{"id":1186,"date":"2026-07-24T11:52:31","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T11:52:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/07\/24\/seven-climate-friendly-ways-to-transform-your-home\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T11:52:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T11:52:31","slug":"seven-climate-friendly-ways-to-transform-your-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/07\/24\/seven-climate-friendly-ways-to-transform-your-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven climate-friendly ways to transform your home"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/span> PerfectHobbyDMK\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This roundup of The Conversation\u2019s environment coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine.<\/em><\/p>\n

Drastic climate action can feel overwhelmingly difficult and far away. But making changes to your home, whether you rent a room in a city centre or own a house in the countryside, is a tangible and effective way to shift the dial towards a more environmentally friendly society. <\/p>\n

This week, we\u2019ve chosen our favourite sustainable solutions \u2013 steps you can take now to lower the carbon footprint of the place you live in, make it more nature-friendly and improve its resilience to extreme weather. <\/p>\n

1. Do up your driveway<\/h2>\n

Think about using gravel rather than hard surfaces to make a driveway as that can make a difference in terms of flood risks, but also look to create planted areas<\/a> around the space where you park your car as well. These can help with air pollution and biodiversity, and might even attract bees and butterflies to your garden. (RJ) <\/p>\n

2. Assemble a building \u2018passport\u2019<\/h2>\n

Before upgrading your home with low-carbon technologies, think about how the equipment you install might be repaired, reused or recycled. <\/p>\n

\u201cSolar panels and home batteries are not designed to be repaired. Heat pumps quickly become outdated and need upgrades. Without a comprehensive plan of action, this new energy tech could soon end up as electronic waste with nowhere to go,\u201d according to sustainable architecture researchers at Lancaster and Ulster universities. <\/p>\n

Retrofit solutions need to prioritise the use of renewable, sustainable materials<\/a> that minimise the consequences of resource consumption and pollution, alongside technologies that can be repaired and reused. And policymakers need to consider the wider green energy supply chain before rapid rollout to avoid replacing one problem with another by turning our houses into skips filled with life-expired technologies. <\/p>\n

Having a building \u201cpassport\u201d (an online logbook of information about all aspects of your building) can help record any retrofit strategies, from building fabrics to the type of materials installed and the maintenance required. (AT)<\/p>\n

3. Create more shade<\/h2>\n

We\u2019ve all been grappling with very hot days in Europe recently. And for those of us who live in homes with a lot of glass, we are looking for ways to create more shade and lower the temperature inside the house. As Ben Rogers from Loughborough University points out, many older houses used to have external shutters<\/a> built in, but in many cases these have disappeared over time. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth testing out if you can hang a sheet over the outside of a big sunny window, as stopping heat getting into the house makes a significant difference. My niece in Cardiff did this with a hot, hot bathroom and with some ad hoc hanging has found the room is much cooler. It\u2019s definitely worth a try. (RJ)<\/p>\n

4. Check your building\u2019s A, B, C<\/h2>\n

Energy performance certificates for buildings can be hard to decipher but ratings across the EU and beyond are starting to be standardised, thanks to a new directive. Class A indicates a building has zero emissions, while Class G is \u201camong your nation\u2019s worst\u201d, as Lala Rukh at the University of Galway explains. Rukh <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are buying, selling or renting in the next three years, check the date on any certificate,\u201d advises Rukh. \u201cA label issued before your country\u2019s rescaling means something different from one issued after, and most existing certificates remain valid for up to ten years.\u201d <\/p>\n

She suggests asking which scale your building\u2019s energy performance certificate<\/a> was issued under. \u201cAnd trust the number more than the letter: the kilowatt-hours per square metre, per year, printed beside the grade is the one language every scale, old and new, EU and UK, has in common.\u201d (AT)<\/p>\n

5. Plant humble hedges<\/h2>\n

When it comes to marking boundaries, fences provide privacy and a very definite \u201cedge\u201d. But they lack the wealth of environmental benefits offered by hedges, explains Tijana Blanusa, principal horticultural scientist at the University of Reading. <\/p>\n

\u201cHedges act as barriers for pollution, provide habitat for wildlife, support pollinators when in flower, produce berries for birds to feed on, capture rainfall and reduce flood risks, and (to a lesser degree) reduce noise.\u201d For these reasons, hedges deserve more attention<\/a>, she says, and they don\u2019t have to be showy, expensive or elaborate to bring brilliant benefits. (AT)<\/p>\n

\n \"close<\/a>
\n Aside from providing shelter and food for wildlife, garden hedges act as natural barriers to sound and help minimise flood risk.<\/span>
\n Christina Bauer\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

6. Exchange at the window<\/h2>\n

Electric-powered heat pumps are all the rage \u2013 they work like a fridge in reverse, but while most of them keep homes consistently warm, they waste the cold air that is released as part of the process. Plus they are usually expensive and big. In the US, window-mounted heat pumps are cheaper and more portable. These self-contained devices are easy to plug in without professional help and they can provide heat and cooling. <\/p>\n

The New York City housing authority has been installing window-mounted heat pumps<\/a> in apartments in Queens, for example. Each unit serves only one room but they cost much less than a permanent system and can be moved to a new property if the owner relocates, as Moncef Krarti, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, explains. (AT)<\/p>\n

7. Put nature first<\/h2>\n

Urban planning can be nature-centric. Ecologist Tom Oliver explains that this begins with being sensitive to the history of a place when designing housing, asking what other beings already have their homes there and considering how people can live alongside them.<\/p>\n

Nature-centric housing solutions<\/a> already exist in places such as Brazil, Italy and the Netherlands. The challenge, Oliver describes, is scaling these solutions up, while adapting them to the nature in each local region.<\/p>\n

Experts agree that \u201cthe technical expertise to build such homes already exists. What is missing, they said, is the deeper mindset shift needed to bring about such an ambitious programme of social change\u201d. So, as Oliver writes, the biggest challenge is \u201cto expand our imaginations\u201d \u2013 for how we can live more in harmony with other species and build political courage for such housing. (AT)<\/p>\n

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Don\u2019t have time to read about climate change as much as you\u2019d like?<\/em><\/strong>
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Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead.<\/a> Every Wednesday, The Conversation\u2019s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 50,000+ readers who\u2019ve subscribed so far.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PerfectHobbyDMK\/Shutterstock This roundup of The Conversation\u2019s environment coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine. Drastic climate action can feel overwhelmingly difficult and far away. But making changes to your home, whether you rent a room in a city centre or own a house in the countryside, is a tangible and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}