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Three Sustainable Living Tips



Sustainable living is a way of life that utilizes natural resources and limits excess waste to be more earth conscious. In modern day media, living a sustainable lifestyle is made out to seem expensive and time consuming, but that simply isn’t true! Check out some sustainable living tips that are inexpensive, easy, and help the earth below!

Plastic Waste:

Single-use plastic is one of the most detrimental everyday materials that we use in modern-day society. Plastic water bottles take 450 years to decompose which is about twice as long as the United States has been a country (Plastic Breakdown, SOS Future). 80% of all plastic waste goes to landfills or to the ocean, which contaminates our food and water. While it is near impossible for one person to solve this problem, there are ways to limit plastic waste. Reusable water bottles are an incredibly useful solution since they get to be used consistently over time and don’t go directly into the ocean or landfills. Reusable water bottles prevent 156 plastic water bottles from going into the environment (Single-Use Plastic Water Bottles, Beyond Plastics). But not everyone is perfect and, as human beings, we can be forgetful sometimes. There will be days when someone forgets to bring their water bottle from home and needs to buy a single-use bottle. For this, there is another solution from plastic bottles! Boxed water is Better is a brand that prides itself on having 92% plant-based packaging . They have also planted over 1 million trees to give back to the plants that they are taking (“Our Product” Boxed Water is Better). While this is not a perfect solution, “Boxed Water is Better” is a more environmentally-friendly alternative to using a single-use plastic water bottle and then throwing it away where it’ll almost definitely go to the ocean.

Be aware of your food:

It is no secret that the meat industry uses practices that are detrimental to the environment. They produce 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions every year, not to mention the massive amounts of deforestation that occurs (Environmental Effects of Meat Production, The World Counts). Similarly the fishing industry takes an unsustainable amounts of fish from the ocean and leaves behind plastic from their gear. However, this information isn’t new or incredibly shocking anymore. Seeing these statistics and many others makes it hard to not want to make some change to prevent this unsustainable exploitation. There is a misunderstanding of what people can do in order to make a change; it doesn’t have to be going 100% vegetarian or contributing to awful practices. My tip is to just be aware of where your food comes from and how it gets to the grocery store. If there are parts of your diet that come from unhealthy practices, try to limit those and go for more positive food. You can even make a fun outing out of sustainable eating by going to a farmer's market. Farmer’s markets allow people to talk directly to the people to create the food you consume and you would be supporting small businesses. Buying directly from the farmer also minimizes plastic waste since the food is going directly to hte consumer. Farmers who participate in farmer’s markets also use zero or less chemicals as well as use certified organic farming practices. Eating sustainably doesn’t require changing your life, all it needs is small changes that make a positive impact.

Reuse, Reduce, Recycle:

This motto is something that we have all been taught from an early age; to do our part to save the planet we need to Reuse, Reduce, and Recycle (“11 Simple Tips For Sustainable Living in 2021” The Common Wanderer). Most of the time, however, we only focus on the recycling part and not reusing and reducing aswell. We should incorporate every part of this moto into our lives. For example, if you have styrofoam from a package, shred it up to make fake snow for an art project. There are many ways that we can reuse and reduce the trash that we create and it’s important to make sure that you are doing your best to limit the waste that immediately goes to the landfill. If you are low on ideas for projects use Pinterest to look up suggestions. If you have children you can make it into a fun weekend activity to spur creativity.

Sustainable living doesn't require one to change their entire life. All it takes is some ideas and small changes to create a positive impact out of negative ones.



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