Moving House without CO2

A new home always means packing up your things and moving them into your new space. Here a few tips on how to make the whole job more pleasant and eco (2 things that normally go together).

• reuse cardboard boxes instead of buying new ones.
Find out when the paper gets collected in your neighbourhood and you’ll have plenty of boxes to choose from if you live near shops. Or ask your local corner store or supermarket for boxes.
• Try to avoid bubble wrap
You can wrap fragile objects in your bed sheets, clothes or towels that need to be moved anyway to the new place. For an alternative to bubble wrap check out Geämi. Make sure not to use very large boxes and to mix heavy and light objects in each box to avoid super heavy boxes as lifting those can seriously damage your back.
• Try to avoid CO2 emission
Now, if you move countries or larger distances, are the proud owner of a nice piano or just own a lot of furniture already I don’t suggest you move by bike. Your options in this case would be finding a transport company that rent out energy efficient transport modes (hydro, electric, solar, …) or if that’s not on offer yet, compensate your CO2 emission by becoming a member of for example CeroC02 (Spain) or the CarbonNeutral Company(UK). The mission of these companies is to reduce CO2 by for example investing into anti climate changing technologies or forestry projects.
If you mainly move boxes rather than furniture I suggest using muscle power as your main energy source and no oil. Get all your friends together, put the beers in the fridge for later and action! Bikes with carriages are for rent or what about the always good humoured rickshaw drivers that might not mind touring your pots and pans instead of tourists for a day. We’ll see … any other idea for a contribution against climate change? Be creative!