Whether you like it or not, doing the laundry is an ongoing necessity. But from an ecological standpoint, it’s a good opportunity to practice some earthy friendly habits. Making a few small changes can make a big and positive impact on your family’s carbon footprint.

No dry cleaning
Dry cleaning typically is done using perchloroethylene (or perc, as it is known in the industry). It’s a toxic chlorine-based solvent that is a known carcinogen, can contaminate air and water, and is classified as hazardous waste by the EPA. So aside from the damage it can do the environment, just think about what you’re doing to your body when you wear freshly dry cleaned clothes next to your skin. Or think about the air quality in your bedroom when your closet is full of dry cleaned clothes.

Dry cleaning alternatives
Tailored suits and formal gowns may need to be dry cleaned (or at least professionally cleaned to keep everything in its proper place and shape), but almost everything else can be cleaned with biodegradable soap and water. Even wool and delicate silks can be hand washed using water and a small amount of mild shampoo.

After all, they are natural fibers and don’t need the kinds of heavy duty commercial detergents that are made to remove grass stains. And they really don’t need dry cleaning chemicals, either. Just learn to gently squeeze the soap through them instead of wringing them or agitating them so that you don’t shrink the wool or cause abrasions on the surface of that shiny silk.

Air drying
When the planet had cleaner air, people used to hang their laundry out in the sun and let it dry in the breeze. Sadly, if you tried that today in many urban areas your laundry would dry with an extra layer of soot and particles. But you can still air dry some of your lighter weight clothing in the bathroom or utility room of your house or apartment. Use inexpensive wooden folding racks to maximize space, and airs dry your silk or synthetic lingerie, spandex workout clothing and any other clothing that you would use the dryer’s gentle cycle for.

If you’re thinking about a sustainable building product, a good place to look is your roof. Most people don’t think about roofing material, but just the best deal you can get for you money. However, since most homes have asphalt shingles, a material with a high environmental impact, and low reusability, and with a short life, roofing is area that needs a second look.

For starters the water runoff is not safe to drink, but there’s no regulation about letting it run into the soil. If your roof is starting to show its age, that presents a perfect opportunity to replace it with a greener option. There are a number of options when it comes to environmentally friendly roofing. Here are a few.

One of the most popular choice in green roofing material is the living roof. Quite literally it is green. A living roof contains a layer of soil or a soil substitute and plants grow on top of them. The first benefit is that they significantly increase the insulation factor of the house which will reduce your heating and cooling bill. Additionally green roofs help the home blend into its surroundings, and they’re quite beautiful. If the home is new, topsoil that’s been displaced during construction can also be recycled as part of a living roof.

You can also reduce your grocery bill by growing vegetables and herbs. City dwellers will especially appreciate this type of roof sinceit provides a park like space to spend time. In cities, they reduce the urban heat island effect somewhat, and they also keep storm water from running off onto the street or ground. Plants can help remove pollutants from the air and water while on your roof, and they’ll help increase the local wildlife population. These roofs are really catching on in in large cities where green spaces are fewer and government incentives are being offered to place a living or green roof on buildings.

Green roofs have a few negatives though. They are much heavier than a traditional roof which means the infrastructure may need to be strengthened to hold them up. If the supporting structure is poorly designed, the roof may leak or attract animals to to set up housekeeping. However, this won’t happen if the structure is properly designed.

Another choice is the metal roof. You should know there is some debate about the sustainability of metal roofing. The positive aspects are that it is a material that lasts a long time, almost never needs to be replaced, and can be recycled after removal. On the other hand, metal production is an environmentally damaging process. For the best of both worlds, recycled metal can be used, but that’s not always possible. However, for those who want to collect rainwater for use around the home, enameled metal roofs are a good choice, as they don’t contaminate the water. They’re lighter than living roofs, but heavier than a conventional asphalt shingle roof. Metal roofs also interfere with signals from satellite antennas.

Although cedar shake roofs require harvesting of trees, they are another popular roofing material. The shakes are made of untreated cedar, and they won’t rot the way other woods do. In general, they last longer than asphalt shingles. The cedar shake industry says this material is renewable, sustainable, and recyclable.

Finally, a long standing roofing tradition in the Southwest is ceramic tile which is nontoxic and long lasting. Kilning clay into tiles requires a reasonably large investment of energy. That means that, like a metal roof, there’s a large investment in tile. However, the durability and nontoxic properties of this material offset the problems for many. Tiles tend to be expensive and very heavy. Although single tiles may need to be replaced periodically, the roof as a whole is quite durable. Unglazed tiles are the most popular, but glazed is an option as well.

Whatever roofing material you choose, keep in mind that the term green is not regulated or monitored. You’ll have to do your due diligence to make sure the products you choose are environmentally sound based on science rather than hype.

If you’re looking for a way to get started using solar energy in your home, small solar panels are an affordable and easy way to begin. Since they use relatively few materials and require tools that many people already have in their toolbox, small solar panels are easy to build. With the help of a good set of instructions and a few video tutorials, people who are handy with a screwdriver, saw and soldering iron can build their first solar panel over a weekend, and create a solar panel that can recharge a 12 volt battery or serve as the beginning of a larger solar electric system.

Books about how to build your own solar panels

Since solar energy has become so popular, there are now several do-it-yourself solar panel guides to choose from. Paperback or hardcover books from your local library or bookstore will take you through topics that include the history of solar energy, how solar cells are manufactured and how to calculate what size solar panel system you will need in order to supply your electricity needs and live off grid.

DIY solar panel guides

There are also some very good downloadable products that include ebooks and videos. Being able to store on your hard drive makes it easy to consult them during the solar panel building process. The written reports can be printed out for general reference or to use as a checklist to follow to stay on track during your project. The combination of ebook and video addresses the different learning styles that people have, and also provides useful tools for do-it-yourselfers.

Solar panel videos

Video tutorials provide a good overview of the solar panel building process and can shorten the learning curve that intimidates many people who would like to try building their own solar panel, but may think the process is too complicated for them to try. When people are unfamiliar with the technical terms, the materials and the tools that are used to build solar panels, pictures really are worth a thousand words.

Also, videos can be helpful for experienced home improvement fans, too, because they can be reviewed when a specific technique is needed. Even if you are a highly skilled crafts person, when learning a new technical skill, it’s often easier when you can watch someone else performing the task, and then try it yourself while using the hard copy instructions for reference.

Compost is one of the most eco-friendly fertilizers there is, and since you can make it yourself, it’s totally free! I like to mix a variety of natural materials together in one of my garden beds, and let those decompose on their own. Coffee grounds make wonderful food for almost any kind of plant or flower. I sometimes spread them around the base of my indoor container plants, and sometimes I mix them into my soil when planting something new.

In the winter time, I tend to have a lot of fireplace ashes. Since I’ve got a fire going regularly in my fireplace, it needs to be cleaned out every week or so. When it’s time to clean out the ashes from my fireplace, I simply scoop them into a bucket. Then I take that bucket to a garden bed that’s right outside my office door, and I dump them in the corner.

I have coffee every day too, but I don’t always remember to dump my used coffee grounds, so this is done randomly and occasionally. The same simple proceedure applies though: Just empty the coffee grounds into a bucket, and take them outside. I dump them into the same corner as the fireplace ashes. Then once in awhile I may stir, mix or spread the pile if it’s gets a little big.

If you drink tea instead of coffee, tea grounds work just as well. In fact, you can toss the entire tea bag into your compost pile, but it will take longer to decompose that way.

These everyday household items are all I tend to use for enriching my garden bed soil. In the spring when I start preparing the beds for planting, I simply mix the ashes and coffee grounds into the soil itself. I then scoop out some into buckets and spread it around to other beds around my yard, and mix it into the soil in each of those too.

Creating compost or enriching your soil in this casual manner does take a bit longer, but it works wonderfully over time. If you’d like to speed up the process you can of course create a full fledged dedicated compost pile in your backyard, or buy a commercial compost bin. Some of them turn your scraps into rich compost within just a month or two.

Other every day items that you can add to your pile include:

Newspaper scraps – they’ll decompose faster if you shred them first.

Fruit and Vegetable scraps – These also will decompose faster if you chop or shred them first. Be aware though: Adding these to your pile can be a bit “smelly”.

If you don’t have enough of your own compost to start, you can buy compost, preferably the organic variety, if you’re growing organic fruits and vegetables. Adding compost to your garden soil, will give your plants nutrients and makes the soil richer and easier to work with.

It always pays in the long run to buy the best quality solar panels that you can afford — and they are not all created equal. Quality translates into energy efficiency, and can mean less weight and more durability.

That means less load on your roof and better performance in harsh weather conditions. Also, solar panels are now made from a wide variety of materials with a lot of variance in performance.

For example, crystalline silicon is commonly used in traditional solar panels, and has withstood the test of more than 30 years of use. These systems are reliable and will product consistent energy for residential or commercial use. Crystalline silicon solar panels are typically assembled into arrays and are installed on roof tops or on concrete pad on the ground using metal racks. These solar panels are still being manufactured and installed today.

However, there are alternatives to the large racks of solar panels. Solar shingles are becoming popular with homeowners who prefer the aesthetics of a natural roof line over one that has a solar array installed on top. Depending on the manufacturers, the shingles may be made of flexible thin-film PV material in the shape of a traditional shingle, or they may be tempered glass glued onto a roof tile. Many of these products can be integrated into existing roofing systems.

Although thin film solar panels look different than traditional solar panel systems, they convert sunlight to electricity in a way that’s similar to their larger counterparts. So what’s the big difference? At this time, the biggest difference is efficiency in the amount of electricity they will produce as well as their performance over the long run.

Thin film solar panels are not yet as efficient as traditional solar panels. Traditional solar panels may be more efficient in your region than amorphous thin film solar panels, especially if weather is often cloudy. If your area receives a lot of strong direct sunlight, your solar panels will need to be constructed from materials that do not degrade under constant exposure to direct sunlight, so make sure the material are UV resistant.

If your region has frequent hail or ice storms, make sure that the solar panels you buy are encapsulated with tempered glass or other materials that are break resistant, will withstand low temperatures and exposure to moisture.

Conventional flooring products are often not eco-friendly and bad for your health as well. For instance, most carpet in the US is made of nylon. This material doesn’t wear well and tends to off gas volatile organic compounds, which are hazardous to our health. To make matters worse, nylon carpet is not easily recyclable and will end up in the landfill, since it’s not biodegradable.

Another conventional option, vinyl flooring, which is common in bathrooms and kitchens, has similar problems. Pthalates found in this material have been blamed for problems in child development. Synthetic laminate woods aren’t much better. While they use recycled lumber waste, this mostly goes into them in the form of fiber board, a short lived product that contains a lot of formaldehyde.

Hardwood floors are healthier and fully natural, but may not have been produced sustainably. You should also pay attention to the finish that’s used on any hardwood floors – most are petroleum based and bad for air quality.

Since so many people love the look of hardwoods, consider reclaimed hardwoods. Reclaimed hardwood comes from old structures, such as dilapidated libraries, barns, schools, etc. Many companies nowadays specialize in reclaiming the wood that would otherwise end up in a junkyard. It is possible to have a new hardwood floor without any new trees being cut down.

You’re probably familiar with the cork used as a stopper for wine bottles, but have you ever walked on cork flooring? Cork is becoming a more attractive flooring option of late because it’s sustainable. It’s the same material in your wine bottle cork, just formed into planks or tiles and applied to the sub-floor. Since it is lightweight, installation is fairly painless.

Cork has a lot of great qualities as a flooring choice — sustainable, hypoallergenic, and naturally antimicrobial — making it a good choice for damp basements. Cork also solves many insulating problems for both for heat and sound. It’s gentle to walk on, sparing your back, knees, and feet. Remember that cork can be scratched and needs to be replaced after about ten years. High traffic areas will wear faster, and lower traffic ones may last longer. Resealing your cork floor may also be necessary, but a well sealed floor can be mopped or cleaned with gentle, non abrasive cleansers.

Another green option is bamboo flooring. Bamboo is considered green because it’s fast growing. Also, it’s a grass rather than a tree. Bamboo farms can grow a shoot to maturity in just a few years. It is a sturdy material that will last just as long as wood. Though there aren’t as many varieties of bamboo as there are species of wood, different finishes can create a myriad of looks for you to choose from.

Since the average person spends 12-15 hours in their home everyday, flooring is an important consideration. For health reasons, you’ll want to take a look at how it will affect the air quality in your home. A green floor will look good as well as reduce allergies and headaches.