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Greening your house is one of the most important steps towards living a greener life, yet so much of the advice on sustainable homes is written with the home-owner in mind. What about those who can’t afford to own homes?

While installing insulation, erecting solar panels, or replacing your windows may be impossible, there’s still loads you can do to green your lifestyle and your home. Whether its switching to energy efficient light bulbs, applying weather stripping, or painting with low VOC paints, many small steps can be both affordable and easy to implement – and they add up too. Just weatherizing your windows can save as much as $115 a year, as well as a significant amount of greenhouse gases.

And growing your own food is a viable eco-option too. While you might not want to spend thousands on expensive fruit trees or edible perennials, you'll be amazed by how much you can grow in a few pots or some grow-bags, and if you ask the landlord nicely they may let you dig up some turf and put in raised beds too.

Even students living in dorm rooms can make big efforts to have a smaller impact – in fact, TreeHugger even posted a guide for would-be green scholars. Tips included scouring thrift stores and Craigslist for cheap, used furnishings, and being careful about using the air conditioning too much.

Ultimately, it’s way too easy to focus in on the big, grand gestures like solar panels or fancy rainwater harvesting systems, that we would love to make if we owned our own house – but each little change, whether it’s to our surroundings or to our behaviour, adds up when it comes to living green. And if you can save on your energy bill in the process, perhaps you can put those pennies aside to eventually find a home of our own too.


Keywords: renting housing accomodation green living sustainability

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