Ways to Live More Eco-friendly
With the extreme weather that we have recently been experiencing in the UK, many of us are becoming more acutely aware of the way that our lifestyles may be having an impact on the earth. As such, so many of us are now on a journey to becoming more eco-friendly.
More than ever, we are more eco-conscious as we all actively educate ourselves and take action to help do what we can to reduce climate change. Living more eco-friendly is about living day to day as consciously as possible. It’s about making everyday choices that will quite literally help to determine our success or failure as a species.
We can be more conscious about reducing pollution, protecting wildlife, conserving natural resources and we can take certain actions that can help slow the rate of climate change. Each of us can actively make a difference individually and as a collective. Changing our habits and making smart environmental choices can become the norm in our lives and in-turn our eco actions can even begin influencing others into taking similar actions.
Doing the right thing for the future of life on Earth can even have immediate personal benefits. It can tap into our creativity, it can get you more engaged with your community and the world, and may even contribute to a healthier lifestyle too for you.
Starting your eco journey doesn’t need to cost you the Earth. You can make changes in your home right away by doing things such reducing food waste by shopping more sustainably. Buying just what you need by ensuring that you stick to your shopping lists, even buying yellow sticker foods that are reduced in price and can be frozen and used as required will help you to save money and help your food retailers to reduce food waste too.
Other ways include ideas like washing your clothes on lower temperatures like 30 degrees. Using your dryer less and trying to dry laundry on something like a clothes horse instead or even hanging your clothes up to dry, in the great outdoors weather depending of course.
You can walk short journeys when possible to reduce using your car whenever you can. You can remember to switch off lights and sockets in your home when they’re not in use. Shopping in places like charity shops for bits and bobs and even using your local social media market places to find useful second hand items and to sell items that you want to offload can also help you on your journey to becoming more eco-friendly. The key is to do what you can dependant on your own abilities and means.
I’m personally a big advocate of living as eco-friendly as possible. I truly believe that even the smallest of changes can make huge differences.
As well as the ideas, I’ve outlined above about ways to living more eco-friendly, I have some other ideas below to help you to take the leap to make changes for the better.
- Swap buying bottles of shampoos and conditioners and instead possibly buying shampoo and conditioner bars. Shampoo and conditioner bars are a great way to help you to reduce plastic waste in your bathroom.
- Using soap bars for body washing instead of shower gels. There are some beautiful soap bars around with gorgeous scents. These are perfect for bathing, hand washing and even washing your dishes (There are particular washing up soap bars for this.) Again this assists in reducing your plastic waste.
- When it comes to dental care, changing to bamboo toothbrushes for brushing your teeth or if you prefer electric toothbrushes, then using recyclable electric toothbrush heads instead. Every plastic toothbrush that you have ever had and will ever have will more than likely be around longer than you’re alive for. Following on from this, swapping your plastic based mouth washes for mouth wash tablets, toothpaste tubes for toothpaste tablets and plastic based dental floss for compostable and eco-friendly floss instead.
- Using a reusable water bottle that can be refilled over and over again means that you don’t have to buy single use plastic bottles of water. On the go, using reusable lunch boxes, wooden cutlery, paper sandwich bags and even compostable cling film can also be helpful too.
- Shaving razors are made out of plastic and their packaging can find their way into landfill (and often oceans). Plastic razors can take hundreds of years to decompose. Changing to a safety razor means less plastic waste as you only need to dispose of the used double edge blades which are recyclable and 100% plastic free.
- The beauty industry is one of the biggest contributors to plastic waste. Much of this industry continues to grow because of our consumption. Swapping beauty items to eco-friendly ones can be of great help. Alternatives like bamboo cotton buds, reusable make-up remover wipes, wooden instead of plastic make-up brushes and even items such as re-fillable eye shadows, refillable mascaras and re-fillable blushers are also available.
- When it comes to your home and cleaning, using natural cleaning products can also be helpful. Eco-cleaning pods are a phenomenal plastic free alternative that means that you don’t have to keep buying new plastic bottles of cleaning products. You can also get hold of plastic free dish washer tablets, laundry powder sheets and so much more.
As a whole, the best solution for us and the earth is to use less plastic so that we recycle less. Recycling helps but it’s not the only answer. Where possible reusing your plastic bottles and containers is essential and eliminating single use plastic that comes in a myriad of forms.
Much of what we now need to do is an unlearning of ways of how we have been living. With our fast paced lifestyles, we need to re-educate ourselves to think more simply, resourcefully and to show more compassion for our environment at every point.
It is important that we remember how lucky we are to have what we have and that we appreciate and are grateful for our environment. We are now at a time when we all need to learn about the importance of looking after what we’ve got and making the right decisions based on our world and what our world needs.