paints or low/no-VOC paints. These are now available at progressive stores across the country.

A parquet floor is great to look at, but a number of hardwood trees have to give up the ghost to make it happen. Hardwood trees take a long time to grow back. You have the perfect substitute with the humble but attractive bamboo. You will never notice the difference and bamboo grows back much faster than hardwood trees.

Come to think of it, there’s no end to the possibilities once you’ve decided to make your home a ‘green’ zone. With the eco-tips above as a starting point, how many more ways can you think of living a green lifestyle?

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Intro to green/eco-friendly paints

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