7 Simple Ways to Live Earth Day Everyday
My family lives Earth day everyday through our sustainable lifestyle. It doesn’t have to be hard. There are numerous, tiny ways you can “vote with your dollar” to celebrate and give gratitude to Mother Earth who has given so much. It’s our turn to give back by supporting earth enhancing habits and purchases.
Here are 7 Simple Ways to Celebrate Earth Day Everyday, that I hope inspire you too:
1. Reduce plastic use. We avoid buying snacks with tons of plastic packaging and buy bulk where ever we can. We don’t use plastic bags and do our best to have zero waste buying the smallest garbage bin as a challenge. So far so good the last 7 years using a 20 gallon bin, sharing with our renter.
Even when it comes to everyday household items like floss, you can play your part. Floss with compostable silk floss in glass containers to reduce plastic impact on wildlife. If you google “floss wildlife”, I was shocked to see tiny bits of floss accumulate into these tangled balls of death traps for wildlife. I was happy to take action and simply buy compostable floss in a glass container.
2. Compost and Recycle. We are lucky to live in a town where we simply buy compostable bags and dump our food scraps in a bin, that can then get dropped into our yard waste bin.
Did you know food scraps are the #2 waste product following cotton from fast fashion of dumped clothes?
3. Shop with reusable canvas bags. We have an electric car and a hybrid car. So we put a set of 4-5 canvas bags in each set that we use shopping at Trader Joe’s so we never forget when out of town and out of our normal routine.
4. Buy fair trade and organic. Nothing like eating food and sourcing products free of child/slave labor in the production supplies that are paying fair wages and are not sprayed with toxic pesticides into our body.
If you think of your body as earth itself, would you want to pollute the home you have to impact your quality of life in future years?
5. Replace all LED light bulbs in our house. Not only will they last for 20+ years versus incandescent, you can get brands that are “happy lights.” Especially in Seattle where SAD can set in from dreary weather, I have a happy LED light right above my desk giving me an extra boost.
6. Offset carbon usage: A fun new way for those who travel a fair amount and feel guilty about the carbon footprint in flying on planes, is that there are now options when buying your airfare to offset carbon emissions by investing a small amount towards sustainable aviation fuel. My last plane ticket, I reduced my environmental impact of flying by offsetting carbon at 106.59 lb for $24.50 invested.
7. Take the New Humanity Pledge: This is a declaration you make to become a truly global Earth Citizen rather than a consumer. The author Ilchi Lee asks in his latest book A New Humanity, “Are you willing to sacrifice convenience, profit, and power for the benefit of all humanity?” If yes, I’ll put a link in the description of the simple pledge you can sign up for as a commitment. https://www.newhumanitypledge.org/.
BIGGER ACTIONS:
There are more bigger decisions we’ve made as well that require more time and patience, and well worthwhile.
Recycle Grey Water. We have redirected our plumbing pipes from from showers and sinks to flow into irrigation for our yard and plants, rather than irrigating using new fresh clean water.
Buy an Electric or Hybrid Car. Since 2007, not only saved us TONS on gas, along with tax credits, we feel great knowing our choices are helping reduce our carbon footprint.
While these actions require more thought and planning, start small. Making tiny changes each year goes a long way as we have done. There’s no effort to do the above now, and have saved lots of money along the way. This earth day everyday lifestyle is now unconscious, easy, and automatic. The biggest payoff is feeling good going to bed at night knowing that our lifestyle is aligned with our values.
Grow your Own Food. Not gonna lie. I was about to sell my Tower hydroponic garden after several failed attempts to grow greens, until it worked the 7th time. Now that we’ve learned from our failures, it’s a pleasure to grow enough chard, kale, spinach and spring greens for our meals. If you’re not up for this task, start with sprouting sides for microgreens! You can get a kit of 2 jars and seeds and you’ll harvest so many microgreens in a couple days, the abundance is amazing.
Tell me below! Which of the habits above do you also share or are now inspired to share?
