Making Everydayness Eco-Friendly? It Is Possible and Here’s How

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World leaders who attended
the 2019 G20 summit in the Japanese city of Osaka have agreed that climate change is a big challenge which needs to be addressed. Other environmental concerns such as deforestation, endangered biodiversity, water pollution, and pollution, in general, are also mentioned. Only a couple of months later we saw the “lungs of the world” burning. It is obvious that our planet is at risk and many people want to be a part of the solution.


While you are probably thinking that this demands large sacrifices and public exposure, we can’t all be Greta Thunberg, that role is already taken. Instead, you can do your share by making a change on a personal level and sharing your experience with the people closest to you. 


Here Is a Comprehensive Guide That Will Help You Help the World.


Change Your Shopping Habits


Stepping outside of the mall with three or more bags of clothes provokes certain satisfaction in most of the people. However, what we fail to see is that by buying new clothes we are just contributing to producing more waste. This is not a small thing, because more than
15 million tons of textile end up on a landfill every year in the U.S. alone. The main culprits for that are the individuals, such as yourself, because only 15% of the consumer-used fabric gets recycled. 

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Fortunately, there are alternatives to this wasteful lifestyle. For starters, you can purchase clothing in secondhand shops. You can swap clothes you are no longer wearing for the ones other people are no longer wearing. You can donate clothes that don’t suit you anymore. Going second-hand is also a good choice for
house remodeling.


Use Eco-Friendly Alternatives for Everyday Things


You eat your lunch. You use a paper napkin to wipe your face. You take a lemonade for refreshment after you eat and, of course, you use a plastic straw to drink it. While you are doing that, does it cross your mind that the napkin and the straw will end up in the garbage and then in the landfill where they will take thousands of year to degrade?


And it is not just a matter of straws and napkins. The problem stretches way beyond and it includes disposable water bottles, single-use batteries, and grocery bags, aluminum-based deodorant, etc. All these harmful
everyday items can be replaced with ‘green’ alternatives, without drastically impacting the quality of your life.


Minimize the Use of Paper

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Do you use post-it notes to track your schedule? Are you piling up documents at work and at home? Are you keeping up a diary or a similar log? Here’s some news for you: we’re living in the 21
st century, and the use of paper is almost always unnecessary.


Most of these things can be done using your smartphone (app planners, to-do lists, etc.) and PC (MS Word, File Explorer…). Soon you will see many other
benefits of such ‘green’ lifestyle, like a clutter-free home.


Don’t Throw Away Your Food


Approximately one-third of the foodstuff made on the planet for human intake (more than one billion tones)
gets lost or wasted annually. One consumer throws away up to 250 pounds of food a year.


To be a part of the solution and not the problem, you shouldn’t buy more food than you can eat, especially if the expiration date is close. Also, you should store the food you have properly and cut back on the groceries which are off-season or require transportation to your country from another continent.


It’s Not About the Destination, It’s About the Means of Transport

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If you are traveling to work every day by car you are polluting the air significantly. Deciding for public transportation instead could be a better way, but you are still participating in harmful practice. On the other side, walking or riding a bike to work and other destinations is the perfect ‘green’ commuting.


Even better, if you can, ask your boss to work from home, one or more days a week. It might not seem like a lot, but according to
The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook, if one million people worked from their home a day in a week, this might abolish three million tons of CO2 over the period of one year.


Finally, there are a lot of things you can do to make your everydayness more eco-friendly, and we are not going to name them all here. Just let the words of Mahatma Gandhi lead you: “Be the change you want to see in the world”.

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