How to green your bathroom

Why is a bathroom – a room that should promote good health – often environmentally unfriendly?

Bathrooms are often considered the rooms in your home that should attract most of your attention. Not only a user of large amounts of energy, your bathroom is the largest water consumer in your home.

 These two issues alone should spark your interest. When you factor in some of the other issues, you will probably agree that making your bathroom eco-friendly is an important task.

Bathrooms create moisture and humidity. They also tend to be insufficiently ventilated to remove and dissipate much of this moisture. This situation can become more than just an annoyance. Consistent moisture often creates both mold and mildew. Along with being ugly and sometimes smelly, mold and mildew can grow in cracks, joints, and crevices in your bathroom, rendering them difficult to remove.

The insufficiency of bathroom ventilation only helps these substances grow faster and stronger. Mold and mildew can not only increase any breathing issues that family members may have, they can sometimes create breathing problems for those who formerly had none.

Proper ventilation is a key ingredient in creating a green bathroom. The Home Ventilating Institution states that your bathroom system should "exhaust one cubic foot of air per minute per square foot of floor area." A combination of a working window and a good bathroom exhaust fan can achieve this goal. You need to make every attempt to minimize both new and latent moisture to improve the health quality of your bathroom.

Another primary area of environmental concern is the materials used in your bathroom fixtures. For example, shower walls are often made of fiberglass or acrylics, neither of which are eco-friendly. The manufacturing process often pollutes the air and even repairing them is difficult (as they are usually one contiguous piece) causing a shorter useful life than other materials, like tile.

As you can see, going green in your bathroom is more than just responsible; it may save you money and improve your health. The importance of considering options to make it friendly to the environment cannot be minimized.

How to create an eco-friendly bathroom

An environmentally friendly bathroom can make a positive impact on your lifestyle, your health, and your commitment to go green. Because of the combination of activities, moisture, and hard surfaces, a bathroom is a potentially eco-friendly showplace. Here are some tips on creating a green area:

Since your bathroom is the biggest water hog in your home, a prime goal in creating an eco-friendly area is to reduce water consumption.

Install a contemporary toilet

The largest of the bathroom water consumers is your toilet. Replacing an old one with a new eco-friendly model can reduce water use by 50%, saving you over 180,000 gallons of water in a six year period.

Install a water-saving shower head

Showers can consume up to 20% of your home's water use. Replacing an old shower head with a new, water saving model is not expensive and might reduce your shower water usage by a huge 70%.

Install a water stingy faucet or aerator

Kitchen and bath faucets use up to 18% of total household water consumption. Replacing old faucets with those rated as 0.5 to 1.0 gpm (gallons per minute) will save you around half of your water usage . If new faucets don't fit your budget, install aerators in your current ones and still enjoy a large savings for just a few dollars. Should you want to save even more water and your budget is strong, install no-touch faucets (like those in hotels and restaurants). They automatically turn on when hands are underneath and turn off when the hands are removed.

Here are a few other tips to green your bathroom and save natural resources and money:

Learn to use caulk to save water and money

Sealing cracks, leaks, and joints is inexpensive and effective. Look for what's called "low-VOC" caulk, as it is safe and lasts around ten years. Don't use outdoor caulk indoors and don't use PVC- or oil-based caulk.

Replace flooring and countertops

Replace flooring and countertops of vinyl or acrylic with stone or tile. They can easily withstand a lot of water and cleanup easily. Vinyl, made with petroleum products and polluting the environment during manufacture, should be replaced as soon as your budget can accommodate the replacement.

Ventilate your bathroom as much as possible

A simple effective tip: Let your bathroom exhaust fan stay on around ten minutes after someone showers. Energy use is minimal and the drying power will be maximized.