How To Give Your Home A Green Makeover

Home renovations can be quite a task but also an excellent opportunity to green your living space. So, study up on the newest green living techniques and get inspired! First, from the Green Guide:

Any green renovation project requires a careful balancing act to satisfy the environmental goals of the project while dealing with aesthetics, product availability and budget constraints. Given America's vast range of climates and landscape, materials and design can vary greatly, but there are always common concerns such as healthy indoor-air quality, sustainable materials and water and energy efficiency.

Before renovating your home earth911 urges its readers to do some preliminary greening.

* Clean Out Your Storage We all have a closet or garage full of items that aren't used anymore. An easy way to organize these areas is to group the products and decide what to do with them accordingly. Some sample groups could include electronics, household waste (paint, pesticides, motor oil) and scrap metal.

* Plant a Tree
It may seem cliche, but planting trees was the original carbon offset. Not only do they reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, but they can provide shade for your home (reducing energy costs) and produce fruits that you won't have to buy at the store.

Huffington Post and Chelsea Green Bloggers Stephen and Rebekah Hren created their own energy saving insulated shutters.

Blogger Amy Stodghill recommends channeling your creative and freecycling skills to restore the items that might be consider trash to some. Eco-minded designers Wary Myers transformed this chest of drawers and made this eco-forest terrarium from a pickle jar.

Refurbish fits in nicely with the three 'R's (reduce, reuse, recycle) and can bring new life to an otherwise useless item. Before buying new, see if you can revamp something you already have. Or turn someone else's trash into your treasure.

As you prepare to repaint, consider using organic earth plaster or non-toxic paint.

Treehugger offers reviews of recommended eco-friendly insulation made of hemp fiber, recycled newsprint and even denim.

Green countertops are an affordable and fun way to reuse materials such as recycled glass and post-industrial aluminium scraps.

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And once the green renovation is complete, either freecycle or donate your belongings to greendemolitions, which will not only resell the items for you but also gives a tax write-off.

Related:

::Read Blogger Danny Seo's account of his green home renovation from the Huffington Post
::Read about the dip in full-scale home renovations on the Huffington Post
::More at the Huffington Post Green Living big news page

Comments

[coyote4]

This article is H_uffycrap. Going green is not using H emp and Green-earth plaster as much as it is reducing our carbon wastage.

Going Green in A merica means getting millions of homeowners off oil heating. How do we do this, and other major upgrades that Americans desperately need in this time of approaching Energy Scarcity and Global Climate Disruption?

I know:
we'll write a fluffy piece about extreme green dreams rather than deal with the harder issues of the politics, incentives and tough community decisions that are needed to actually deal with this problem.

No wonder HuffyGreen is relegated to the end of importance scale, after "Living" and "Style" and among the "joke" sites like "offthebus" and "23/6." A mericans are incapable of taking Green seriously when even her so-called promoters think that Green is an e xtremist joke.

No wonder there is so little interest in H uffyGreen

And then, when I post the word "s tink" in a green column concerning composting, I am edited! For god's sake, A r ianna, get with the program or go away. Stop pretending to care.

[ShaunHammer]

You need to chill a bit. It was a decent article....geezs

[coyote4]

please provide a supporting argument

[RedDonnaAnn]

40 percent of all carbon emissions come from... buildings. You are ranting on and on about an uber obvious source of greenhouse gas emissions, but green is green, but it paint, reclaimed water, solar, new fiber clothing.

Why don't you write blog. It's a good idea.

[research]

did someone steal your computer, coyote4?

Sure, there are more important things, but building and renovations are a major energy user and waste generator.

[coyote4]

I think you meant to say: "did the cat hork up on your keyboard again?" And yes there are some serious renovation issues with most housing in America being older than 20years. But I saw nothing here except turning scrap jars into terrariums and using green paint.

Not one mention of heat pumps or adding green fibrous insulation to the largest source of heat/cooling lose, the ceiling.

All fluff/no stuff.