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Windows provide natural daylight and views, but homeowners often use drapes or blinds to cover them because of comfort concerns. ENERGY STAR qualified windows and skylights allow owners to enjoy the light and views while saving money on utility bills and helping to protect valuable furnishings and finishes from sun damage.

Bamboo blinds and bamboo shades are an inexpensive way to add warmth and exotic flavor to any room in your house.

These traditional Asian inspired bamboo window coverings are made by weaving together very thin shafts of bamboo, which have been whittled and stripped of joints and outer skin. In Asia, bamboo-blind making continues as a traditional craft and involves both manual and mechanized procedures.

Venetian and Roll-up bamboo blinds make an economical and attractive window covering to accent any décor.

Composite decking products blend waste wood fiber and recycled plastics, adding in waxes, fiberglass, and preservatives to form wood-like boards. Popular manufacturers known for sustainable products and practices of composite decking include Trex, Nexwood, Verenda, Timbertech, and others.

Some composite products last up to 20 years with little maintenance; however, all weather and warping are not unusual.

Windows contained in doors are less energy-efficient than solid options; whether they are french doors, patio doors, or doors containing a small peek-through window.

Your doors have to a lot to do, especially exterior doors. Essentially, they need to prevent things you want to retain from escaping, and keep things that you don't want out of your home, all while allowing you to come and go as you please. "Things" that might be as small as molecules of hot air, or as large as a burglar. That’s a tall order for a simple rectangle on hinges! Making sure your door is energy efficient will help keep energy where you want it to be.

Lumber made entirely from High Density Polyethylene resin—the same plastic milk jugs are made of—is made from plastic waste that easily makes another turn around the recycling wheel. Like composite lumber, it is workable with wood tools. HDPE plastic lumber comes in various colors and wood tones. Plastic lumber colors and wood tones include: white, green, sand, cedar, gray, weathered wood, redwood, and many more. Decking, trim, and railings are only some of the uses High Density Polyethylene plastic.

Natural wood decks have advantages that no other decking materials possess:

Wood is nontoxic and extremely strong for its weight, as well as beautiful and easily worked. Wood is a renewable resource if it’s intelligently managed. Wood is produced with comparatively less fossil-fuel inputs compared to other materials used for decking, especially if harvested products come from forests that are local to the buyer.

Weatherstripping is the application of a strip of some combination of materials around your door perimeter to improve the air seal. Weatherstripping improves your door’s energy retaining ability. Almost all the heat energy loss associated with doors is not through the surface itself, but through the cracks between the door and the wall, and between the door casing and the wall. In terms of energy conservation, good weatherstripping and caulking are more important than the actual materials that comprise your door.

Do Your Doors Need Weatherstripping?

Naturally rot-resistant wood is wonderful stuff, but as human pressure on forests increases, woods have become more and more expensive, forcing people to search for more cost effective alternatives. A popular substitute, especially in areas far from cedar and redwood forests, is decking made from less rot-resistant, cheaper softwoods that are pressure-treated with various chemicals that inhibit decay.

The degree of a wood’s rot-resistance depends upon the depth of treatment—wood that is in contact with damp soil needs the deepest treatment.

Your doors represent an invitation into your home—they are part of the fabric of your house that you and your visitors will encounter on a daily basis, so this is an area in need of your green attention. There are many types of doors, all of which are area-specific. Selecting certain doors and doors specific to their area will help save energy, as well as the planet .

Storm Doors: Storm doors are a good way to increase the energy efficiency of an existing or recycled door.