10 Eco-Friendly Tips for Going Green Under $10(ish)

In this article I’m going to throw a couple options at you that you can cheaply do to help reduce your impact on the environment. Now I have cheated a little as two of them are not under $10, but they are very close.

With the weight of everyone on the environments shoulders these days it is important for us all to do our part and with some of the options out there it isn’t very hard. I hope to decrease that difficulty by finding cheap alternatives for you that will make it easier on your pocket book.

1. CFL is the Way to Go
One easy thing you can do is to start replacing all your old incandescent light bulbs as they burn out with the newer more energy efficient CFL (Compact Flourescent Lights). These bulbs last longer and use less energy. Here is one option for $9.98 from Lowes, SYLVANIA 40 Watt Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb. Typically a CFL bulb uses approximately 20% of the energy that an incandescent does, meaning a 25W CFL is about equal to a 100W version of its older brother. You can find these cheaper than this, and if you have the money to buy in bulk I’ve seen them as low as around $4/each in packs of 10 or so.

2. Use a Water Bottle, Not Bottled Water
Something around 80% of the plastic bottles that bottled water comes in end up in a land fill every year in the US. There is argument over the improved quality of the water you get in bottled water, in most cases it is simply the tap water in the area it was bottled. You can purchase a re-usable water bottle and help cut back on all the plastic, non-biodegradable waste. I personally like the Nalgene bottles. You can get one as low as $9.25 from their website. Here’s a link for a nice one, Nalgene Grip-and-Gulp. They also have an assortment of different types of bottles for other varying prices. You can also get off brand bottles that are very similar for about half the price at places like Walmart and other big box stores like that. If you have problems with the taste of your tap water, you can purchase a faucet filter fairly cheap, however that would increase the cost a bit.

3. Paper or Plastic? Lets try neither
While paper is definitely more eco-friendly than plastic, we are still wasting a diminishing resource. The renewability of a resource like paper only works if we are not using more than we can renew. The alternative to this is a re-usable shopping bag. There are many manufacturers of mesh type shopping bags that you can check out. Just to name one for example is GreenSak. They have a bag available for $5.00 at this link. I’d like to mention that this is just one option and a quick google search will produce many other options for a similar price.

4. Make Sure the Power is Really Off
A not so commonly known fact is that even when you think that an electrical item is off, it usually still has some draw to it. Typically anything that can be controlled by a remote and all those chargers with the little black boxes for plugs have a standby draw that uses power even if the appliance is turned off and nothing is plugged into the charger. You can combat this one of two ways… Unplug things when you are done with them, or even easier plug things into a surge protector that has a switch on it. When you aren’t using anything on the strip, turn the switch off and save some electricity. You can find a nice bare from Office Depot here for $9.99.

5. Go Old-School with Your Laundry
You can save yourself some money and conserve some electricity by going back to the old ways and hanging your clothes to dry rather than using an electric clothes dryer. This is a fairly simple thing to do, you can get a 100ft section of clothesline for around $5-6.00 at most hardware stores and a bag of clothespins for $1 or so from a dollar store or any place else that is cheap. Simply find two trees and tie the line to it and away you go. Very little setup and every little bit helps.

6. No Junk Mail Please
Every one of us gets mail occasionally that we just look at and chuck. We don’t really need all those sales ads and pre-approved card offers. If I want a sale ad, I can go online and print it and not waste the paper for the rest of the ads I don’t even care about. There is a company called Direct Marketing Association that will remove your name from mailing lists for a low fee of only $1. That is a low price to pay to reduce all the junk mail we get.

7. Stop Energy Waste
A large percentage of energy used in homes isn’t used, it’s just plain wasted. One of the biggest wasters is drafty windows and doors. During the winter time close your front door and sit on the floor in front of it, if your bottom gets cold you have a draft. A good test for your windows and doors is to take a stick of incense and hold it around the doors and windows if the smoke gets blown away, you know where the leak is and you can patch it. Windows are fairly easy to fix, you can find the leak and simply caulk it up to seal it. Doors typically have a leak on the bottom of the door and can be fixed quite easily with a product I’ve found and use at my own home. Something similar to this one for around $9.99. This one is nice because it moves with the door when you open and close it.

8. Put a Blanket on Your Heater
Now this one is cheating because the cheapest I could find was around $20 but I’ve seen them on sale for lower than that, however I felt that this one was important enough to throw in here. Your hot water heater is a big culprit for wasted energy. By simply adding a insulation blanket to your heater you can reduce the amount of energy required to keep your hot water hot. I’ve found one for $20 at Lowes at this link but I’m sure if you look around at your local hardware and home supply stores you can find one cheaper than this.

9. Lets Save the Oceans so the Whales Have Somewhere to Live
Water is one of the biggest wasted resources we have. People tend to take it for granted the amount of water that is on our planet and don’t feel it necessary to try and preserve it. With the aquifers drying up and our waters becoming more and more polluted it’s time to put a stand to this. I’m just going to scratch the surface with this one, but like I’ve said before every little bit helps. You can get a low volume shower head that aerates the water so it doesn’t feel like you are losing any of the pressure or volume. Ace Hardware has one that has a flow of 1.5 gallons/min for a low price of $10.49 you can get this one here.

10. Calculate and Compensate
My last tip is something that is actually free. This is a calculator that you can input your information into and it will estimate how much of a footprint you have. I took the little survey (less than 10 questions) and according to them I have an Your estimated annual CO2 emission of 18.38 Tons and it would take 14 trees to offset my impact this year. The website does offer the option to make a donation and they will plant that amount of trees for you or you can just use this calculator to gauge how much you consume and try to improve from there. The website is located at The Conservation Fund. Check em out and share how you compare with everyone else in the comments below.

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