Earth Day 2021 - 5 simple ways to do your bit
The timings of these weekly missives and when they go live means you’ll be reading this at least one day, if not more, after this year’s Earth Day (which falls/fell on April 22nd), but I’m afraid to say that doesn’t get you off the hook in playing your part in this year’s theme which is “Restore Our Earth”. Sorry about that.
Granted our focus has understandably been on other things in recent months, but the clamour around climate change is necessarily re-emerging and this annual event is a useful moment to refocus our attention on the part each of us can play in reducing our impact on our precious planet, today and every day.
Fortunately there are plenty of ways to achieve this that aren’t hard to do. And in the same way as every vote counts, every action we each take, however insignificant it seems compared to the scale of the challenge, builds into a collective effect that has real impact.
Lecture over. Here are some of my suggestions for simple ways you can do your bit to Restore Our Earth.
Improve your recycling
There are very few (if any?) councils here in the UK that don’t have recycling bins now. And yet we’re still only recycling 50% of our household waste (in Germany and Austria it’s 60-70%. In the US only 32%)
Check on your council website what items they do recycle and look at the labelling on packaging for recycling information.
This excellent article explains, amongst other things, why you need to wash what you put in the recycling bin, why you shouldn’t put items inside each other and why you need to leave the caps on bottles.
2. Use less plastic
I wrote a blog all about this, and other waste-less products that I’ve tried and loved (and a couple I haven’t liked quite so much), which you can read here.
Far and away the easiest (apart from not buying plastic bottles of water and carrying a lightweight reusable water bottle with me at all times instead) has been ditching the scourge that is clingfilm (it takes decades to decompose and leaks chemicals into the earth all the while) and using beeswax wraps instead.
You can find all the details and information you need in the blog.
3. Cut back on meat
I’m not going to get all soap-boxey and insist you need to become vegan. Or even fully vegetarian. But since animal farming is responsible for 60 per cent of the emissions from agriculture, it makes unavoidable eco-sense for each of us to do our bit to reduce the demand for meat.
There are a limitless number of delicious plant-based recipes to choose from, but if you’re unsure where to start, or in need of some inspiration, try subscribing to one of the excellent home-delivered recipe box services like Mindful Chef, Gusto or Hello Fresh.
Not only do they provide a tempting variety of dishes (which do, of course, include meat, chicken and fish recipes as well as vegetarian and vegan ones), but also detailed preparation instructions and exactly the right amount of ingredients so there’s no waste.
I’m a faithful, and very happy, customer of Mindful Chef and you can find out why, and how it works here
4. Buy less stuff….
I’m quite the fan of the sweeping statement. But I’m also pretty confident that this one is 99% likely to be accurate. We all have more stuff than we need. And by ‘stuff’ I’m generously including everything from household items to clothes.
Which makes this do-your-bit tip a double whammy of both planet and bank-balance friendly.
Each time you’re tempted to purchase another thing, whether that’s a sofa or a shirt, think first whether it’s something you really need. And if it is, whether you can buy it from a genuinely sustainable source (here’s another excellent Independent article on how to do that when it comes to fashion), or whether you might find just the thing you’re looking for on a resale site like Facebook marketplace, or Ebay
5. ….and recycle or upcycle what you have
Which neatly brings me to this next simple tip. When something you own has reached the end of it’s shelf life (or simply doesn’t fit on the shelf any more, see above), think carefully about how you dispose of it. Or if you actually need to dispose of it at all.
This blog is all about great ways to declutter and save the planet at the same time by finding genuinely eco-friendly things to do with the things you don’t want. Including up-cycling and repurposing/repairing them.
I’ve picked these five Restore Our Earth actions because I think each of them really is easy to achieve and, critically, sustain. Something I say based on the highly unscientific research measurement that I’ve tried, and managed to continue, to do all of them.
Of course, there are many, many other ways each of us can play our part in helping to combat climate change, from heating our homes more efficiently and sustainably (this Green Choices article is a useful guide), to choosing greener ways to travel, to trying to understand as much as we can about the climate and why/how it’s changing (Nasa’s clear, comprehensive and comprehensible website is as good place to start as any).
I’ll finish as I started, by reiterating that whatever each of us can do to live in a more environmentally aware way plays a small but important part in bringing about the change we need to save and protect our precious planet, and ensure that the world we pass on to the generations to come will be as rich, diverse and healthy as possible.
Please do share any planet-kind tips you have in the comments.
