Think of it this way: let's say that these environmental troubles are a disease—possibly heart disease. Not everyone can spend their time and energy looking for the cure, or researching medicine. However, everyone can take steps to prevent this disease from happening to them or those around them. Not everyone can spend time looking for ultimate solutions to pollution and sustainable living, but everyone can take simple measures to decrease their impact on the environment.
That's the purpose of this blog: to give people tips on how they can change their everyday lives to give more consideration to the environment. These are things you can do right away to narrow your ecological footprint.
LEARN MORE: A First Step Towards Saving the Planet
So how can you become more earth friendly? Well, one of the best ways to start out is to put your life in an environmental perspective. What I've found to be the best way to go about doing this is to find out your ecological footprint--in short, how much land on average is required to sustain your current lifestyle. My favorite tool for calculating this is called myfootprint.org, where you are asked just a few simple questions and given statistics based on your answers. The biggest problem with this system of measurement is that there are many different theories on how these acres should be calculated and how many acres are to be used per person to be considered "ecologically sustainable". However, quantifying anything associated with environmental sustainability is difficult enough as is; I find that, either way, this tool and measurement together can help give a good starting point to anyone looking to make their lives more friendly to the environment.
For example, I took the quiz and got results a bit like these:
CATEGORY: ACRES
FOOD: 5.9
MOBILITY: 1.5
SHELTER: 5.2
GOODS/SERVICES: 5.9
TOTAL FOOTPRINT: 18
I'm not exactly proud of some of these results, considering that the website also states that there are about 4.5 biologically productive acres per person worldwide. My results when matched up with the national average, though--24 acres per person--brightened my hopes a little bit.
You can also use the "Take Action" function on their website to figure out how much your activities affect your ecological footprint. If you really plan on taking action to reduce your ecological footprint, this is another helpful tool.
Once you have this information, you can form a plan of action. Once you begin to form your plan, there are several things you can do without having to change your lifestyle very much to slowly reduce your ecological footprint.
BUY EARTH FRIENDLY: Think a Little, Save a Lot
Almost immediately you can start out helping your environment by making different choices when buying both consumer goods and groceries. When it comes to these goods, here are a couple of tips for buying earth friendly:
- Buy from our store at http://www.earthfriendlyfinds.com/ for various consumer goods, including beauty products, housewares, purifiers, etc. Some interesting finds are recycled wine bottles, refinished and cut to create glasses and cups, and also biodegradable, non-toxic ice packs for both home use and shipping. The biodegradable ice packs can also be found at http://www.icepackstore.com/.
- Be more earth conscious at the grocery store! You can kill two birds with one stone by buying less meat. Meat requires much more land for much less food, and it's also much more cost effective to lower the amount of meat you eat. Being a vegetarian, although a bit extreme of a measure, can cut down both your food bill and your ecological footprint. If you're a big meat eater and simply cannot reduce your meat intake, research a bit to see which meats take the least resources to produce.
- Buy recycled products, but be careful about how the recycled label is used. Be especially careful when buying recycled paper, because technically, as long as a paper has a certain percentage recycled set by the EPA, it can be considered recycled--but this recycled material does not have to be the conventional type that is recycled after consumer use; it can be just shreds of paper created as waste in the manufacturing process. This way, paper companies can use the label without actually using post-consumer recycled paper and save money by putting their waste to use. Although this is technically recycling, to buy what I consider real recycled paper--paper that actually makes use of already used paper--you should make sure that the packaging mentions that it uses post-consumer recycled paper besides the regular recycled label. Don't be fooled by the companies!
- If you can, buy food as locally as possible. This cuts down on fossil fuels used to transport your food. Farmers Markets are the best way to go about doing this, and have many benefits besides being locally grown. In a farmers market, you can buy food for about the same price, know that it is probably locally grown, have more money going back to farmers by cutting out the middle man, and select from a greater percentage of organic foods. Also, farmers markets are gaining popularity in North America, making them easier to find.
- Also, when you're buying your groceries and consumer goods, always look to buy the products with the least packaging. This way you can cut down on waste to slow down filling up landfills, and also save extra energy that companies use to add the extra packaging. So cut down on the snack-sized packaging!
These are just a few tips to help start conserving goods, land and energy that everyone can implement to do their part in saving our environment. To get some more ideas, look at our products on www.earthfriendlyfinds.com and keep tuned for more helpful posts.
