This planet was given to us for safekeeping, and it’s about time we started acting that way, whether it’s at home or in public spaces.
Dozens of improvements are yet to be made in order to make life a bit more eco-friendly, and even though we’ve got the technology, it’ll be at least another decade before they’re fully implemented.
Electric cars are a good example, as they’ve been around for what feels like an entire decade, but they’re yet to truly become a thing, and the majority of drivers in the US will tell you that they still prefer a good old gas guzzler.
That being said, this doesn’t mean you can’t do your part at home, and even if affording an electric car is way out of your budget right now, there are many other things you can do to lower your carbon footprint.
Gardening
Making your own produce is certainly one way to contribute to the preservation of mother nature, but the way you’re doing it is actually much more profound than you’d ever imagine.
As it turns out, gardening on your own has somewhat of an influence on local farms, and if demand is lowered, supply will dwindle as well, no longer forcing the farms to keep cutting down forests in order to expand their usable land.
Knowing where your food is coming from is just an added bonus here, and it doesn’t even have to be anything too complicated.
Just a few tomatoes and potatoes ought to do it, and if you’ve got some extra space, you can squeeze in some herbs just to spice things up a bit.
If you’re limited to a balcony area, growing some mint, basil, or peppers in pots on your windowsill is also a viable strategy.
Energy-efficient appliances
A single washing machine wastes tens of dozens of liters of water for a single cycle, and that’s just one wash, meaning that thousands of liters of water go down the drain every week.
If you factor in the water you flush and the water you use to wash your hands, face, and teeth, this amount grows to astronomic heights, leaving one wondering how we could’ve ever become so irresponsible with water.
A number of different options are available to you, ranging from connecting your sink to your toilet, allowing you to reuse the water from washing your hands and brushing your teeth to flush down whatever it is that requires flushing, whereas a replacement for your current appliance should be as efficient as can be.
Look for products with the energy star label on them, and once you find them, you’ll know that they’ll be both effective and high quality, seeing as they passed a number of different inspections.
Use natural light
The sun is our main source of light, and it’d be a shame to let all that free energy go to waste, especially if you’ve got a well lite house/apartment.
Turning the lights on every night can quickly add up to a lot of money, especially if you’re forced to turn them on earlier than your neighbors, or if you keep them on for longer.
Instead, you can attempt to go without artificial light for as long as possible, using the sunlight as your illumination for the day, and only turning the lights on when it’s pitch black and impossible to see.
If you do this, you’ll notice some changes to your energy bill right away, and if those living with you implement this strategy as well, you could easily begin saving a couple of hundred dollars every year.
Ignore unsolicited mail
There’s nothing worse than receiving an entire handful of mail from the postman only to find out that one of them was relevant, whereas the rest was trash.
We all have subscriptions we’ve forgotten about, we’re just too lazy to figure out how to cancel them.
By putting an end to all this spam mail, you’re making sure that paper isn’t being wasted while also preventing yourself from eventually owing a lot of money to a company that you absolutely can’t pay it back to.
As long as you’ve got the original e-mails or the contract you signed upon receiving the subscription, you’re in luck, and it’ll be a hop, skip, and a jump to trash—free mail for years to come.
Final word
Not having an electric car doesn’t make you any less eco-friendly than your neighbors who do, but rather, one’s actions are what’s recognized.
Doing your part in protecting the planet is both noble and important, as we won’t be getting any second chances with Earth, and if we keep things up at this pace, we soon won’t have a planet to call home anyways.