Shifting toward an eco-friendly lifestyle can help improve your life, health, and the world around you. Ditching needless chemicals, harmful foods, hostile Earth practices, and bad habits can lead to a healthier you and the preservation of the environment.
For example, you can benefit from renewable energy sources supplying your daily energy needs. Everything in your house could be powered by solar panels or wind turbines and that could mean more money saved on electrical bills and not having to suffer power outages again – they are too much of a good thing.
Wherever you live in the world, the 20 tips below are all attainable undertakings. Some of them are even fun! Have fun while you make this shift towards a healthier lifestyle.
1. Save Energy
One step you can take to have a direct and positive impact on the environment is decreasing the amount of energy you are using inside your home. Making your home greener by saving energy has great benefits in your life which, in turn, can save you more money in the long run.
Although some energy-saving methods require financial spending, in the beginning, the money you save will eventually add up and pay for itself.
Some energy-saving home enhancements you can adopt:
- Using low-energy light bulbs: CFLs or compact fluorescent lamps save money and energy– usually, they use 1/3 to 1/5 electricity compared to old versions of incandescent bulbs. They also last 8 to 15 times longer.
- Turn off appliances and other machines when they aren’t in use: Leaving items like computers, kitchen appliances, and audio-visual equipment on “standby” still uses electricity. If you’re not making use of these devices, you must turn them off completely.
- Unplug your charger once your tablet, laptop or phone is fully charged: When your electronic gadgets are fully charged, disconnect their charger to conserve power.
- Insulate your house: Insulating a home right can make heating more efficient. A few local authorities provide insulation projects, so it’s sensible to take the effort and time to investigate whether you’re qualified for free home insulation.
- Lower your thermostat: Decreasing the temperature on your thermostat by a couple of degrees will, eventually, reduce the energy amount and cash you spend on heating.
- Use low water temperature when washing laundry: Much of the energy utilized in washing clothes is spent on heating the water, thus always go for a lower temperature.
- Line-dry laundry: Tumble-drying clothes utilize huge amounts of electricity, therefore use a washing line and drying rack to dry your laundry in a more natural manner.
- Cover pans when you’re cooking: Always cover the pans whenever you cook– this cuts the energy amount that emits from open pans, and the time it takes to boil water and heat up food.
2. Save Water
As with cutting energy usage, saving water is another way to reduce the environmental effect of your lifestyle. It can also save you money.
- Make use of short cycles for washing laundry: New versions of washing machines include an “Eco Wash” alternative you should get the most out of.
- Fix leaks: Making sure your plumbing system has no leaks– including toilet cisterns, taps, and pipes – aids in preventing needless water wastage.
- Take short showers: Hot showers are a fantastic luxury, so do not waste this by showering too long.
- Turn off running tap water while brushing teeth: A frequently-forgotten bad habit that wastes litres of water. Turn it off.
- Install faucet aerators on every tap: Aerators are low-cost additions to the taps’ end that decrease the water flow while improving the pressure of the stream of a tap.
- Install a low-flow showerhead: Low-flow showerheads work the same way as tap aerators – aerating the water stream, improving pressure and saving plenty of energy and water.
- Boil only the amount of water you require: Coffee and tea drinkers can help here very much.
3. Save Fuel
Whenever possible, avoid using a vehicle. Cycling or walking can make short trips healthier and more fun. Always opt for public transportation routes if you’re travelling a lot.
Clearly, these options aren’t available to everybody and much depends on your personal conditions, but walking and cycling should get you going and help preserve the local environment.
4. Share Car Rides
Now if you need to travel via car, consider the possibilities for carpooling with neighbours and friends, sharing trips for leisure and work, to decrease the number of vehicles on the roads. Many busy offices keenly promote such projects, so ask around to determine if you can take advantage of this.
5. Go Organic
The food we eat has a huge effect on the world’s environment – as the worldwide population increases, the food demand grows and the stress on habitats and ecologies increases. The problems around food consumption, supply, and production are very complex, yet some considerations may help lessen the environmental effect of what you consume while maintaining a healthy lifestyle at the same time. These include:
- Choosing seasonal or local produce.
- If you consume meat, cut the number of meat-containing meals you eat every week.
- If you consume fish, choose sustainably sourced fishing techniques and species.
- Avoid mercury-contaminated fish (due to industrial pollution) – you can make use of the NRDC (Natural Resource Defense Council’s) guide for this.
- Avoid food with too much packaging, because this results in additional rubbish for your bin.
- Always opt for sustainable, fair-trade, eco-friendly foods, because they aid the economy.
6. Avoid Bottled Water
Bottled water is expensive, inefficient, and produces enormous amounts of plastic waste. Instead, drink tap water and buy a refillable water bottle. If you like, install a water filter to clean up tap water and then freeze it inside the refrigerator.
As Mother Nature points out, the very idea of bottled water is flawed because of our already direct access to healthy tap water.
7. Ditch Plastic Bags
Plastic bags are wasteful to our environment. It’s estimated that there are 1.11 billion plastic shopping bags used in the UK annually, and only 1% to 3% of the world’s plastic bags are reused or recycled.
This indicates an enormous amount of waste, and much of it ends up in the wild regions. You can help much by utilizing eco-friendly bags (such as paper) as well as recycling your old plastic bags that have been lying around.
8. Save the Bees!
You can do a lot of creative environmental activities, but one that’s quite important is the necessity to save the bees. These insects are crucial to pollinating the planet’s vibrant ecosystem, but they’ve been dying out because of pesticides.
Buying Organic Honey (in support of natural beekeeping) can help. You can also donate to various bee charities to help preserve their well-being.
9. Use Renewable Energy
Use solar panels, wind turbines, and other renewable sources of energy. Newcomers to solar power frequently do not know how to store power obtained from the sun. People tend to assume that it isn’t possible to store up effectively energy from sunlight.
Solar power innovators know that you can use a car battery. Running alternative currents from solar power and power stored in car batteries is a reliable and economical way to supply power to a residence without depending on the grid. This reduces your carbon footprint.
10. Use Freecycle
“Freecycle” is an internet-based community service that enables users to discover and share reusable stuff. Before buying, visit a local Freecycle community to check out if you can discover items for free, and if you have undesirable properties in your home, utilize the service to make use of them. It is simple to use and helps your local community as well as the wider environment.
11. Share and Borrow
Books, DVDs, CDs and lots more can be rented from friends and libraries. You can save on packaging and delivery by simply borrowing or renting something, plus, you can do something good for your friends as well to get a proper social interaction.
12. Green Gifts
When giving gifts, consider a greener alternative, like creating your gift, or offering your skills and time to do a favour for your loved one or friend. Also, you can use eco-friendly companies, like the Eden Project. Whichever country you live in, suitable sources will be available, so do a fast search to discover a unique present.
13. Grow Food in the Garden or Kitchen
Growing food saves cash, provides you with an understanding of food production, and allows you to be in touch with nature. Certainly, there is the issue of having neither space, energy, or time to plant and cultivate an entire vegetable patch, therefore aim for something simple like a potato sack or potted herbs, which can be grown efficiently on a window ledge.
14. Make Cleaning Products!
Recent household cleaning products are costly and frequently harmful to the environment. Therefore a green alternative is good for you and the planet. Safe and eco-friendly substitutes utilize ingredients like lemon, soap flakes, baking soda, vinegar, and cornstarch. The internet contains loads of information regarding these recipes.
15. Select Plant-Based Cleaning Products
If you have no time to create cleaning products, then you can switch to eco-friendly alternatives instead. Brands like Ecover are created from natural, plant-based, sustainable ingredients and are biodegradable. Very handy for the local wildlife and your crockery.
16. Purchase Recycled Paper
Modern recycled paper is seamlessly acceptable for most daily letter printing and documents.
17. Go Paperless
If you would like to go further, then you can go paperless! You can get your letters and bills from energy companies, banks, and other services via email. And note that do not print off documents unless it is important. Also, you can help the process by recycling any card and paper you don’t need.
18. Repurpose Household Items
Everyone ought to be recycling household stuff, but this frequently varies according to the recycling provisions in the local area. Another alternative for avoiding disposing of household goods is by repurposing them – modifying them for a fresh, new purpose in life.
This may be anything from unfilled jam jars to store other foodstuff, wine bottles modified to become attractive lamp shades or vases, tin cans converted to tea light holders or any other items that be repurposed with your creativity and imagination. Pinterest, a social media network, has loads of such concepts for inspiration.
19. Celebrate the Green Way
Huge celebrations are frequently associated with consumption and extravagance. You can continue this as it ought to be. However, you can go, Green, while you are enjoying yourself.
For example, gestures, like making invites from recycled materials, requesting visitors to bring homemade food, as well as choosing local or fair trade food items, can go a long way. Once the party’s done, you can gather all the utilized goods and modify them into something cool, if you are the creative sort.
20. Green Holidays
Holidays can have detrimental effects on the areas tourists go to through fuel consumption, pollution, damage to local habitats, and distortions in economies.
When preparing for a holiday, you must consider green alternatives, or a “staycation” by relishing in a local holiday, therefore cutting the environmental effect of vacationing, and engaging or benefiting the ecology, economy, and your local community. Green Loon is a good place to begin; they offer a few amazing destinations with the satisfying Green factor.
Conclusion
Eco-living can be quite rewarding for people who are bold enough to make a difference in their lifestyles. There would be some minor adjustments to make in the beginning but if you develop the good habit, you would be happy to discover how much it will pay off for you and the environment in the end.
The benefits of eco-living vastly outweigh anything that an unhealthy, unsustainable life can offer. You can enjoy a healthier and greener way of life, reducing your energy costs, avoiding pollution and increasing your contribution to preserving this beautiful planet.
Follow the 20 eco-living tips for a healthier lifestyle and feel your life change for the better every day. People who have done this already can tell you that their lifestyle choices have to lead to creative ways in which they can live healthier lives. Good luck on your journey!
Explore additional resources and expand your knowledge. Click here to learn more: 50 Ways to Reduce Climate Change
