How to be Eco-Friendly When You Move House
We understand that moving house can be a stressful time in anyone’s life. Between preparing two houses for a move, finalising last minute details and arranging for the necessary transport and support, ensuring your move is also environmentally friendly is probably extremely low on your list of priorities.
However, applying green principles to your move doesn’t necessarily have to mean extra work, and considering that the following strategies can have a positive impact on your move, as well as the environment, they’re well worth it. We’ve compiled together a list of most beneficial, yet low effort ways, you can colour your move green today.
Declutter Your House
Moving house is the perfect time to get rid of some old belongings, as it is often only when we move house, we realise how many things we actually own (and never use). Not only does decluttering your possessions create more room in your new house, as well as some positive feng shui, it also lightens the weight of the load in the removal van. The lower the volume of goods you have to transport, the lower the carbon footprint.
Equally, by donating, selling or gifting your items, either through traditional means or over sites like eBay and Gumtree, you can help others and earn yourself a bit of extra cash at the same time.
Re-useable Packaging Materials
Removals, by trade, can be a wasteful industry. Not only is it predicated on creating carbon emissions, but packaging, including those plastic packing peanuts, often end up in landfills or polluting the ocean.
Using recycled materials, or even recycling your own packaging by using old newspapers and found cardboard boxes, is one of the easiest ways to green up your move. Not to mention it saves you the expense of buying new.
Start collecting packaging material a few months up to the move to ensure you have enough. Ask friends and family to save any large delivery boxes, and even repurpose other belongings like towels and dishcloths into makeshift packaging for fragile goods.
Avoid Food Waste
Pay attention to what exactly is in your fridge and cupboards, as it’s not just a waste of money, but also a waste of valuable resources if you end up chucking half of your inventory out the night before you move.
Rather than buying food in bulk like usual, try buying food only as and when you need it, or get creative and aim to use up all your freezer and fresh food before you leave. Creating a food plan of potential recipes you can make with the food you already have at hand, could be a fun way of cooking some great meals and saving yourself some money.
Whilst stored food, like tins, will last over the journey, do you really want to use up valuable packing space to transport it? An alternative step to disposing of the food is to donate it to homeless charities. Bristol charities like Feed the Homeless may be able to repurpose your waste to a better use.
Notify Direct Mail
The earlier you start notifying companies about your change of address, the better, for both the environment and your own mailbox, especially if you take this opportunity to opt out of unnecessary direct mail for good.
If you’re comfortable receiving digital statements, a lot of energy providers, banks, etc. offer an option to receive your statements and bills via email, rather than through the post, and now is the perfect time to switch.
If you need to notify a change of address via post, try using recyclable paper, cards or envelopes. If you want bonus green points you could even hand deliver these to local addresses.
Use a Green Removals Company
As we mentioned briefly above, the removals business isn’t the most naturally environmentally friendly industry. However, a number of removals companies, ourselves included, have made the decision to act as ethically and environmentally conscious as possible, tailoring everything from operational strategies down to staff uniforms, to work towards a smaller carbon footprint.
Undoing your hard work by choosing a removals company that uses inefficient methods and gas guzzling vans would be counterintuitive, especially when there are alternate options available. Look out for removals companies that reuse removals boxes if they offer a removals packing option, or if they employ small strategies to cut down on fuel emissions like cycling to home removal surveys.
For instance, we even offer our customers half price rates if they re-use one of our empty vans, providing they are on route, offsetting harmful CO2 by reducing the number of unnecessary trips.
If you’d like more advice on how to be more environmentally friendly in your house move, please don’t hesitate to call our team on, 0117 287 2127.
Or, read our Ultimate Guide to Your Moving Day for more tips.