How to Live Greener Every Single Day
It can be a simple decision, to live greener but it’s not always so simple to do. At least not at first. Living greener often has a snowball effect, where the first act of green living will evolve into the next as we learn more and more about the environment and our effect on it. There’s a lot of things, both large and small that we can do every single day to live greener.
Reduce your waste
One of the easiest actions you can take is to reduce your waste. This can be done every single day in many, many ways. Once you start thinking about reducing your waste to reduce your impact and footprint, you’ll be constantly coming up with new ways to tackle the global waste problem.
First, start to reduce your reliance on plastic. Instead of wrapping up your lunch in plastic wrap, use a (hopefully non-plastic), reusable container instead. Avoid accumulating hundreds of plastic bags when you go grocery shopping by taking your own cloth bags that you can use over and over again. To help you do this, it’s always a good idea to keep a couple of reusable bags in your car or in your backpack for everyday use.
Live minimally
Once you’ve started to reduce your waste, you’ll notice that you’ve stopped accumulating so much stuff. Wonderful. Now this brings us to step 2. Live minimally. We can live more minimally, by reducing the amount of stuff we have. We’ve already reduced our plastic waste so now we can start to reduce the rest of our waste. Gifting is a huge problem when it comes to living minimally.
We can start off by asking friends and family to give of themselves during the holidays or by buying experiences instead of extra toys for the kids, homewares you don’t need and items that just aren’t quite right. Next you should reduce your reliance on your stuff. Start by culling what you don’t need to live more simply. Soon you’ll realise just how little you actually need to live a happy and fulfilling life. You may even notice that you’re a lot happier now that you’re living with less.
Shop responsibly
Besides simply taking your own bags to the store to carry your groceries as in step 1 and of course buying less junk and stuff we don’t really need as in step 2 it’s important to shop more responsibly. When shopping, ask yourself “Do I really need this? Is this going to make my life better?” If yes, then go ahead but you’ll notice that most of your old impulse buys, don’t cut it anymore.
If you’re after new clothing or homewares buy second-hand instead, either from charity shops or online. This reduces waste and consumer demand to create more. When you have to buy new, always opt for the most environmentally friendly version of the product. Is it plastic free? Is it carbon neutral? Does it have excessive packaging? There are always better and worse options when it comes to buying anything new, and always an option to shop more responsibly.
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