Modern living is both wasteful and expensive. In the US alone, we produce around 254 million tons of waste every year. That’s around 4.4 pounds of solid waste per person per day. Needless to say that this is not sustainable. In fact, if we carry on at this rate, the late great Stephen Hawking predicted that we’ll have rendered our planet completely uninhabitable within a century. We all know that we should be doing more to help save the planet, but doing so is expensive, time-consuming and disruptive to our lifestyles, right? Right? Well… Not necessarily. There are many ways in which you can make a real difference to the environment without changing your lifestyle… And you can even save money too.
Most of the time, all it takes is the judicious switching of a few products of a few very tiny lifestyle changes to make the world a better place…
Use fewer, but better cleaning products
We have a national addiction to cleaning products. As important as a clean, tidy and well-maintained home are, we don’t need to waste a fortune on expensive products to facilitate one. We have been conditioned to believe that we need one product for sinks and baths, one product for the floor, one product for kitchens, one product for bathrooms, another product for surfaces… The truth is that one single cleaner will do the job just as well on all of these surfaces. It doesn’t need to be packed full of environmentally damaging unstable organic compounds, either. Just check out some of the products at www.CleanHappens.com. Not only are they made out of safe, all natural ingredients, they’re made domestically so they have less carbon footprint and they’re manufactured using sustainable solar power.
Eat more veggies and less of everything else
We all want to stay in shape, be healthy and eat right… But many of us go about it in entirely the wrong way; buying prepackaged low fat ready meals which are usually wrapped in non recyclable plastics. If you want to get in shape, save money and still make a difference, buying loose fresh veggies is the best path open to you. These foods are simply loaded with phytonutrients to help you to stay healthy and keep illness at bay. Try to reduce your consumption of meat and dairy products, too. Livestock, especially cows, produce more environmentally harmful waste into our skies and rivers than the entire transportation industry combines. In fact, simply quitting beef reduces your carbon footprint more than getting rid of your car. Eat more veggies, grains and pulses and less of everything else and you’ll find that you lose weight, gain disposable income and make the world a greener place.
Don’t buy bottled water… Ever
Seriously, what’s the point? Beverage companies have been trying to convince us that their water is better than the stuff we get out of the tap for free for decades now. Drinking more bottled water certainly hasn’t made us any healthier. All it’s done has led to a pandemic of plastic water bottled going into landfill waste at a rate of a million bottles per minute. Experts predict that if we carry on at this rate there will be more plastic than fish in our oceans by 2050.
Saving the planet doesn’t have to cost a penny. Do it right, and you’ll actually save a small fortune.
