Sustainable Design: How To Make Your Home Eco-Friendly

By Vincent Glover

Thu 4 Feb 2021

Awareness surrounding sustainability is on the rise, and for good reasons. Ever since the first single celled organisms burst into life on our little planet, a series of wild and wonderful events has led to us being here in 2021. We are part of a multimillion-year natural continuum and without action there is a chance it could all come to a premature end . There are however some easy steps you can take to lower your carbon footprint and give a helping hand to the planet.

Sustainable design at home

Today we’ll be looking at how your home can be a conduit for sustainability. We’ll be exploring a few easy-to-implement changes that can help the environment and all the diversity of life that lives within it.

What’s more, these changes won’t break the bank either. Moving to electric cars or installing solar panels – while great and important steps – come with a hefty price tag. These changes will be much kinder on your finances and provide a terrific starting point for your eco-friendly future.

Heating in the home

According to the International Energy Agency, “heat is the largest energy end‑use. Providing heating for homes, industry and other applications accounts for around half of total energy consumption.” Furthermore, the equipment used in the creation of this energy remains dominated by fossil fuels.

With the choice between using eco-unfriendly sources of energy or being very cold, many during these colder months have their heating up to the max. Sadly, much of the heating we pay for, both monetarily and environmentally, seeps through the windows and walls and doesn’t provide much benefit at all.

To stop this, you can look at draft excluders on your doors and – to make an even greater difference -look at specially designed thermal linings for your curtains and blinds. Thermal linings help spaces retain heat, meaning you use less energy to maintain the temperature. During the summer months, thermal linings also keep the heat out of the home, allowing you to keep the air conditioning off for longer.

This option clearly helps the environment and will help you save money on energy bills too. Speaking of saving money, at Blinds Direct, you can enjoy a FREE thermal lining upgrade on most of our beautiful curtains and Roman blinds!

Using ethically sourced materials

You can also help the environment in your choice of material. Real wood, for example, can be used for a range of items from floors to tables, windowsills to window blinds. The sad reality however is a lot of wood on the market today is not ethically sourced. This can mean the material is taken from nature with little or no regard to protecting the future.

That doesn’t mean that wood should be ignored, however. Many suppliers only obtain their woods from sustainable sources which have plans for maintaining the world’s forests. At Blinds Direct, we’re proud to only use ethically sourced woods for use in our handmade blinds and only deal with regulated, certified suppliers.

Use recycled materials at home

Since the 1950s, the consumption of plastics has gone through the roof. Where people would have historically bought drinks in glass bottles and used paper bags, so much today is plastic.

Globally, we use 500 billion plastic bottles per year, less than half that number is recycled. Much of what’s left ends up in the oceans or in landfill, both cause great damage to the environment.

Just to put the scale of billions into context, where a million seconds equals 12 days, a billion seconds is 31 years…

The good news however is that plastic bottles are being recycled more and more and innovative solutions are being created using the material. Take our range of products created with recycled fabrics for instance.

The polyester used in many of our Roman blinds, curtains and lampshades is made from recycled plastic bottles or other materials, reducing landfill and damage to our oceans. Look out for our eco-friendly icon for relevant products. What’s more, there is no difference in the aesthetic beauty or quality of any item using recycled materials. They are a win-win!

Sustainability at Blinds Direct

Maintaining the health and bounty of the environment, while making our planet a better place for everyone is the underlying philosophy at Blinds Direct. As mentioned above, we work with wood suppliers that only take from responsibly managed forests, we’ve perfected the use of recycled plastics in many of our products. You can browse our recycled fabrics collection here.

Where possible we purchase cotton from members of the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI). BCI is an international not-for-profit organisation and the largest cotton sustainability programme in the world. It exists to make global cotton production better for the people who produce it, better for the environment it grows in and better for the industry’s future. This mission statement fits beautifully with our own and demonstrates our commitment to supporting the environment and all the communities involved in our supply lines.

A final comment should focus on durability. In today’s world of fast, disposable consumption, we are dedicated to crafting products that last, that’s why we’re confident to dispatch every item with a five-year guarantee.

We all love our homes and want to keep them as nice as we possibly can. If we can expand that thinking beyond our walls to the rest of our little rock bobbing around space, we can make it an even better place for the generations yet to come. If you’re interested in adopting additional steps to reducing your impact on mother earth, the Huffington Post published a few more top tips here.