This post is a guest submission. Please see our Disclaimer, Disclosures, & Affiliate Notice for details.
Are you an avid camper? Or did you leave traditional living in order to adopt a wild and free RV lifestyle? No matter what motivates you to live in a moving home, if you’re not careful, you can do a lot of damage to the environment with your fuel consumption and harmful gas emission.
But you can do a few things to make your RV greener and your lifestyle eco-friendlier. Here are some green RV tips to follow.
Get a Recycling Bin
While RV campgrounds have the most necessary amenities, they very rarely have a recycling bin. Recycling is just not practical in most small and remote spots, even if they are glamping destinations. However, you can ensure your waste still gets recycled.
If you’re serious about going green in your RV, you can get a sturdy container for your house on wheels and hang onto your recyclable waste. Plastic bottles and aluminum cans can be stored for a long time and ditched once you come across a recycling bin on your travels.
Invest in Solar Panels
One of the most haunting things when living or camping in an RV is fuel consumption. You will use fuel to stay on the road and have an adventure, but also to keep your RV warm or cool and your appliances powered.
Sure, you can’t turn off all the appliances, but you can certainly take some of the load off the fuel by investing in solar panels. An RV solar kit can save you a lot of fuel and power your appliances with clean and sustainable energy that’s completely free.
When your AC and TV are running on solar power, they are also sparing your battery ensuring it has a longer lifespan. Saving fuel and battery power is a great way to reduce your resource consumption and carbon footprint.
Improve Your Safety Gear
You might think that safety gear doesn’t have anything to do with eco-friendliness, but think again. If you have an accident on the road, it will leave a lot of debris and spilt gas on the road and create pollution. Additionally, some safety gadgets can ensure your RV is running more efficiently overall, which saves fuel and your time on the road.
These devices will also come in handy if you’re not the best at parking, so be sure to get a top-notch RV camera system for your vehicle. By being completely aware of your surroundings, you’ll drastically minimize the risk of causing an accident when driving, turning, or parking.
Improve Insulation
Better insulation can also save you a lot of fuel on heating and cooling. Insulated walls and good double-glazed windows will keep the cold air inside in the summer and outside in the winter and ensure you don’t have to blast your AC and heater. RVs that are not constantly on the move can also benefit from an RV skirt which blocks air flow underneath the vehicle and conserves energy.
Buy Waterless Products
This can be both the easiest and hardest step towards green RV living. If you want to reduce water consumption, you can ditch traditional products and opt for dry shampoos and other waterless wash products.
On the other hand, going waterless can also be hard. For instance, an average flush toilet spends more water than any other appliance, so you might want to replace it with a good waterless RV toilet. This is a big and demanding investment, but it will truly make a big environmental change.
Get regular checkups
Skipping RV checkups can cause you to overlook various issues with the engine and battery which will definitely affect your fuel consumption and harmful gas emission. Checking your tire pressure is especially important since a flat tire can seriously raise your fuel consumption.
Luckily, you can grab a small tire pressure monitor, one of the must-have motorhome gadgets that will ensure you always know the exact air pressure in your tires.
Whip out your grill
Food is one of the best parts of traveling and living in your RV, but unless you’re ready to make your own food, expect to be faced with horrible processed food.
Processed foods are bad for the planet, bad for your body and just unappealing all around. So, make sure to get a good grill for your RV and whip it out every time you get hungry. This cooking option is practical, saves money and the planet. It will also dirty up a minimal amount of dishes so you don’t have to waste cleaning supplies and water on washing.
Living in an RV doesn’t have to be wasteful. If you adopt these green RV tips, you can practice a perfectly green and eco-friendly lifestyle on wheels and enjoy the freedom of living on the road without any guilt.
Derek Lotts is an experienced freelance writer and researcher. His main areas of interest are small business, home improvement, and sustainable living. He strongly believes in the power of sharing knowledge and ideas through the mediums of modern technology.