A Guide to Greening Your Apartment

Image Gallery Image by zbowling, licensed under Creative Commons.

Before Kari Volkmann-Carlsen sat down to write “Green Renting Revolution” (Jan.-Feb. 2009), my fellow editors and I dug into Utne Reader’s alt-press library—1,300 publications and growing— and scouted ecofriendly advice for apartment-dwellers. Wouldn’t you know it, the alternative press is chock-full of savvy tips for greening your rental pad. Here’s a sampling of the wisdom.

First stop, our sister publication: Natural Home. Many of the immediate ways to green your rental unit are the same starting points for home-owners: Eliminating chemical cleaning products or switching to non-toxic bedding, for example. The editors at Natural Home also offer tips to eco-minded apartment hunters and showcase some amazing apartment eco-remodels.

Terrain, the magazine of Berkeley’s Ecology Center, suggests slaying vampire loads with programmable or smart power strips. Programmable ones shut down the flow of juice on schedule, whereas smart ones know when appliances are off and adjust energy accordingly. It’s just one nifty idea in Terrain’s article “Don’t Be an Energy Hog.”

Philadelphia-based sustainability magazine Grid—the one that Volkmann-Carlsen mentioned in “Green Renting Revolution”—has put its first issue online, making it available for free as a PDF. Download the issue and check out “Renting Efficiently: 10 Steps” (p. 7), as well as a host of other eco-minded articles.

The Worldwatch Institute, publisher of World Watch magazine, lines up “10 Ways to Go Green and Save Green,” including using dryer balls (to cut energy-sucking dryer time!), eating lower on the food chain (a la Taras Grescoe’s Bottomfeeder), and buying foodstuffs in bulk.