by Lorelei Cohen

Created on: August 26, 2010

Beginning college does mean that you will require a lot of items to sustain you during your time there, but  just because you are heading off to college, does not mean that your carbon footprint has to increase two shoe sizes. You can still be environmentally friendly and start off college on the right foot by going green with these simple dorm room decorating tips.

Begin going green by reducing the amount of new purchases that you will make. You are going to require furniture and accessories for your dorm room. Many of these purchases can be environmentally friendly, recycled or reused products. So the first places you should start looking for these items are at your local thrift or Goodwill store.

A desk, table, chairs, bookshelf, end tables, lamp, television, toaster, dishes, and numerous other dorm room essentials can be purchased at your local thrift stores for a fraction of the price that you would have paid for them new. Saving a little money is always nice, but the best reason for buying these products used is that you reduce your carbon footprint whenever you lesson the amount of raw materials, and energy that are required to make items for you to purchase.

Use only energy efficient CFL, LED, or Florescent light bulbs for your dorm room lights, desk lamps, and flashlight. By simply switching to more energy efficient light bulbs you can conserve up to eighty percent of the energy that you would otherwise have used in lighting your dorm room. These bulbs also last much longer than regular incandescent light bulbs, CFLs up to ten times longer, and LEDs even longer. This means less bulbs thrown away into your local landfill. These are great reasons, and a very easy way, to help reduce the size of your carbon footprint.

But there are even more green dorm room decorating tips and they are just so easy to implement. You are most likely going to require an extension cord to plug your computer, printer, and desk lamp or other dorm room electronics into. Rather than picking up a standard electrical cord, purchase a power bar with an on / off switch on it instead. It is estimated that around eighty percent of an electronics electric consumption occurs when they are not in use. Whenever you head out for class, and also just before you go to bed in the evening, you can simply click the off button to power down all of the electronics in your dorm room. This simple gesture can dramatically reduce the amount of electricity that you would otherwise have used. 

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