Because I find it so incredibly important to do our part in protecting our natural environment, I have put together a list of eco-friendly tips for our every day lives. By each of us doing our part to protect Mother Earth and all of her beautiful creatures, together those single acts can actually amount to having a great impact on our planet. These tips are simple changes that we can easily make in our every day lives:
- No More Plastic Bottles – Rather than trashing multiple plastic water bottles each day, invest in a environmentally friendly, reusable bottle and just refill it. Such a simple change, that can have a huge impact! Did you know that “making bottles to meet America’s demand for bottled water uses more than 17 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel 1.3 million cars for a year”? Check out even more troublesome bottled water facts at bantthebottle.net.
- Choose Locally Grown Food – It takes mass amounts of fuel and energy to ship fruits and vegetables from other countries. By buying locally you are helping to decrease wasteful use of our natural resources. In addition, local produce is often much fresher than what you find at a large chain grocery store.
- Use Reusable Grocery Bags – Rather than using plastic bags or even paper bags at the grocery store, use reusable fabric bags instead. To help with forgetting them at home, I suggest keeping reusable bags in your car. (Note: you can usually find hundreds of these fabric bags at local thrift stores too, just give them a wash and they are ready to be used for years to come!). “If you don’t consume something in the first place, you reduce the impact in two places: production and disposal.” Get inspiration from Leigh Ann Evans’ article for the Nature Conservancy!
- Be Mindful of Your Energy Use – When leaving a room, simply remembering to turn off the lights and/or television can help save mass amounts of energy. This will also help save you money by reducing your energy bill!
- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – I know, we have all heard this before… but really think about it. Each time you go to throw something away, be sure to think hard about how that item could be used again. Get creative and reuse the items for arts and crafts projects. Donate unneeded items and pass them along to someone else who could make use of it. There are countless possibilities for your extra stuff besides sitting in a landfill!
Although all these tips are very well known already, realistically many of us don’t practice them daily. We can read “green living” tips all over the internet… but if we don’t actually do them what good are they? I urge you to take these tips seriously and try them in your daily life. I promise, they really aren’t hard to do and they really do help protect the environment. Think about it – if each person makes these changes, we can actually have a considerable affect on our planet – it all starts with you!