4 Ways to Make Your Next Move More Eco-Friendly

For anyone conscious of their environmental impact, moving house can often be a big problem. Simply put, moving requires a lot of materials and resources – which often means more waste.

Fortunately, you can reduce your waste and minimise your carbon footprint by using the right strategies. With some advanced planning and minor adjustments to your normal packing routine, you can make your next move eco-friendly.

Here are four great ways to do it:

1. Ditch the styrofoam and plastic fillers

Standard box fillers like styrofoam and bubble wrap may be effective, but they’re not exactly the most eco-friendly materials out there.

Instead of using materials like these, consider using more natural and eco-friendly materials for filling your boxes or padding your items. The great thing about this is that you probably already have these eco-friendly materials in your house. Items like old newspapers, egg cartons, or your old clothes can fill empty spaces and protect your things just as well as their plastic or artificial counterparts.

So consider ditching the standard styrofoam, bubble wrap, and plastic wrappers when you pack your items. Instead, be creative and use more natural materials for your containers.

2. Use cardboard boxes / recycled boxes

Speaking of containers, you’re often better off using cardboard moving boxes than plastic containers.

That’s because big plastic containers usually take up a lot of space in storage, which makes it harder to keep for future use. This means they’re often thrown away or discarded soon after being unpacked.

Cardboard boxes, on the other hand, can be flattened and stored easily, so they’re more likely to be reused in the future.

If you want to be even more eco-friendly with your containers, you can even reuse old cardboard boxes you already have at home or buy recycled packing boxes if you need new ones.

3. Use eco-friendly cleaning materials

When you’re moving, you’ll do not only a lot of packing and unpacking, but also a lot of cleaning.

This gives you more opportunities to reduce your carbon footprint and make your move greener. The best way to do this is to use eco-friendly cleaning products and techniques, which will help minimise your environmental impact and lessen your use of nasty chemicals.

You’ll find a variety of eco-friendly cleaning products in stores, so you’ll have a lot of choices for staying green while cleaning. There are also several natural DIY cleaning solutions that you can use for cleaning tasks that don’t require strong chemicals or solutions.

Not only are these solutions better for the environment, but they’re also better for your health!

4. Donate/recycle things you don’t need

More than using the right tools and techniques, reducing your waste offers perhaps the biggest impact in making your move greener.

Accumulating waste is inevitable during a move, but that doesn’t mean you can’t minimise it.

The easiest way to do this is to reduce, reuse, and recycle things as much as possible. This involves going through all the things you don’t want to bring with you and finding ways to donate, give away, or even sell them.

The fewer things you throw away, the less waste you’ll drive to the landfill.

It Takes Some Work, But It’s Worth It

Like any other environmental initiative, making your move eco-friendlier will take some effort as you make the right changes.

But the good news is that reducing your carbon footprint isn’t always as hard as most people think.

With a few small adjustments and some careful planning and consideration, you can make a big difference.

If you want more packing tips and advice, check out our blog for other useful advice.