Still Riding Your Earth Day High? Here Are Ways to Reduce Waste Around Your House

By Brenda Masse
Special Contributor

Earth Day was last Friday, and that always puts us in mind of ways to reduce waste around the house.

You may not be surprised to learn that we home inspectors witness a great deal of waste happening in people’s houses. So here are some examples with info about how you can do better.

Because the more you know…

Dirty Air Vents

You know we love to show you a dirty air vent. We constantly harp on you to change your air filters. This is good for the planet because it makes your AC run more efficiently, therefore using less energy, and the air you breathe is cleaner. BUT, we don’t usually talk about the massive waste of all those dirty air filters piling up in landfills. Sadly, you can’t just stick your used filters in the recycle bin, but you CAN recycle them with a little extra effort. Here’s how.

Water Heater Waste

Your water heater uses a ton of energy, and much more so if it’s not set up properly like this one. Another greener option is to abandon the tank-style water heater and go tankless. Tankless water heaters cost more upfront, but they save money long term in both energy and water bills. They take up much less space, you get instant hot water, and no risk of your tank failing and flooding your house, which we’ve seen before in this column!

@greenscenehome Problemas con el calentador de aqua. Inspector de vivienda habla Espanol en Dallas. #bienesraicesdallas #bienesraicestips #inspectordevivienda ♬ original sound – Green Scene Home Inspections

Waste Not Want Not

In this video, we have an older aged home with a pier-and-beam foundation that has had some foundation work done. What the Inspector finds is that while the work has been done well, the thing that’s causing the movement hasn’t been fixed. There are disconnected pipes in the crawl space leaking water,  so they basically have flooding under the house 24/7.

How is this related to the environment/home efficiency, you ask? Well, first, that’s wastewater flushing not into the sewer system, but into the ground beneath the house, so all that waste, bacteria, etc. (yuck) is polluting the soil, nearby plants, and groundwater.

Second, the condition of that one pipe means the rest of the plumbing system is likely in the same shape so we probably have multiple leaks, which means lots of water waste. The upshot is that if you live in one of those charming old homes with lots of character, you are going to have to update the systems to run safely and efficiently.

There are so many big and small ways we can save energy and create less waste around the house each and every day. If you’d like to find out how your house is performing, you can do an Energy Assessment to find out what’s going wrong and get recommendations to be more efficient.