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With climate change gaining more coverage across various media platforms everyday, it’s hard to escape from the shocking reality of the impact humankind is having on the planet. Every individual person has their own carbon footprint, which can be measured and changed depending upon the sort of lifestyle they choose to lead. Each little decision you make during your day can alter the impact you have on the environment, and you are ultimately responsible for whatever comes after what you opt for. However, there are things you can do in order to decrease your negative effect on the planet and live a sustainable and eco-friendly life. By assessing some key aspects of your day to day decisions, you can rethink and evolve to make better choices and keep Earth alive for future generations to enjoy.
Photo by Pixabay from Pexels
Change Your Diet
The food that you consume can have a huge effect on your total contribution to global warming. By eating a diet high in meat and animal products, you are essentially funding industries that destroy the planet and care very little about the environment around them. Agricultural farming is now taking up so much space that the Amazon rainforest is being obliterated to make way for thousands if cows to use land for milk and meat. It also takes a considerable amount of food to fatten up livestock, meaning that as well as dedicating miles and miles of land to animals, you must create an even faster space to grow a sufficient amount of crops for them to eat. Farming meat and dairy to an excess causes soil and water degradation, a decrease in biodiversity, and even acid rain, and it’s said that animal agriculture causes more emissions and greenhouse gases to be released into the atmosphere than all modes of transport combined, including ships, planes and cars. By opting for a plant based diet, you can ensure that you are in fact helping the planet with the food choices you make. Eating vegan is the most sustainable diet you can choose, and it will help your carbon footprint shrink dramatically. It’s not difficult to make the switch, but it’s better to ease yourself and your family in slowly by starting off with one day a week, such as ‘meat free Mondays’.
Cut Your Plastic Use
Plastic is one of the worst materials to be invented in terms of having a negative impact on the planet. Plastic can take hundreds or even thousands of years to break down and degrade, which can mean they stay completely intact for longer than the person that threw them away. There are so many things you can do to cut down your own plastic use and prevent the rising levels that are clogging the oceans and causing dramatic harm to all kinds of wildlife. Invest in some kind of cotton totes to use instead of carrier bags, as a reusable and recyclable container for your shopping will cut your weekly plastic use drastically. Don’t use the clear bags provided for fruit and vegetables in the grocery store either, as these are pointless due to the natural protective barrier these foodstuffs have evolved to have, and the fact you will still have to wash your produce either way anyway. Say no to disposable cutlery when ordering takeaways, and buy a reusable water bottle to fill up at home rather than buying individuals from the store again and again to use and throw away.
Walk, Run Or Cycle
When you think about emissions, you probably relate this to cars and other exhaust fumes. Choosing to walk instead of driving when it’s a short distance will help to reduce your carbon footprint dramatically, and you can even invest in a bicycle if you want to travel longer distances in a much more environmentally friendly way than your usual motorway stint. If you really must take some kind of transport, opt for the bus rather than a taxi or car. Each bus, depending on their size, has the potential of removing over 20 cars from the road. By opting for a shared mode of transport such as the bus, you will be able to reduce your emissions drastically along with everybody else onboard. Most forms of public transport are more environmentally friendly than going it alone in your own way, so why not have a look at what options are available for your usual roots.
Recreate Your Beauty Routine
The contents of your kitchen cabinet can be a haven for unnatural chemicals and harmful products that will make your environmental impact much greater. If you cannot read or pronounce the ingredients of your face wash, you probably should not be using it so vigorously every morning. Most of these chemicals were actually mass produced in a lab to mimic a feature of a natural product in a less expensive way, which means there are most definitely alternatives out there that will be much more pure and better for both your skin and the environment. Every time you wash away these products down the sink, they get into the waterways and can easily cause damage to wildlife if they come into contact with it. If you’re not sure where to start when it comes to recreating your beauty routine, visit artNaturals to see the wealth of different products you can choose from. You can even create replacements for your usual products by yourself with kitchen ingredients, such as face masks made from bananas and honey.
Hopefully this guide can help you start to make some great changes in order to lead a more natural and environmentally friendly life. Rethink your usual habits such as the way you eat and get around, and address the impacts that your everyday decisions will have on the planet before you commit to making them. Every little bit will add up over time, and the more you commit to changing the greater your chances will be of reducing your carbon footprint once and for all.