How Your Everyday Habits Can Impact the Climate Crisis

Friday, September 22, 2017

As much as poor industrial practices have been blamed for damaging the environment and the climate crisis, human activity has contributed a lot to this damage as well. Inefficient water usage, energy wastage, pollution with household waste, and other harmful personal practices has done a huge amount of damage to the environment. There are several habits you can adopt to have a more sustainable environment and help slow down climate change.

Cold showers

A cold shower is not only good for your skin, but it also feels invigorating and refreshing after a stressful day. Taking a cold shower avoids using electricity to heat the water which in turn means less electricity needed and lower amounts of natural resources needed to produce electricity.

Better water usage

Why take a bath in a full bathtub while a shower can serve the same purpose? You do not need to water your garden with fresh water from the tap. Better water usage helps conserve good drinking water which is increasingly becoming a scarce commodity.

Insist on recycled toilet paper

Expensive brand toilet paper is made from freshly cut trees, which is a damaging industrial practice. By insisting on recycled or tree free bamboo toilet paper, you discourage the production of these destructive brands and promote green options.

Stop printing documents

Printing emails and other electronic documents is futile and wasteful. With today’s advances in cloud storage, your documents are safe and do not have to be in hardcopy to stay safe.

Learn to compost

Eliminate ground water pollution by relying on natural fertilizer. Composting is easy as all you have to do is dump all your organic and plant trash in one heap and wait for it to ‘cook.’ You can use this compost in your garden or lawn.

Switch off the lights

Installing an intelligent home system is the best bet in ensuring that lights go on and off when needed. In the absence of this, develop a habit of switching off the lights when getting out of a room.

Carpooling

Gas emissions from vehicles are the second biggest contributors to green house gases after industries. You can reduce your emissions by carpooling. In a normal sedan will carry 4 people plus the driver, which means that 4 cars stay off the road.

Learn the 3 R’s

Learn to recycle, reuse and repurpose. There are plenty of material that can be recycled including paper, glass and plastics. Reusing basically means using an item over and over again, for example, honey jars to store sugar. Repurposing is finding another use for an item, for example, a shoe box to become a plant nursery.