We are all ecologists at heart, and care for our planet as for ourselves. About once a week, after heart-rending TV reports about seal hunting, melting Arctic ice, the greenhouse effect and global warming, you urgently want to join Greenpeace, the Green Party, the World Wildlife Fund or another environmental organization. The ardor, however, quickly passes, and we have enough maximum to force ourselves not to litter in public places.
Do you want to help your planet, but don’t know how? It turns out that simple household actions can save a lot of electricity, save rainforests and reduce environmental pollution. Instructions for homegrown ecologists are attached. It is not necessary to fulfill all the points without exception – you can help the planet with one thing.
1. Change a light bulb
If every home were to replace at least one ordinary light bulb with an energy-saving fluorescent bulb, the reduction in environmental pollution would be equivalent to simultaneously reducing the number of cars on the roads by 1 million cars. Unpleasant light cutting on the eyes? Energy-saving light bulbs can be used in toilets, utility rooms, closets – where its light will not be so annoying.
2. Turn off your computer at night
A hint for computer geeks: if you turn off your computer at night instead of the usual “sleep” mode, you can save 40 kilowatt-hours a day.
3. Skip the primary rinse
The usual way for everyone to wash dishes: we turn on running water, and while it flows, we rinse the dirty dishes, only then we use detergent, and at the end we rinse again. The water continues to flow. It turns out that if you skip the first rinse and do not turn on the running water until the detergent is rinsed off, you can save about 20 liters of water during each dishwashing. The same applies to the owners of dishwashers: it is better to skip the stage of the initial rinsing of dishes and proceed immediately to the washing process.
4. Do not put the oven on preheat
All dishes (except, perhaps, baking) can be put in a cold oven and turned on after that. Save energy and contribute to the fight against global warming. By the way, it is better to watch the cooking process through heat-resistant glass. Do not open the oven door until the food is ready.
5. Donate bottles
There is nothing shameful in this. Recycling glass reduces air pollution by 20% and water pollution by 50%, which is produced by glass factories that produce new bottles. By the way, a discarded bottle will take about a million years to “rot”.
6. Say no to diapers
Easy to use, but extremely non-environmental – baby diapers make life easier for parents, but undermine the “health” of the planet. By the time of mastering the potty, one single child has time to stain from about 5 to 8 thousand “diapers”, which is 3 million tons of poorly processed garbage from one baby. The choice is yours: diapers and cloth diapers will greatly facilitate the life of your home planet.
7. Make a comeback with ropes and clothespins
Dry things on clotheslines, exposing it to the sun and wind. Tumble dryers and washer dryers use a lot of electricity and ruin things.
8. Celebrate Vegetarian Day
If you are not a vegetarian, then at least once a week arrange a Meat-Free Day. How will this help the planet? Consider for yourself: to produce a pound of meat, about 10 thousand liters of water and several trees are required. That is, each eaten hamburger “destroys” about 1,8 square meters. kilometers of tropical forest: the trees went to the coals, the cut area became a pasture for cows. And if you remember that it is the rainforests that are the “lungs” of the planet, then Vegetarian Day does not seem like a big sacrifice.
9. Wash in cold water
If all owners of washing machines in the country begin to wash clothes at a temperature of 30-40 degrees, this will save energy equivalent to 100 barrels of oil per day.
10. Use one less tissue
The average person uses 6 paper napkins a day. By reducing this amount by one napkin, 500 thousand tons of napkins can be saved from falling into garbage cans and the planet from excess garbage in a year.
11 Remember paper has two sides
Office workers annually throw away about 21 million tons of drafts and unnecessary papers in A4 format. This insane amount of garbage can be at least “halved” if you do not forget to set the “print on both sides” option in the printer settings.
12 Collect waste paper
Remember your pioneer childhood and collect old newspaper files, magazines read to holes and advertising booklets, and then take them to your local waste paper collection point. By scrapping the backing of a single newspaper, half a million trees can be saved every week.
13. Avoid bottled water
About 90% of plastic water bottles will never be recycled. Instead, they will be thrown into landfills, where they will lie for thousands of years. If tap water is not to your liking, purchase a reusable bottle of several tens of liters and refill as needed.
14. Take a shower instead of a bath
Water consumption during a shower is half that of a bath. And much less energy is spent on heating water.
15. Don’t turn on the water while brushing your teeth.
Running water, which we thoughtlessly turn on as soon as we go into the bathroom in the morning, we absolutely do not need while brushing our teeth. Give up this habit. And you will save 20 liters of water per day, 140 per week, 7 per year. If every Russian would give up this unnecessary habit, the daily water savings would be about 300 billion liters of water per day!
16. Spend less time showering.
Every two minutes taken away from your own desire to soak up a little longer under warm streams will save 30 liters of water.
17. Plant a tree
First, you will complete one of the three necessary things (plant a tree, build a house, give birth to a son). Secondly, you will improve the condition of the air, land, and water.
18. Shop second hand
Things “second-hand” (literally – “second hand”) – these are not second-class things, but things that have gained a second life. Toys, bicycles, roller skates, strollers, car seats for children – these are things that outgrow very quickly, so quickly that they do not have time to wear out. Buying things in second-hand, you save the planet from overproduction and pollution of the atmosphere, which occurs during the manufacture of new things.
19. Support a domestic manufacturer
Just imagine the amount of damage that would be done to the environment if the tomatoes for your salad were shipped from Argentina or Brazil. Buy locally produced goods: in this way you will support small farms and slightly reduce the greenhouse effect, which is also affected by numerous transports.
20. When leaving, turn off the light
Every time you leave the room for at least a minute, turn off the incandescent lamps. It is better to turn off energy-saving lamps if you are going to leave the room for more than 15 minutes. Remember, you save not only the energy of light bulbs, but also prevent overheating of the room and reduce the energy consumption for the operation of air conditioners.
21. Label glasses
Having started a friendly picnic in nature and armed with disposable tableware, at some point you get distracted and forget where you put your plastic cup. The hand immediately reaches for a new one – they say, why regret disposable dishes? Have pity on the planet – there is so much garbage on it. Take a permanent marker with you to a picnic, and let your friends write their names on the cups – this way you will definitely not mix them up and spend much less plastic utensils than you could.
22. Don’t throw away your old cell phone
Better take it to a collection point for used equipment. Every gadget thrown into the bin causes irreparable damage: their batteries emit toxic waste into the atmosphere.
23. Recycle aluminum cans
It takes the same amount of energy to produce one new aluminum can as it takes to produce 20 recycled aluminum cans.
24. Work from home
The popularity of remote work is gaining momentum. In addition to reducing the company’s expenses for equipping a workplace for an employee, the environment also benefits, which is not polluted in the morning and in the evening by the exhausts of home-workers’ cars.
25. Choose matches
The bodies of most disposable lighters are made of plastic and filled with butane. Every year, one and a half billion of these lighters end up in city dumps. In order not to pollute the planet, use matches. An important addition: matches should not be wooden! Use matches made from recycled cardboard.
Sourced from wireandtwine.com