4 Ways to Make Your Everyday Routine Greener

Raising environmental awareness starts with how you approach the things you do every day, even the simplest ones. After all, if you begin with smaller things, you can advance to doing increasingly more for the planet as the time passes. One great place to start is your everyday routine. While you may be used to doing everything in a manner that perhaps hasn’t changed in ages, making a few smarter decisions can go a long way towards preserving nature. If you’ve given this some thought, but still haven’t come up with any good ideas, here are some that can help you make your routine greener now.

Move Around Wisely

How you get to and from work, or anywhere else really, matters tremendously. If you travel everywhere by car, you’re most likely causing more harm to the environment than you truly have to. If your workplace isn’t too far from home, you should make it a habit to go on foot or by bike. Aside from being kinder to the planet, you’ll also be doing your own body and your overall health a favor. In case walking and cycling would take too long and aren’t an option, there are other environmentally-friendly options to consider. One of them is certainly public transport, as taking a bus or, even better, a train would be an excellent alternative to your car. If that’s also extremely complicated, which can happen to people who live in rural areas and work in cities, you should try to find somebody in your proximity who commutes to the same place as you, and give carpooling a shot, as at least then you won’t drive two or more cars when you can easily fit into one.

Aim for Going Paperless

The environmental impact of paper production can be described as devastating and there are several types of actions you can take to cut down on paper use. In the office, you can digitalize your files and keep them in a cloud storage for everybody to access from anywhere. Use devices and apps instead of paper to write notes, lists and messages and switch to electronic billing. At home, you can take your name out of mailing lists for all sorts catalogues and junk mail, since most of them have been available on the internet for a while now. Similarly, you can cancel all of your newspaper or magazine subscriptions unless they have an online version for you to read. You can even get an e-reader, so that you can stop buying paper books. Finally, replace kitchen paper towels and facial tissues with reusable ones and contemplate installing a bidet in your bathroom to reduce your toilet-paper usage. If not, you can simply choose recycled over the regular toilet paper.

More Sustainable Beauty Routine

If you’re serious about your daily skincare routine, it surely adds up to a lot of products and valuable resources on an annual level and it’s something you should be careful with. First of all, be mindful about water usage and save on energy by opting for lukewarm water rather than warm or hot. Next, when removing makeup and dirt from your face, always opt for reusable cloth cleansing pads, which you can rewash many times. These are a much eco-friendlier variety of the single-use cotton pads. As far as the skin-care, body-care and beauty products you buy go, do your best to invest only in top-quality natural skin care cosmetics. The most adequate ones do as much for you as they do for the planet, meaning that they’re made of plant-based and vegan ingredients, that they weren’t tested on animals and that they’re free of GMOs, synthetic fragrances and colors, or formaldehyde, to begin with. Look for products which are sustainably sourced and that only contain natural aromas.

Shop With Ecology in Mind

The way you shop is definitely worth revising and correcting, as being thoughtful about it allows you to be kinder to the environment. Merely reusing shopping bags can make a huge difference, as can rationalizing your shopping lists. Namely, buying food or other products in bulks may seem like a bargain, but not so much if you end up getting a needlessly huge amounts of something and then throwing it away once it goes bad. Aside from that, you should buy local produce instead of the imported, since a lot of air and water pollution comes from transport of goods. Furthermore, you should buy food that’s in season, preferably directly from farmers, especially those who grow organic food and sell them in sustainable packaging. Avoid buying things on impulse, so that you don’t pile up items you don’t actually need. Plus, whenever possible, buy used pieces of clothes, furniture or whatever else you need. The key is to prevent anything you can from winding up in landfills, when there’s a chance for it to serve its purpose in your home.

You may thing that you’re just one person and that you could never make a visible change in the world, but in fact, your behavior and attitudes matter greatly. If each of us made an effort and did what’s in our power to preserve the environment, we would live in a healthier and more beautiful world.

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