Are you looking for sustainable, eco-friendly, green products so you can adopt environmentally-friendly practices for green living? Today, we’re facing an environmental crisis as most of the products we use at home are not environmentally friendly.
But, people are also more aware of the harmful effects of conventional gadgets over green technology-based gadgets, and anyone who wants to understand how green technology helps the environment will find a lot of information online.
There are many earth-friendly products and green eco-products being developed every day and you can use these inside and outside your off-grid or net-zero home to save money and energy.
In the previous post, we discussed the eco-friendly technology advantages of net-zero homes. In this post, we list the top eco-products and eco-friendly devices that will help you reduce your carbon footprint, improve energy efficiency, and choose environmentally-friendly alternatives.
17 Top Eco-Friendly Products & Eco-Gadgets For Green Living
What does environmentally friendly mean? Eco-friendly or environmentally friendly products are those that do not harm the environment either when manufactured, used, or discarded.
In this article, we list 17 of the best eco-friendly, go-green products and best eco-gadgets for the home as eco-friendly alternatives for green living.
#1. The Instant Pot Electric Pressure Cooker
The Instant Pot is a wonderful electric pressure cooker. It’s designed to be safer than stovetop pressure cookers but works just as well. It also uses a lot less energy than your stove.
This environmentally-friendly product won’t heat the room and does its job super-fast, which means it uses much less energy. The Instant Pot is very popular in the summer due to how little heat it emits while cooking.
#2. Soladey-3 Ionic SOLAR Toothbrush
Strangely, a toothbrush needs to be energy efficient, but the Soladey-3 Ionic SOLAR Toothbrush is one such eco-gadget and it even powers up with light.
Since this go-green product uses ions to clean, you don’t even need to buy toothpaste anymore. That makes this eco-friendly electronic device a money saver and a time saver too.
#3. Water-Saving, Dual Flush Toilet
An excellent use of environmental technology is to install a water-saving toilet as most households use the maximum amount of water.
A water-saving toilet can make a huge impact on your water usage and bill. You’ve heard the saying, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down.” With the dual flush toilet, you don’t have to do that.
It uses less water for the yellow stuff than the brown stuff, making it more economical and environmentally friendly. Plus, you can also get a low-water, dual-flush toilet.
The TOTO CST746CEMG#01 Drake Two-Piece Elongated Dual Flush Toilet generates a powerful cleansing flush while only using 1.28 gallons of water.
It also meets the standards for EPA WaterSense, and California’s CEC and CALGreen requirements and helps reduce the frequency of toilet cleanings, minimizing the use of harsh chemicals and water.
#4. Compost Bin
Everyone needs a compost bin. What kind you buy depends on where you live and your situation. You can compost kitchen food waste right on the kitchen countertop with the ENLOY Stainless Steel, Odorless Compost Pail.
For outdoor composting, you can use this Garden Composter Bin made from recycled plastic. Even if you don’t personally need the soil that you create, you can give it away, or you can donate it to someone to use. You can also pour it into planters anywhere.
#5. Solar Hot Water Heater
Even if you cannot afford everything to be solar, you can install a DIY evacuated tube solar water heater (also called a vacuum tube solar water heater or batch solar water heater).
It’s the most popular solar collector in the world because the evacuated tube solar water heater performs well even in cloudy and cold conditions and outperforms other collectors, giving you more consistent year-round heat.
#6. Back-Yard Wind Turbine
If you live in an area where wind energy is plentiful, installing a backyard wind turbine is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint. You can use the wind to power most, if not all, of your home.
You need wind speeds of at least 5 mph to generate enough electricity. Learn how to build a windmill with our DIY primer on wind power for homes or go ahead and buy the Automaxx Windmill Wind Turbine Generator kit.
#7. Smart Power Strips
Did you know that when you keep everything plugged into the wall all the time, it uses more energy? Even if you turn the appliance off, it’s still using some energy when plugged in.
If you use a smart power strip, though, it has a standby mode which it will go into automatically when the appliance is in the off position. The only other way to save this much power is to unplug your appliances after use, every time.
With the Kasa Smart WiFi Power Strip, you can independently control 6 smart outlets, and charge 3 devices with built-in USB ports. This eco-friendly electronic product is ideal for controlling electronics in your home and monitoring how much energy your devices consume.
You can check on each device from your Kasa smart app and remotely turn off ones that are using too much power using Alexa, Google Assistant, or Microsoft Cortana voice commands.
#8. Sense Home Energy Monitor
If you have a solar energy system in your home, the Sense Home Energy Monitor will help you make the most of your solar investment.
This innovative eco-friendly product will tell you if you’re using more power than you’re generating or if you’re scheduling your EV to charge when your solar outputs the highest.
The Sense Home Energy Monitor gives you a powerful dashboard to monitor your power use and solar production in real time, with cost calculations, built right in.
It connects to your home’s Wi-Fi network and then reports your real-time and historical energy use and solar generation to your iOS/Android device and the Sense Web App.
The Sense Home Energy Monitor measures solar production and analyzes changes in current and voltage one million times per second, giving you insights into your solar production and power consumption with unprecedented accuracy.
You can compare overlayed graphs of your production to usage and ensure you’re making the most of your solar investment.
#9. Programmable Thermostat
One problem with heating and cooling your net-zero home is having to turn the heat or air up or down manually to control the atmosphere.
With a programmable thermostat, like the Honeywell Home RTH9585WF1004 Wi-Fi Smart Color Thermostat, you can avoid these problems by setting it up to make the temperature constant throughout the day depending on the time of day.
This 7-day programmable, touch screen, Energy-Star, Alexa-ready device will save you a lot of money and make you comfortable at home.
#10. Solar Trees
Solar trees are a cool, eco-friendly product that incorporates solar energy technology on a single pillar, like a tree trunk, either in the form of a solar artwork or a functional power generator.
Solar trees use a wide variety of arrangements of solar panels to power a few things. A small, portable version of the solar tree with its “trunk” capable of being jabbed into the soft ground can go with you to the beach and charge devices like your cell phone.
Large solar trees save space to allow more panels to exist in a confined area, so theoretically, a solar tree that occupies four square meters of space can produce the same energy that would otherwise have required 400 square meters.
Another recent green technology innovation is the SmartFlower, an intelligent “sunflower” that will “bloom” to produce clean solar energy.
By tracking the sun from east to west, this green, environmentally friendly technology aims to be more efficient than regular solar panels.
#11. Reusable Shopping Bag
Although some stores now charge for bags for your groceries, others expect you to bring your own bags or will sell you cloth bags that are washable and can be reused many times.
Using reusable cloth bags for your shopping can cut down tremendously on plastic waste, so much of which winds up in our oceans. It’s best to store these bags in your car, so they’re always available.
#12. Water-Efficient Shower Head
Conserving water starts by using shower heads designed for high efficiency. You can install the ANZA Water-Saving Massage Rain High-Pressure Shower Head or wait for EvaDrop, the world’s first smart shower device that claims to save up to 50% of your water.
The EvaDrop advanced sensor system allows you to set your temperature preferences, automatically adjusts water flow customized by you, and automatically shuts off the water when your desired temperature is reached.
If it does everything it promises, it could be one of the best eco-products you can install in your off-grid home.
#13. Eco-Friendly Pest Control
Biological pest control is about controlling garden pests the natural way by using natural predators to get rid of them. These eco-friendly techniques are the safest way to rid your garden of pests without using harmful pesticides.
The Natural Enemies Handbook is a comprehensive guide to biological control agents. It will help you identify and understand the biology of predators, parasites, pathogens, competitors, and antagonists that help control specific insects, pathogens, nematodes, or weed pests.
Another eco-friendly pest control method is the Solar Animal Repeller, a humane way to repel rodents, ants, cockroaches, bed bugs, mosquitoes, flies, and spiders.
The high-frequency sounds emitted by this humane animal repellent for gardens will be stray deer repellent for plants, cat repellent for outdoors, rabbit repellent, dog repellent for lawns, and skunk repellent.
If you have a problem with weeds in your garden, watch the video below to learn how to make homemade, environmentally-friendly weed killers using salt, vinegar, and dish soap.
#14. Environmentally-Friendly Paper Alternatives
Our use of immense amounts of paper is responsible for deforestation and waste generation on a global scale.
One way to reduce your carbon footprint is to use the best environmentally-friendly products made from environmentally-friendly paper alternatives like bamboo and bagasse (sugarcane) instead of paper.
NooTrees Bamboo Bathroom Tissue is made with 100% biodegradable and renewable bamboo pulp and is environmentally friendly right from the core to the outer packaging.
Instead of using paper plates at your next picnic use the disposable Tree-Free Eco-Picnic Pack from Earth’s Natural Alternative made of compostable wheat straw fibre and bagasse.
#15. Environmentally-Friendly Packaging
The use of disposable and single-use plastic packaging has created a waste problem of gargantuan proportions, polluting the oceans, killing wildlife, and sea life, and poisoning even our food supply with microplastics.
If you want to do your part to minimize plastic waste, consider using environmentally-friendly packaging such as eco-friendly, reusable Beeswax Food Wraps and Silicone Storage Bags to store produce, meat, cheese, and snacks.
You can also use environmentally-friendly materials such as these washable, food-safe, reusable, Multipurpose Cloth Bags to store food and sandwiches.
Hopefully, environmentally-friendly plastic alternatives will soon become widely available, like this biodegradable plastic bag made of Cassava/Tapioca that is probably one of the most eco-friendly products ever created.
Other new eco-friendly products that help the environment include MarinaTex, a compostable alternative to current single-use plastic made from waste products like fish scales and skin.
Another environmentally friendly packaging innovation is a styrofoam packaging replacement created from agricultural waste and mushroom fiber.
#16. Green Cleaning Products
For hundreds of years, humans used eco-friendly cleaning products such as vinegar, lemon, and soda bicarbonate.
However, today’s conventional cleaning products contain harmful chemicals like bleach, ammonia, and chlorine that are not safe to use around children and pets. They also pollute the environment and our water supply with toxic chemicals.
With the realization of the harmful effects, environmentally-friendly cleaning products are coming back into fashion. Here are some of the green cleaning products available.
- Better Life Natural All-Purpose Cleaner
- Meyer’s Clean Day Multi-Surface Everyday Cleaner
- Clean Revolution Plant-Based, Non-Toxic, Biodegradable, Eco-Friendly Cleaner
- Puracy Natural Green Tea & Lime All-Purpose Cleaner
Also, check out the video below for some eco-friendly cleaning recipes for homemade cleaning products and detergents.
#17. Green Or Solar Lighting
LED bulbs are among the most energy-efficient lighting systems because they require on average one-tenth the power to run than an incandescent bulb, and produce less heat.
They also last longer and come with a 5-year warranty, but you’ll have to save the receipts or boxes to be able to use it.
LED light bulbs are rapidly becoming the norm as their prices have been reduced to make them more affordable, so there’s no excuse not to replace your incandescent and CFL bulbs with green LED lights in your home.
Fluorescent tubes and bulbs can be more efficient than LED, but they degrade faster, suffer from energy loss over time, and need replacing more often. Also, they contain harmful materials such as mercury while LED bulbs only have minute amounts of “doped silicon”.
For outdoor landscape lighting in your yard, garden, driveway, pathway, or pool, you can get the waterproof and heatproof InnoGear Solar Lights.
Now that you’ve read all about the eco-tech and latest eco-friendly products you can use in your off-grid homes, which best-selling eco-friendly products will you incorporate into your life?
