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Top ten tips: How to make your home more eco-friendly

Thursday, 16 February 2012 1:54 PM

Want to make your home more eco-friendly? Here's ten ways to do just that, provided by Abacus Estates.

1. Grow your own food, whether it is a full-blown allotment with tomatoes, lettuce and carrots or a small herb box on your windowsill.

2. Use food waste as compost to feed your plants, however awful it looks, your plants love it! Yum.

3. Trade in your branded cleaning products and swap it for natural products like vinegar, baking soda and lemon to remove those dreadful stains.

4. Collect rainwater for your garden. A water butt fitted to an external drainpipe will soon fill up and give you a good supply of water for your garden. Make sure the water butt is raised enough to make it easy for you to extract the water.

5. Smells can be a nuisance, however so are aerosol air fresheners that are full of chemicals, swap these for an eco alternative of lavender or orange oil.

6. Plant a tree.

7. Check insulation. A lot of the time homes are not well insulated so the heating is turned on. Soon enough you are paying to keep the whole street warm!

8. Windows can be the worst for releasing all your heat especially if they are old, rather than replacing the window try out heavy curtains or draft excluders.

9. Make sure there are no little standby lights left on any appliance. Turn all electrics off from the main when not in use.

10. Recycle! Plenty of cool and creative decorations can be made for your home using items you no longer need for example use old pencils to decorate a photo frame, old jumpers can be stitched into cool cushion covers and old candles can be melted together to make new ones.

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