If you rent your house or apartment, you might not feel that you have much control over energy, water, air quality, and other aspects of green living. But before you give up, have a look at all the good ideas on the EPA Renter's Checklist. How many of the 49 items can you check off?
The EPA Renter's Checklist includes ideas to consider when selecting your rental and once you've moved in. In the selection phase, you might look at factors such as location and energy efficiency, and even try to negotiate with the landlord for greener features. If you're already living in a rental, the list provides suggestions for smart heating and cooling, conserving water, protecting your health, and reducing waste. Not everyone can implement all the items on the list, but it's a useful resource that might get you thinking about additional ways to go green.
Related:
• Negotiating Your Way Into an Eco-Friendly Apartment
• Is Your Landlord Certified Green?
(Image: Flickr member jnyemb licensed under Creative Commons)
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This isn't bad personal advice, but it really angers me that you're basically capitalizing on the "green" catch word, and lying to your readers. This article has nearly nothing to do with "going green"--it is about avoiding high bills.
What do you think is going to happen to that inefficient apartment you avoided renting? The Planeteers are gonna come rent it out and save the world?
If you actually cared about going green, you'd rent the shoddiest apartment you could find, and fix it up as best you could.
I'm not saying I'd actually do that personally. But at least I'm honest about how deep my commitment goes.
Thank you for posting a list for discussion and debate. After selling my own place, I'm in a rental again - and faced with figuring out how to live most efficiently in this new space. We spent a solid weekend closing draft-sources (Narnia-like winter!), and figuring out the best way to heat (turned out to be 1 space heater for the whole 2-story loft, and 1 for the bathroom). Oh, and we had to rig the recycling - most cities don't service complexes with fewer than x number of units, so that means finding a nice neighbor with a house who doesn't mind extra bags in front of their place once a week. Haven't quite figured out where our extra kw's are coming from (suspect the washer), but might borrow/buy a kill-a-watt to investigate. Interested to see how everyone else is handling their rental situations.
Probably the most efficient way to heat and cool is by using fans in conjunction with heating/ cooling appliances.
They help to provide white noise, too, when dealing with noisy neighbors/ poor insulation.
I don't think Apartment Therapy is capitalizing on "green" at all - it is, after all, a resource provided by the EPA (whose job is to protect the environment, not consumers' wallets, as Doug implied). And Apartment Therapy is simply passing it on.
Thank you for including a list that reminds us of lead and asbestos issues, helps in picking out a new apartment (which we are in the process of doing) AND helps us reduce our energy footprint, which has the benefit of also cutting down our expenses.
I don't think it's fair to say they're capitalizing on green either - whether someone is doing it to save money or not; they're still being green.
wether saving money is the biproduct of an action OR being green is - it shouldn't matter.
and as far as the list not providing things that you could do without your landlords consent - maybe if you were that passionate about doing something it'd be up to YOU to convince your landlord that it's positive and by doing it; once you're done they can rent it out as a green apartment - something people would be willing to pay for?