It goes without saying that the planet is undergoing a lot of stress right now due to pollution. As a result of this abuse, several ecosystems  are disrupted and irreversibly damaged. There’s also the gradual changing of the climate brought about by several factors, one of which includes open landfills and uncontrolled carbon emissions.

With these in mind, it’s important to do your part by becoming more environmentally friendly. Not only will you be keeping your home cleaner and more orderly, you’d also be making a small but positive impact on the planet. Here are a couple of tips on how to be an eco-friendly AboitizLand homeowner or vecino.

Look For A Responsible Developer

It’s important to work with a developer whose values reflect your own. This is because 1) it’s easier to work with a developer who can resonate with what you cherish most and 2) it’s easier to participate in any event or campaign that can help make the world healthier and pollution-free.

AboitizLand, for instance, prides itself on sustainability and continuously improving how people live. As an example, most of its residential communities are master-planned and follow principles of New Urbanism. This urban design movement promotes environmentally friendly habits through wide walkable paths that encourage walking rather than driving and providing a wide range of sustainable housing options. Another example of how AboitizLand protects the environment is how it prefers to respect the natural topography of the land, instead of flattening hills to give way to more income-generating cuts of land.

Another conscious effort in propagating the marine treasures is Pawikan Conservation. Seafront Residences, an AboitizLand master-planned beach community in San Juan, Batangas, is home to baby turtles and their nestling sites – AboitizLand made sure that these eggs were buried and secured. Annually, hatchlings are released into the ocean with the help of the DENR and UP Diliman Science Research Foundation, Inc. 

AboitizLand’s contactless home buying service also offers digitized documentation which saves a lot of time and energy required to submit hard copy documents. As a result, less paper is required for transactions, and less fuel is consumed for logistics. Online brochures exist now, which not only makes for safer ways to view collaterals, but also makes a great addition to AboitizLand’s efforts to go paperless.

With several projects like the Pawikan Conservation Project and notable partnerships that seek to introduce eco-friendly housing in the industry, AboitizLand is a force for good when it comes to protecting the environment. So in case you’re looking for a home that can help you become a more environmentally-friendly home owner, AboitizLand is for you.

Remember The 4 Rs

The 4 Rs are the basic tenets of being an environmentally-friendly home owner. They stand for Refuse, Reuse, Reduce, and Recycle. In a world that’s already riddled with a lot of pollution and has waste problems, these 4 Rs can help you make a small difference.

The first R, refuse, means foregoing items and practices that we used to do, in the hopes that we can help the environment better its current state. As an example, purchasing single-use plastics or individually packed items are considered fairly wasteful and can cause a lot of damage to the environment.

Reuse is pretty self-explanatory – just have a policy of purchasing or using reusable items in order to reduce waste. From choosing reusable grocery bags to buying steel table utensils, having reusable items in your inventory helps you prevent discarding more waste.

Reduce is both a choice you make when it comes to buying items and the results of choosing more environmentally-friendly choices. Choosing reusable items marginally reduces your carbon footprint, thereby directly helping the environment. Reducing your electric or water consumption, for instance, not only helps you cut down on your bills, it also helps you preserve resources.

Finally, to recycle means just transforming what can otherwise be waste into something reusable. Plastic, glass, paper and metals waste, if converted properly, can be turned into a variety of helpful items. For instance, paper is an item that can be easily recycled. While plastics can cause serious harm to the environment, they can be easily recycled into other usable items.

Make Better Choices

In everything you do, it’s important to ask: Will this damage the world you live in? It might seem neurotic, but it’s important to keep in mind that every little choice you make affects the world in one way or another. So it makes sense to make the right choices so you won’t have to regret them later. With over 13 tons of hazardous waste produced per second (over 400 million tons of hazardous waste generated on a yearly basis), every little choice you have can make a positive or negative impact.

From a homeowner’s point of view, you can choose better, more environmentally healthy methods of maintaining your home. For instance, you can use cleaning materials that are labeled to be eco-friendly. This not only reduces the amount of waste you contribute, it also helps you effectively clean and sanitize your home. 

Alternatively, you can make your own cleaning solutions with easily accessible and organic ingredients. For glass surfaces like glass tables or window panes, mixing a half gallon of hot water, two tablespoons of vinegar, and four tablespoons of lemon juice can make for an effective cleaning solution. Meanwhile, for wooden surfaces or furniture, stirring a tablespoon of vinegar into three tablespoons of olive oil and a cup of water can make for an excellent solution without damaging its integrity.

Rather than buying from the supermarket, you can choose to repurpose old clothes and turn them into rags or floor mats if you’re creative enough. You can also choose to sort your waste into non-biodegradable, biodegradable and recyclable. At the end of the day, helping your planet is a choice you have to make.

In this regard, it helps if your developer shares the same environmentally-conscious mindset as you and has cascaded it into its properties’ designs. A majority of AboitizLand’s properties follow the principles of New Urbanism which employ the use of wider roads and promote environmentally friendly habits. This means that if you’re a vecino, you would opt to walk towards a destination in the property rather than drive the car. This makes you healthier as an individual and at the same time reduces your carbon footprint.

Turn Your Home Into A Smart Home

A smart home, in the strictest sense, allows homeowners to control functions in their home using a device like a smartphone or tablet. It’s a given that, given all that automation and control, it’s definitely convenient. But more than this, it offers you something that can help the environment: control of utilities.

Turning your home into a smart home can help you regulate how much resources you’re using, from how much water is running in your faucet down to how much electricity you’re utilizing.

If you’ve the resources, consider converting your regular home into a smart one and have the necessary hardware and software installed to regulate how much resources your home spends. You could start small too by purchasing smart LED lighting, which allows you to dictate when and for how long your lights remain turned on. If you plan to have an air conditioning system, make sure it’s an inverter one (it saves more electricity) and is capable of being integrated into a smart system that you can control. The same can be done for plumbing systems and water pipes so you don’t have to worry about using too much water.

At the end of the day, saving the world you live in starts with a choice. If you want to be a more responsible, eco-friendly vecino, feel free to follow these tips and you’ll be doing your part.