eco-friendly

If you’re like many people, then you might be looking to make subtle changes to your daily life to reduce your overall carbon footprint. While none of us can hope to solve the problem of climate change by ourselves, we can make a difference with a few simple tweaks.

Get a reusable coffee cup

The disposable coffee cups you might pick up from your favourite café or fast food outlet are actually environmentally disastrous. They contain small amounts of plastic, which helps to keep the liquid contained. As such, they can’t be composted or recycled.

The solution here is to get a single reusable cup. You might buy one and use it for ten years, thereby preventing thousands of cups from going into landfill.

Get an Electric Car

The automotive industry is approaching a tipping point, beyond which most motorists will drive electric and hybrid cars rather than traditional internal-combustion-engine-powered ones. This switch will hugely reduce emissions, and lead to huge energy-efficiency savings.

If you’re doing a lot of driving, then investing in a battery electric vehicle might make sense. The environmental cost of creating the battery, however, makes it slightly less green as an option for occasional drivers.

Make your Home Eco-friendly

You might also modify your home to make it slightly greener. This generally means reducing the amount you spend on heating by preventing heat from leaving the property. Insulation in your loft, double-glazed windows, and replacement external doors can all help substantially. If you’re thinking of insulating the loft, then consider what’s going to happen to your moisture retention before you get going; it might be that you need to create some air-circulation with the help of an air brick or two.

As well as improving your insulation, you might also look into reducing the amount you spend on electricity. Smart LED bulbs, efficient appliances, and automated heating can all make a big difference to the amount you spend overall. 

Vary your diet

For both environmental and nutritional reasons, you should eat a varied diet that’s heavy on plants and light on meat. Where possible, you might look into growing your own food in you garden, or on a windowsill or allotment. 

You might also look to dispense with plastic packaging. This is generally a good idea, but be aware that sometimes the plastic packaging is worth it. The shelf life of something like a cucumber, for example, is vastly extended once it’s given a plastic sheath.