Ask Lemmy

Go vegetarian or vegan. Compost if it's available and accessible.

You can do a lot but it depends on how much you can get away with in your apartment. I was lucky enough to have a landlord who didn't give a shit about the property or what you did to it as long as you paid your rent and didn't make trouble. This was an appartment building that was over 100 years old and renovated sometimes in the 90s. So when my husband and I moved in we did a whole lot of stuff. We took out all the lightbulbs and replaced them with LEDs and put the old bulbs back in the boxes for when we moved out. We replaced the broken halogen light fixtures with LED fixtures. We replaced the thermostat with one that has timed settings. We removed the broken crumbling plastic window fixtures and replaced them with blackout fixtures and double hung curtains. We added sealant to the windows which didn't have any for some reason. We replaced one of the door seals and would fill window cracks with paper in the winter. I'm guessing a lot of this stuff you couldn't get away with in a strict apartment and some people wouldn't want to do all that or know how to. The only reason we did is because we could and we intended on being long-term renters. In the 5 years we were there he never cared and never raised our rent. But all of those things saved us money on gas and electric over those years. Obviously if you own a place, you can do more things that are even more effective and permanent, but this is a rental we're talking about. Just make sure you know what you can get away with before you do it.

My go tos are

• Low(er) flow faucet aerators & shower heads (don't have to get crazy but try a few at different flows to see if you can go any lower without it being obnoxious, I stopped at 1.5gpm as the 1gpm restrictors felt like a stingy public bathroom)
• Adjust water heater to a cooler temp (at 125-130F I can still get the shower as hot as I need just by turning it close to full hot)
• LEDs in all light fixtures, I usually calculate lumens per watt to get the most efficient I can find while still having ~80+ cri and a 2700-3000k temperature (colder temperatures are usually more efficient but I'm not about living in blue light)
• IR reflecting window film for the summer and draft-reducing film for the winter
• Weather stripping to fill any drafty gaps
• Make sure HVAC filter is changed on time and not restricting air flow
• Simply let it get a bit warm in the summer and a bit chilly in the winter, use eco modes if your thermostat has it

Use fans in the summer. You can keep your thermostat at 77-78 during the day and still feel comfy. The issue of why you feel hot is not because 77 is hot, it’s because air is not moving. Having a fan on keeps the air circulating in your apartment, making it more comfortable without using too much energy; instead of relying on your AC to move air around by lowering the thermostat so it keeps turning on.

Blackout shades also work to cool down your apartment, not just keep light out. Put them on windows facing west to keep sunlight out during the hottest time of the day.

For starters you can ask why your apartment management charged you 104 dollars for heat a month even though you use the gym showers at work, and it was never cold enough to turn on the heater. That's one way

The bathroom/shower.

1 kW is enough to heat 1 liter of water per minute by 14.3 degrees Celsius. If you have a 20 l/min shower head and water pressure to actually deliver that, that's 20-30 kW of power for as long as the shower is running (if the water is heated by heat pump, that's output power, input would be 1/4th to 1/3rd, and wastewater heat recovery is possible - but most places don't have that and use fossil fuel or resistive heating).

A 15 minute, 20l/min shower uses 5-7.5 kWh. You can reduce that by a factor of 6 by using a 10 l shower head and 5 minutes of water (turning the water off while you don't actively need it). At 200 kg CO2 per MWh (natural gas), that's 0.3-0.45 tons of CO2 saved per year.

Likewise, lowering the thermostat and saving heating can make a huge difference.

In general on a large scale, living in a smaller apartment is "greener", since less space needs to be heated, but also less space has to be built, and higher density means less travel.

Heating/housing, food, and travel are typically the biggest parts of your footprint. For travel, distance matters more than the way you move. Flights aren't great per km traveled but what makes them really impactful is that they make it practical to travel large distances. (Keep that in mind when you see "green" politicians trying to propose measures - often these measures are either purely symbolic, adding annoyance without benefit, or work mostly by making it impractical/undesirable to travel or do otherwise enjoyable things).

By eating your landlord

In addition to the socket sealers on outlets you can caulk any gaps between the outlet box and drywall. (Don't put anything inside the outlet box)

The same thing can be done with can light fixtures if you’re on the top floor

Don’t get kids.