5 Ways To Reduce Your Carbon Footprint When Moving House

Moving house can be an incredibly exciting and busy time for people. It can also be stressful trying to balance getting ready for the big move with a job and other commitments. This means the environmental impact of the move may not be a high priority for most people although the average UK home move creates around 16.8kg of CO2 emissions and is a growing issue that needs addressing. In this blog, we outline 5 easy ways you can reduce your carbon footprint when moving house.

1. Don’t Send Waste to Landfill

When sorting out your clutter ready for your move, it’s easy to just throw everything you don’t need anymore in the bin which will ultimately end up in a landfill. Instead, you could sell your unwanted items on second-hand stores like eBay or take them to local charities to sell on. If the item is broken or unusable then try and recycle what you can before throwing it in the bin straight away.

2. Avoid Using Plastic Packaging

Plastic packaging can take up to 1000 years to degrade making it incredibly bad for the environment as it ends up in oceans, rivers, lakes and littering the streets. It also takes a lot of energy to produce plastic so using alternative packaging such as newspapers and cardboard will help reduce your carbon footprint.

3. Hire a Skip

Hiring a skip from a company like Baileys Skip Hire and Recycling to manage your unwanted waste can also help minimise negative impacts on the environment. This is because skip companies will sort and separate your waste after collection and then recycle as much of the waste as possible massively reducing the amount of your household waste going to landfills.

4. Buy Second-Hand Items Where Possible

It’s inevitable that you will need to purchase some items for your new house both before your move and once you are moved in. You can buy great quality second-hand items for just about anything you may need from places like Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree. This will not only help the environment but will even save you money.

5. Use Less Energy in Your New Home

Moving into a new house is a great time to implement good habits in your home that will use less energy. This includes installing low energy bulbs, ensuring your loft is well insulated and even using renewable energy sources like solar panels. This can even save you money in the long run.