Living an eco-friendly life doesn’t have to be an inaccessible dream. On the contrary, everyone could make simple changes today to their day-to-day to make it more environmentally conscious. We can’t afford to ignore our environment any longer. If we don’t make changes to our habits today, future generations will pay the price of our mistakes. Therefore, implementing simple tweaks to our routine could make a huge difference already.
Something as simple as turning off the tap when you brush your teeth could save water. You can also consider smart LED lighting that tends to use less energy than traditional lightbulbs and last longer. You will be able to notice a significant decrease in your energy bills too.
This article discusses the next steps you can take for the environment. Indeed, you can consider eco-friendly changes that require more commitment. As a result, these may not be easy to implement without adequate preparation. However, they can completely transform your lifestyle and your carbon footprint for the better. Are you ready to challenge your habits for the planet? These are the changes you can make tomorrow.
Change your home
If you are already a homeowner, this might be a big thing to ask. However, if you are a first-time buyer exploring the real estate market and the available homeloans, you can add an environmental factor to your decision. Indeed, purchasing a property that has a high energy performance rating can significantly lower your carbon footprint. The house energy rating, HER, evaluates the building’s energy efficiency. For US homes, HER ratings have been used since the 1980s, but you can also come across other rating schemes such as building greenhouse rating, TRET, Energy gauge USA, LEED, etc. Ratings typically are made using a performance scale of 0 to 100 or 1 to 5 stars. Needless to say, you want your property to achieve over 75 or 4 stars.
Purchase an EV
Electric vehicles are designed to be the green alternative to our petrol-fuelled cars. While there’s still a long way to go to make EVs the ideal substitute, they’ve already shown fantastic environment ratings. Indeed, an electric car produces zero-emission, which means they are not going to accelerate greenhouse gas effects. Additionally, because they run on electricity rather than fossil fuels, they are not going to use up fossil supplies. However, it’s fair to say that electric vehicles are still in their infancy. Manufacturers are developing production strategies to reduce carbon emissions during the manufacturing process. In other words, EVs’ production is not entirely green as of today. However, the good news is that their carbon footprint will be essentially paid off within the first 2 years of driving.
Additionally, electric cars can be a huge commitment, both in terms of costs and change of lifestyle. You need to plan your trip carefully to feature plenty of charging stations on the way. An electric vehicle can drive approximately 300 miles between each charge, which is only a fraction of what petrol cars can cover. It makes no doubt that the situation will improve as innovative technology solutions appear. But for now, an eV is a big commitment to make.
Sustainable lifestyle products
The majority of products you have in your home have a sustainable substitute. Simple switches, such as using a shampoo bar rather than bottled shampoo, are environmentally friendly or cost-effective. However, when it comes to other items, the decision to buy green comes at a higher cost. Indeed, a conscious consumer lifestyle can be expensive. Therefore, it helps to understand where those costs come from. Sourcing responsibly and developing a product with as little polluting impacts as possible is costly. Indeed, cheap fast-fashion, for instance, is likely to use synthetic fiber, underpaid labor, and non-ethically transport solutions. In other words, buying ethical and green includes the cost of fair wages, green production and transport, and environmentally-friendly sourcing. On the other hand, while expensive, you can expect your green item to last longer. In short, it can take time to upgrade your household with green substitutes!
Go vegan
Vegan diets are growing in popularity because they are among the most sustainable lifestyle solutions. Indeed, animal products (meat, dairy products, etc.) have a devastating impact on the environment. Producers of meat and dairy products generate 14.5% of the global greenhouse gas emission. If we want to control global warming and avoid a future catastrophe, we need to adopt a plant-based diet. And that’s not something that everyone is ready to do right now.
Going green is a challenging journey. There’s more to our environmentally-friendly lifestyle than introducing new routines. It is a complete lifestyle change that means forgetting everything you’ve been doing since you were born. Of course, it is challenging. That’s why some changes such as the ones mentioned above need to be introduced gradually. But, in the end, the planet is worth our commitment.
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