Trusted Tips for Going Green

With Earth Day just around the corner (it’s coming up on April 22), many people are wondering what they can do around the house and in their daily lives to go green and do their part to save the planet. Here at Guardian Plumbing and Drain, we care about the Earth just as much as you. We've come up with these three tips you can use around the house to save water, energy, the planet, and some money while you're at it.

Tip One: Save Water

Water is essential to life on this planet, so taking steps to conserve water is a huge green bonus for Earth Day. One of the simplest ways you can save water at home—without having to change your habits at all—is to install water-saving shower heads, water-efficient faucets, and low-flow toilets.

These modern devices could save you up to 5 gallons per flush, 25 gallons per 5 minute shower, and 30 percent of the water you use when the taps are running. There are also water-saving habits you can adopt. They include:

• Taking shorter showers
• Running dishwashers only when they're full
• Using water-saving settings on the washing machine
• Using a rain barrel to collect water for the garden
• Turning off the taps when you're brushing your teeth, washing your hands, and doing dishes, or installing motion-operated faucets

Tip Two: Save Energy

Tankless water heaters are an ideal way to go green because they offer so many additional benefits. Tankless heaters save energy because they only heat water when it’s needed, so there's no standby loss (which wastes about 20 percent of the energy that storage-tank heaters use).

They use 30 percent less energy because they aren't always keeping a tankful of water hot. But on top of that, tankless heaters are also great because they guarantee an endless supply of hot water, they save you money, and they last twice as long as traditional models.

Tip Three: Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

A huge focus of Earth Day is reducing your carbon footprint because your carbon footprint grows as you use more fossil fuels. Luckily, there are some very simple and effective ways you can reduce your footprint. One of the most important is to replace bottled water with a home water filtration system.

But what's the link between bottled water and fossil fuels, you ask? The plastic used to make bottled water comes from fossil fuels. In North America alone, millions of barrels of oil are used annually just for the plastic to make these bottles.

On top of that, the transportation to get water bottles from plants to stores requires a lot of fuel as well, further increasing the carbon footprint of a water bottle. You can change all this by installing a water filtration system in your house and using filtered tap water instead of buying bottles.

Additional carbon footprint reduction tips:

• ride your bike instead of taking the car
• install energy-efficient appliances
• replace incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent ones
• reuse and recycle instead of throwing out
• invest in renewable energies

For more tips and information ongoing green in your Cobourg, ON home, give Guardian Plumbing and Drain a call at 289-251-1626.