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Smart home technology has become increasingly mainstream over the past decade, while it was only a few years ago that an Amazon Alexa was a high-end novelty that would impress all your friends, smart home tech is now more pervasive in modern homes than ever.
While smart home tech has become more common, another big trend has emerged that makes us reflect on our impact on our shared planet: sustainability!
Sustainability is currently one of the most important things on many people’s minds, as we asses our carbon footprint and look for ways to minimise our total impact on the planet. This has also impacted the smart home world, with many smart tech enthusiasts weighing sustainability when they choose devices to use in their homes.
How can you balance your love for bleeding edge smart home technology and your concern for the environment? There are many ways you can use smart home tech for the greater good, read on to discover how you can make your home equal parts smart and sustainable.
Choose High Quality Brands Over Cheap Brands
When shopping for smart home gadgets, there is quite a price range for many devices, with some areas of smart home tech having cheap options starting at as little as £10 and more quality brands that cost £100s for a comparable device. It can be tempting to opt for the cheap options when you’re starting off on your smart house journey, but that isn’t advised.
We all know the phrase “buy cheap, buy twice”, when you opt for cheaper gadgets, they tend to be a lesser quality or have less features, meaning that they’ll need to be frequently replaced when they break or age out of use, whereas investing in a quality piece of smart home tech will mean it needs replacing and upgrading far less frequently than their cheaper alternatives.
Opt For Multi-Purpose Tech Where Possible
Another sustainable step you can take to improve the green credentials of your smart home, is to look for multi-use pieces of tech rather than purchasing many single use pieces of tech. There are many hub gadgets that can easily do the job of multiple other pieces of tech, helping you to lower your consumption.
The crux of this is that by opting for a single gadget that can do it all, you will need less electricity to power your device compared to powering three or four devices. Will be responsible for less plastic and heavy metals as less devices need to be made. And on a long enough timescale responsible for less items ending up in landfills.
Take Advantage Of More Efficient Power Usage
One of the many advantages of smart tech, is that it allows you to use your home in more efficient ways. This efficiency can of course be used to improve the efficiency of your power usage at home. Thanks to devices like smart bulbs, which allow you to control them even when you’re out of the house.
By using smart tech, you can make your home’s power usage much more efficient. Whether that’s by using items like smart plugs to easily cut power usage to devices, smart controls to make sure you’re not wasting energy by keeping gadgets on when not in use or keeping track of your energy consumption with a smart meter.
Use Alternative Energy Sources To Power Tech
The source of the energy you use to power your homes can have a big impact on how sustainable you truly are, with green or renewable energy helping to reduce your impact on the environment and other energies like natural gas or coal creating a bigger carbon footprint which is less sustainable.
Unfortunately, as a household you have very little power over the source of your energy supplier, unless you have a green alternative provider in your area. But with individual devices you can use alternate power sources, for example these remote-control blinds from DotcomBlinds can be powered by a clip on solar panel, rather than using your home’s mains electric.
Look For Gadgets Made With Sustainable Materials
When it comes to sustainability, the materials that make up your smart home gadgets are as important as their power consumption. Materials such as cheap plastics cannot be recycled and take hundreds, if not thousands of years to decompose, which will result in them taking up space in landfill dumps or polluting the oceans.
Of course, it’s practically impossible to make smart home technology entirely without using plastic in some form or another, but you can look for gadgets that use recycled plastics or recyclable plastics in their devices, or gadgets that use other materials such as metal or wood more prominently in their design.
Use Gadgets To Improve Energy Efficiency
Sustainability shouldn’t just apply to the quality and materials used in the smart home gadgets you buy, but also what sustainable benefits smart home technology can provide you and your home. By using these gadgets to improve the efficiency of your home, you can help reduce your impact on our planet whilst also automating some parts of your life.
One great example of this is with electric blinds, which can be used to provide added insulation to your home’s windows which ultimately improves your home’s energy efficiency. Another pertinent example would be smart motion sensors for your home’s lighting to reduce electricity waste or smart meters to effectively track your home’s energy usage.
We’ve given you 6 solid ways that you can intermingle smart home technology and sustainability within your home. But the key takeaway is that by spending a few more minutes researching devices before purchasing them and reflecting on how they operate within your home. You can make more sustainable choices which you can feel good about.
Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list of absolutely every way you can work sustainability into your smart home, but these 6 ideas are excellent jumping off points for those wishing to live a greener, more sustainable life.