Thinking sustainability?

The way I see it, there are two parts to being sustainable. There are the things that can be bought and installed into a home to make it more sustainable and then there are the things that can be done within the home to improve the sustainability lifestyle. 

Things that can be bought and added into a resident include a PV array, water tank, insulation, weather stripping or building vegetable gardens. These things are add ons. You outlay money and improve the energy efficiency of your home or reduce the 'carbon mile' of food. Other things can be bought in order to swap or change, such as putting in more energy efficient appliances, double glazing windows or installing water saving taps and toilets. This is an interesting one as although the new products make the house more efficient, the removal and disposal as well as production of the new fittings add to the carbon footprint of the home. Recycling or reusing fittings should also be considered in terms of reducing the carbon footprint and the embodied carbon that recycled items contain. 

The things that can be done within the home are what I consider to be lifestyle things. This is the actions that are part of the every day. For us this includes turning appliances off at the wall, avoiding using the appliances that consume a lot of power (like hairdryers, clothes dryers, fan heaters or heat lamps), reducing the temperature that the house is heated to in Winter, or not cooling it so much in Summer. We have changed habits to collect the water before it runs warm when washing the dishes or showering, we wash our clothes using cold fast wash, and our dishes using fast wash. We have played around with the amount of detergent used to wash properly, and now only use as much as we need to. We turn off lights when not in a room and we cover ceiling cooling vents during Winter so as not to lose heat into the ducting. 

Lastly there are the choices for at home that we make in the supermarket and when shopping. The products that we chose to buy are chosen for many different reasons, such as nutrition, diet, brand loyalty, convenience or cost. The choices we make in terms of products can have environmental impact too. Where ingredients are sourced, how a product is made, the amount of packaging, the work conditions of employees and the 'after use' effects such chemical waste or solid waste, reflects the environmental and ethical nature of the products that we buy. So that is a brief view of some of my ideas.