If you are looking to find things you can do that will help reduce your climate impact, then this guide will be the one for you. I have been doing a little bit of research into things we can do to reduce our climate impact. Some of these are super easy and quick to do and the reward is great.
6 THINGS WE CAN DO TO REDUCE OUR CLIMATE IMPACT
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TURN TO GREENER ENERGY
One of the biggest changes you can make is switching to greener energy, whether it’s installing solar panels on your house or switching to more energy efficient appliances. Other things you can do include turning off electronics which are constantly on standby and not turning lights on unless you really need them, try to use natural daylight more often.
You can also switch your lightbulbs over to more energy efficient ones that use less energy and heat when you use them.
REDUCE OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT
Switching to a fully electric car or a hybrid which will really help reduce your carbon footprint. There is a huge market for these now with every major car manufacturer bringing out their e-models which are either fully electric or hybrid.
Other things you can do include using public transport, carpooling or car sharing with other people to reduce the cars on the road only filled with one person per car. I saw this very interesting post on Instagram, which had lots of cars in the road and claimed it was a traffic jam but there was only 1 person in each of the cars so if you take all of them off the road – there will be no traffic to clog up the roads.
GROW YOUR OWN
If you want to really test if you have a green thumb, learn to grow your own fresh produce. You can either grow from an off cut of something you already have or buy packets of seeds to grow from scratch. It is very rewarding and helps reduce the carbon emissions of it being delivered to the shops. I have just started to do this mainly for my rabbits veggies but also for me. I have an off cut of a romaine lettuce and it’s growing really well. It won’t grow fully but will grow leaves that I can use and eat. I have also bought a packet of different herbs and green leaved veggies to grow from scratch.
EAT LESS MEAT
So this isn’t me preaching to you to go completely vegan or vegetarian but it is known that meat production uses a lot more carbon emissions than the production of vegetables and vegan ingredients. Even if you give up eating meat a couple of times a week, it can really help make an impact.
You might be surprised to discover that farming animals is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. Meat and dairy production causes 14.5% of planet-warming gases. Producing meat industrially uses more carbon per calorie than producing grains and vegetables, and cutting meat and dairy products from your diet could reduce an individual’s carbon footprint from food by two-thirds, according to an Oxford study published in the journal Science.
SHOP IN BULK AND PLASTIC FREE
It breaks my heart every time I go in to a shop and see fruit and vegetables wrapped in plastic and in plastic packaging, when it wasn’t like that in the 1950s. You could buy fresh produce from markets and in stores completely free from plastic packaging and it was in paper bags that were a lot easier to recycle and compost down. Things these days have got a lot more lazy and mass produced in a bad way and we need to change that.
I really think we need to change this and do a lot more bulk shopping from smaller businesses where you can buy dried goods in bulk instead of buying a bag of rice in a plastic packet and adding to the landfill.
USE REUSEABLE ITEMS AND PRODUCTS
One thing you can do everyday is by getting reuseable and more sustainble products to use. I wouldn’t buy anything new until your less sustainable items have finished or come to the end of their life. Don’t buy things new like that just for the sake of it. Do your research for a good replacement whilst you are still using it before you buy a new version that is better for the planet. Good things to look at are how the product is produced, how you recycle or reuse them when they are finished and what they are made from and the impact that it can have.
There are lots of awesome brands out there for you to check out and I have written about quite a lot of them on my blog or socials. Brands like OneNine5, Ordo, Pela Case, Wild Deodorant and Zao Makeup are great ones to start with.
Photos used in this post are credit to Nadi Lindsay and Anete Lusina from Pexels.
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What are you doing to reduce your carbon footprint? Let me know what you are doing in the comments below.
Be kind,
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