Smart home items are a must-have if you care about automating everyday tasks at home. Considering the rising costs of energy bills and the fact that environmental degradation is a major concern these days, a lot of manufacturers are turning towards eco-friendly smart home items.

These devices help you monitor your energy consumption, reduce costs, and contribute to a greener environment. They often feature an environmentally friendly design that doesn’t contribute to much e-waste either. If you’re worried about your carbon footprint, these are the best eco-friendly smart home items to have at home.

Smart Waste Kitchen Disposer

Smart waste disposers give you an environmentally friendly way of keeping waste out of landfills. Many of these kitchen disposers are electric countertop compost bins that turn food waste into nutrient-rich dirt. You can use this dirt for gardening and growing your own vegetables, further cutting down on your carbon footprint.

Other than that, most of them have very low energy consumption. These disposers can transform over 80% of your food waste. This includes meat products, fruits and vegetables, dairy products, and more. They’re also very quiet and neutralize the odour, so you can avoid rotten smells in the kitchen.

Smart Thermostats

The smart thermostat market value is projected to skyrocket to $6.2 billion by 2025 according to Statista’s data. This is largely due to rising electricity costs around the world. As these costs grow, people want to automate the heating and cooling in their homes for optimum performance and energy savings. A lot of these thermostats can use less energy for heating and cooling.

They also often send you alerts and updates that push you towards energy-saving habits. These notifications include setting recommendations and reminders. Smart thermostats also feature proximity sensors to optimize the perfect heating and cooling routines. This allows for more precise temperature control, making them more efficient than traditional thermostats.

Robot Vacuums

Robot vacuums are excellent smart home cleaning devices that automate the cleaning process in your home. They can be controlled via a companion app or by a simple voice command as they are compatible with multiple voice assistants. You can set specific schedules and modes that the robot can follow for vacuuming your space.

They are extremely eco-friendly as they are designed to use less energy than traditional vacuum cleaners. Since they run on internal batteries, they only use energy from the wall to recharge. Some smart vacuum cleaners like ECOVACS also feature a sophisticated filtration system that captures dirt and dust contributing to a cleaner environment in your home. Some of them even feature HEPA filters.

Smart Power Strips or Plugs

Smart plugs or power strips can help you monitor energy consumption and save on expensive energy costs. When a device is plugged into these plugs and not in use, the plug will automatically turn off power to cut down on energy consumption. This is great for devices like lamps, gaming consoles, laptop chargers, and more.

If you get a smart power strip, you’ll usually get plenty of outlets along with built-in USB ports. They also feature surge protection which protects your devices from unexpected power fluctuations. You control connected devices remotely by using the app or with a simple voice command. A lot of these integrate with voice assistants such as Google Assistant or Siri.

Smart Lighting

The smart lighting market is valued at almost 19.42 billion in 2023, making smart lighting one of the most popular smart home devices. When you think about it, it’s easy to see why. Smart lighting allows you to change the ambiance of your home depending on the mood and occasion. You can also control the temperature of the lighting for more comfort. However, these lights don’t just look good, they also help save energy.

Many of these lights are compatible with ecosystems such as Google Home or Amazon Alexa. This lets you integrate them into your smart home routines. You can specify a bedtime within your smart home app, and when that time is near, your smart lights will automatically dim down or turn off completely to save on energy. You can also set a routine that tracks your location and turns off the lighting in your home when you’re away.

Smart Air Conditioning

A lot of smart AC units work similarly to smart thermostats. While this is the newest style of smart home product on the list, a lot of people are embracing them for their homes. Smart AC uses clever machine learning to pick up on your daily habits, and they only turn on when you really need them to.

They adjust the temperature according to the ambient temperature in the room and will stay off on cooler days. You can set a custom schedule or control them remotely via a companion app. Many of them also feature compatibility with multiple voice assistants.