7 Easy Tips to Eco-Friendly Living
7 Easy Tips to Eco-Friendly Living
All the talk of climate change and rising sea levels can be a little overwhelming at times; making us wonder how we can make a difference as individuals. Individuals can make a difference, especially, when we’re all working towards the same goal. Here we’ve compiled a shortlist of tips to consider; that can have a far bigger impact than the effort required to adopt them. 7 Easy tips to eco-friendly living.
1. Use reusable cups
Taking your own reusable cup with you next time you buy a coffee is such a simple step to take. One which has such a potentially significant impact. Not only could you save money; with many cafes now incentivising you to avoid disposable cups; you’ll also be tackling a waste phenomenon of remarkable scale.
Each year approximately 500 billion disposable cups are either incinerated or consigned to landfills. To put that into perspective, it works out to be around 1 million disposable cups being discarded every single minute. Day and night.
To make matters worse; many of these cups cannot be placed in recycling bins; as the mixture of materials can contaminate the automated sorting machines used in the recycling process. The only solution is to remove them from the equation altogether. Thankfully, reusable cups already exist, our kitchens are full of them, so the solution is staring us in the face. Make sure your next caffeine fix is also environmental!
2. Avoid single-use plastics
On a similar note to reusable cups, we can all make the effort to avoid single-use plastics wherever possible. By now most of us are probably used to taking reusable shopping bags with us to buy groceries, which is a massive step towards reducing the estimated 5 trillion plastic bags used annually. We can also ensure we’re not buying plastic drinks bottles more than is strictly necessary. Again, the figures are truly astounding, with around 1 million plastic bottles being purchased every single minute.
3. Vote for the environment
We’re not ones to impose our political will on anybody; of course, there are myriad factors to consider when deciding who is deserving of your vote. However, there is one undeniable thing that science teaches us, and that is that every one of us, rich or poor, will eventually be affected by climate change.
By voting for parties with a strong commitment to the environment. Writing to your local politicians to express your concerns with sustainable development policies. You will ensure that the message doesn’t go unnoticed; and that environmental protection should be at the top of every political party’s agenda.
4. Be energy efficient
Unless you’re brave enough to attempt to live ‘off-grid, then you can’t avoid energy consumption entirely.
We can of course switch to energy suppliers who draw their power from renewable energy sources; such as; wind, hydro and solar. We can certainly try to maximise our energy efficiency with some simple fixes.
Switching to energy-efficient light bulbs can not only reduce energy use by up to 80%, but they can also even last up to 25 times longer than conventional light bulbs.
Invest in thermally efficient insulation for your home, especially with your windows and roof. Not only will you save energy, but you could also save money in the long term.
Washing clothes at lower temperatures and hang drying them is better for the environment, and even the clothes themselves. If you have young kids, then feel free to ignore this recommendation, you’ll never get the stains out…
Last, unplugging unused devices such as; TVs and computers rather than leaving them on standby mode can make a difference, too.
5. Consume less meat
We know consuming meat is not exactly great for the animals involved. It’s less well understood by most people just how bad livestock farming is to the environment. Not to mention, cutting down forests to make way for farmland, the animals reared for consumption produce methane. According to the United Nations, this contributes as much greenhouse gas as all the aeroplanes, trains, ships and road vehicles combined.
6. Join a movement – Inspire others!
We are greater than the sum of our parts when we work together. Joining local organizations that plant community gardens, organize rubbish-collecting initiatives, or just share ideas online about living sustainably can help to inspire and educate others into doing the same. If we can make living ‘sustainably’ the new normal, the default way of conducting ourselves, then we give our planet and future generations a fighting chance at enjoying the environments and species we’ve taken for granted for too long.
7. Get involved
While we can all make small changes to our daily routines to help fight climate change and environmental destruction, there are individuals out there who dedicate their whole lives to these causes, working in the field to save species and ecosystems.
Conclusion
As you can see, most of these tips don’t require much sacrifice from us as consumers but can have a big impact on the planet we’re fortunate enough to call home.
