Eco-Friendly Ideas for Recycled Insulation Materials in Your Home

With such a variety of eco-friendly alternatives on today’s market, insulating a home with either recycled insulation or a sustainable insulation material is a no-brainer..

Have you ever given much thought to your home insulation materials? Is your insulation eco-friendly? If not, perhaps it’s time to consider using recycled insulation materials.

Energy prices rarely fall over the long term, and very few of us have the option to continuously heat or cool our homes with free sources of energy. Insulating a home is, therefore, essential.

Fortunately, those of a green and creative mind have a wide range of options available to them when they begin to map their strategy to install  recycled insulation materials or some other form of eco-friendly insulation.

Older homes were dependent on fiberglass between floors and behind walls. Newer homes, and those renovating legacy dwellings, should consider installing what natural energy advocates now call eco insulation. Ditch the monstrous old pink or blue rolls when insulating a home. Choose green!

Here’s a rundown of some of the most prevalent materials for insulating a home in eco-friendly style.

Insulating a Home with Stone

Brick is fine on the exterior, but insulating a home requires additions to its interior. For this purpose, tiny bits of stone and rock- sand- is a viable alternative insulation material. Move over, stone wool! EcoBatt (www.ecobatt.us) is a leading supplier of sand-based insulation. Their product is a blend of sand and post-consumer recycled glass. Its binding agent contains none of the harmful chemicals found in traditional fiberglass insulation and it is noncombustible. It is certified by the GREENGUARD Environmental Institute as mold resistant and safe for use in schools, too.

Home Insulation from Recycled Wood Products

The project of insulating a home can be completed using a range of recycled insulation derived from wood products.

Cork Insulation

Cork is among the most common. Made from the bark of a species of Oak tree, cork is a sustainable wood product. Some of us see it most often stopping our wine bottles; in fact, enough of us see it that way for a whole industry to have developed centered upon recycling wine corks and repurposing them into home insulation. Cork has outstanding temperature modulation capacities and, of course, recycling discarded cork preserves the ability of the trees to devote their bark to other eco-friendly pursuits.

Newspaper Insulation

Rather than putting every newspaper in the recycling bin, keep a few issues. If you have naked water pipes in the basement, try wrapping newspaper around them to preserve the temperature of the standing water inside them. It will cut the cost of running your hot water heater, and thereby consume less electricity or natural gas. In the winter, pipes won’t freeze, and you won’t need to run up your electric bill blowing hot air to thaw them out.

Cellulose Insulation

Cellulose is an organic compound—the most widely found organic compound on the planet! You contribute the raw materials for cellulose insulation already, as it is produced from recycled paper. The Cellulose Insulation Manufacturers Association (www.cellulose.org) contends that cellulose insulation contains the highest recycled content of any product on the market and, because it interrupts the path of paper on the way to the landfill, it helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Insulating a Home with Repurposed Fabric

Clothing drop boxes are not the only appropriate locations for outgrown clothes and textiles you no longer need.

Wool Insulation

Fine insulation can be made from wool. It has excellent capacity to resist fire and water damage alike. We know it’s warm, or wouldn’t have bought that sweater or blanket in the first place! Sheep wool is sustainable and creates an insulation material that doesn’t irritate the installer to the degree fiberglass does. Plus, sheep wool requires less energy to produce than synthetic insulation products. Consumers can purchase natural sheep wool insulation, and supplement it with old clothes and blankets to create a medley of sustainable, renewable, recycled insulation.

Recycled Denim Insulation

Be sure to patch in some of this, too: denim. Companies such as Bonded Logic have introduced products utilizing post-industrial denim that are safe and squeezable to boot. UltraTouch, for example, describes its composition as 90% recycled denim and various other cotton fibers.

With such a variety of eco-friendly alternatives on today’s market, insulating a home with either recycled insulation or a sustainable insulation material makes financial sense and, at the same time, will not compromise the comfort level of your castle.