5 Ways to Make Your Life More Sustainable

5 Ways to Make Your Life More Sustainable

Worried about climate change but not sure if you’re doing enough to make your life more sustainable? Well, we’re not sharing anything particularly groundbreaking here, but often, the most sustainable tips are the ones that take things back to basics. 

So here, we’re sharing 5 of our favorite ways to make life more sustainable. Let’s begin!

Do more walking.

These days, unless you live in a highly pedestrian city like New York or Chicago, everyone with a driver’s license has their own car. But, that wasn’t always the way. 

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, a typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. So if you, your spouse and your two teenage children all have cars, you can go ahead and quadruple that number – and that’s just for one household!

To make your life more sustainable, try walking to do more walking. Walk to the grocery store or, if you can, walk to work. And as a bonus, walking is not only an easy way to reduce your carbon emissions, but it’s fantastic for your health too!

5 Ways to Make Your Life More Sustainable 3

Travel locally.

Similar to your daily driving, traveling long distances by car or plane also releases a lot of carbon emissions that damage the planet. The Air Transport Action Group estimates that the aviation industry alone produces around 2.1% of all human-induced CO₂ emissions.

Still, even with this knowledge, many of us take vacations all over the world, sometimes multiple times per year. When at the end of the day, traveling locally (at least some of the time) has a lot to offer while offsetting a huge amount of harmful carbon emissions.

Many of us never take the time to explore the cities we live in. So, choose to take a staycation or travel only an hour or so away for a holiday. Even if you travel locally for every other vacation you take, you’ll do a lot towards making your life more sustainable.

Invest in renewable energy.

Another way to live more sustainably is by investing in renewable energy. Depending on where you live, the reasonable type of renewable energy available to you will vary. 

In places like Australia where it’s mostly sunny, solar power would be the way to go. On the coasts of Canada, perhaps hydroelectricity is worth looking into. And in the open plains of middle America, wind power is likely a great option.

Currently, most of the world’s electricity is powered by fossil fuels which makes up 25% of the total greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change – a vast majority of all the sources. 

As the climate crisis continues, investing in renewable energy now by doing things like installing solar panels, for example, you can start to slowly transition your home and business to be powered fully by renewables sooner than later for a more sustainable home every day.

Bring a grocery bag.

While some places in the world no longer allow grocery stores to pack your groceries in single-use plastic bags anymore (unless you want to pay about 15 cents per bag), you should still always bring your own reusable bags to the grocery store. 

With over 953 billion (and counting) single-use plastic bags produced worldwide every year, this is a simple change you can make to make your life much more sustainable. 

Instead of these plastic bags ending up in oceans and landfills, get used to bringing your reusable bags to the grocery store every single time.

 

5 Ways to Make Your Life More Sustainable

 

Eat organic.

Organic food refers to food in its purest form. This means no additives, GMOs, and minimal (if any) processing. While they’re usually more expensive than other fruits and vegetables in your grocery store, they’re worth it for sustainability.

More specifically, organic farming is what makes organic food better for the environment. Organic farming relies on the seasons and uses the other crops growing around it to naturally fertilize one another without the use of anything artificial.

As opposed to conventional farming that uses chemicals and GMOs to grow single crops in huge batches, organic farming grows lots of things all together to avoid the need for anything unnatural. 

With that, there’s no chemical runoff into our soil and waterways or other harmful environmental effects with organic farming. Not to mention, organic food is incredibly nutritious and better for your health and fitness goals too!

So, with all that said, it leads us to the question, what are your favorite ways to make your life more sustainable?

 

5 Ways to Make Your Life More Sustainable

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