Category — Green Appliances

When you just need to heat a single room in your home, or even just the area around your desk, space heaters are an excellent way to conserve energy and save money. Why run the furnace and unnecessarily heat your entire home?

This space heater, the Vornado Digital Vortex heater, is an energy-efficient choice because it eliminates those alternating periods of frigid cold and blazing heat that you get with many space heaters by continuously maintaining the set temperature. The space heater features a digital thermostat, remote control, and heat output ranges between 750-1500 watts. Safety features include automatic shut-off if tipped, cool exterior, and overheat prevention. The Vornado DVTH Vortex space heater is available at Comfort House for $101.49.

Take care to select a safe, up to date space heater, and use it according to the manufacturer’s recommendations. Here are some helpful tips on space heater safety.

People in many parts of the country are just starting to feel the first cool breezes of Fall, and have begun waking up to chilly mornings.  Before you turn on your home’s furnace for the first time this year, make sure you’re starting with a clean furnace filter.  Whether you have a gas furnace, or an electric furnace, a clean furnace filter will help you conserve energy, save money, and live greener. Consider the following:

Conserve Energy: A dirty filter makes your furnace work harder, and consume more energy.  If you want to save energy, replace your furnace filter once a month, or perhaps even more often if you have pets.

Furnace Life Span: Regularly changing your furnace filter will help prevent the need for early replacement of your furnace.  This will save you money, and reduce the amount of waste in landfills.

Clean Air: Clean furnace filters promote clean air in your home by capturing the dust, mold, pet hair, and other particulates circulating in the air. Circulating air through a dirty filter just adds more dust and contaminates to the air you breathe.

Permanent Filters: If you’re concerned about the waste generated by disposable furnace filters, you may want to consider a reusable furnace filter.   This permanent furnace filter, available at Never Buy Another Filter.Com, can be used for  years.  When it gets dirty, simply hose off, dry, and reuse.

Here’s some helpful information on how to change a furnace filter.

Soy candles are an excellent idea for green Halloween decorations, because soy wax burns much cleaner than the paraffin wax used in traditional candles. This Halloween pumpkin candle, from Beyond Making Scents, is made from 100% soy wax, and has a lead-free wick. It is available in many scents, including candy corn and pumpkin pie, to really spice up your Halloween party.

Here are a few green living tips on burning candles:

Soy Wax vs. Paraffin Wax: Did you know that paraffin is actually a fossil fuel by-product and it releases chemicals when it burns? According to GreenSpace Candles, paraffin wax releases petrol-carbon soot, which introduces toxins to your home. Soy wax is a natural product, and burns cooler and cleaner than paraffin.

Soy Wax is Renewable: Soy wax is a produced from soybeans, which are a renewable resource.

Soy Wax is Water Soluble: If you end up with a spill of soy wax on a coffee table or countertop, it will clean up easily with just warm water.

While we seem to focus so much attention on searching for and purchasing the most energy-efficient refrigerator and freezer, it turns out that how much food you store in your fridge or freezer has a significant impact on how energy-efficient they are. According to these green shopping tips at Ideal Bite, your fridge and freezer will function more efficiently when they are full, but not overstuffed.

So, here’s a thought: Next time you head out to do some grocery shopping, make it worth your while. Running in for just a few things multiple times a week ends up costing much more in the long run due to impulse purchases and wasted fuel. By planning meals, and shopping from a grocery list, you’ll conserve fuel, save money on groceries, and conserve energy. I guess the express lane isn’t the “easy out” I thought it was.

Are you always looking at new washing machines trying to find the one that is the most energy efficient? Well, how about one that uses absolutely no power? This hand powered washing machine sits on a counter top, and operates on elbow grease alone. Just add your clothes, a little water and laundry soap, and give it a few cranks for 10 seconds to 2 minutes to get your laundry clean.

You can either rinse your clothes in the washing machine after draining out the wash water, or your kitchen sink. This green washing machine is made of plastic, and it does not require any maintenance.

While it might be a good green living idea for someone who doesn’t do much laundry, I think anyone with a family would get tired of cranking this portable washing machine in a hurry. I’d like to have one for going camping though. The hand crank washing machine is available at Clean Air Gardening for $49.99.

When it comes to vacuum cleaners, I truly believe the old adage that “you get what you pay for”. In the past, I’ve skimped on lower-cost models, and quickly found myself buying yet another vacuum cleaner because my “bargain” model croaked only a few months later. So, in the long run, I’ve ended up spending more money, and helped to fill up landfills with my junk vacuum cleaners. Not exactly a great idea for green living, huh?

I’ve been on a search for green vacuum cleaners, and I found this one that looks promising. It’s the Miele Luna 34580. According to Green and More, this vacuum is designed to last 10-20 years, and it is energy efficient. Miele vacuum cleaners are made largely from recyclable materials, are produced via an environmentally-friendly process, and come in a minimal amount of packaging. You can read more about several environmentally friendly vacuum cleaners, including the Miele Luna 34580 at Green and More.

If you’re looking for green living tips, there’s still time to catch the Better Homes and Gardens Living Green home tour in cities across the US.  The exhibit showcases green home decorating options, including a kitchen with bamboo cabinets, recycled glass counter tops, a recycled mosaic tile back splash, and green kitchen appliances.

Designed by Libby Langdon, the Living Green exhibit also includes a green living room, bathroom, and laundry room.  If you go, check out the bathroom vanity made from a salvaged dresser, sustainable wood furniture in the living room, and a media cabinet made from a recycled baby changing table.

Although it began in June, the tour continues through October with upcoming stops in Boston, Washington DC, Jacksonville, Atlanta, and NYC.  Here’s more information, photos and the tour schedule for the Better Homes and Gardens Living Green home tour.

If you’re looking for an energy- efficient kitchen stove, make sure you check out convection ovens before making your final choice. Did you know that convection ovens are much more efficient than traditional ovens? In fact they use one-third less energy, because they continuously circulate air around food, causing it to cook faster.

Convection ovens are available in counter top versions which are about the sames size as a microwave oven, or as a feature on full-size kitchen stoves. My Frigidaire range can be used as a regular oven or a convection oven. It has a switch for turning the convection fan on and off.

And since we’re on the topic of green kitchen appliances, don’t forget to use your microwave oven whenever you can. Microwaves use two-thirds less energy than traditional kitchen ranges! There are also many microwave/convection oven combination units on the market today.

Find out more about energy efficient appliances at Energy Star.

Whether you’re cleaning out the garage, or completing an entire green remodel, chances are you’re going to end up with a few things such as old batteries, leftover building materials, paint, and fluorescent light bulbs that you simply aren’t sure how to safely dispose of . According to Consumer Reports, here are a few resources for recycling those not-so-everyday household items.

Recycle Rechargeable Batteries: From power tools to cell phones, it seems almost everything requires a rechargeable battery, but what do you do with them when they die? The Rechargeable Battery Recycle Corporation (RBRC) has over 50,000 drop off locations for recycling rechargeable batteries including major retailers such as Home Depot, Circuit City, and Best Buy.

Recycle Household Appliances: Switching to green household appliances? Here are two resources for recycling refrigerators, freezers, and washing machines. Appliance Recycling Centers of America offers free pickup of old appliances in parts of California, Georgia, Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin. Jaco Environmental recycles freezers and refrigerators for a small pickup fee in parts of California, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.

Recycle Construction Materials: The Construction Waste Management Database is a government sponsored service which allows users to search by zip code for recycling locations that accept construction materials including carpet, roofing materials, lighting, paint, flooring, etc.

Of all household appliances, refrigerators are near the top of the list when it comes to energy consumption. If you’re looking for a green refrigerator to help you save energy, consider the following tips:

Read the Labels: A great first step in selecting green household appliances, refrigerators included, is to narrow down your search by reading the energy consumption labels on the appliances. By doing so, you’ll quickly be able to determine which appliances are the most energy-efficient.

Don’t Buy More than You Need: Larger refrigerators require more energy than smaller ones. Buying a large refrigerator when a small one is sufficient, results in wasted energy due to continuously cooling space that you simply don’t need. On the flip side, if your family currently requires two refrigerators, you might want to consider upgrading to a single, but large, energy-efficient refrigerator, because one large refrigerator requires less energy than two smaller ones.

Style: When it comes to saving energy, the greenest refrigerators are typically top or bottom freezer models. However, you should always pay attention to energy saver appliance labels as manufacturers are continuously developing new styles of green appliances which consume less energy than their predecessors.