One of the biggest mental roadblocks hindering people from living an eco-friendly life is that such a life will cause them great discomfort and inconvenience their day-to-day lives. The reality is that eco-friendliness is about removing unnatural complications from everyday life.
The result of eco-friendliness is a much simpler life that is more in tune with nature and the universe’s demands for sustainability. You can improve your quality of life significantly by actively choosing to live an eco-friendly life. This article will show you some of the ways you can make this possible.
Sleep on an Eco-Friendly Natural Mattress
You will spend about a third of your life sleeping. When you consider how much of your life you spend on your bed sleeping, it only makes sense to get a good mattress that can afford you the best quality of sleep possible.
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Fortunately for you, mattresses made using eco-friendly organic materials are some of the best purchases you can make. These mattresses tend to be more durable, more comfortable, retain their shape better, and are more breathable than mattresses made using artificial inorganic materials. You will be saving the environment while also affording yourself the best sleep money can buy.
Take Home Energy and Water Saving Seriously
Making a decision to save energy and water in your home will serve the environment while also reducing your monthly utility budget. You can use the extra coins to explore hobbies such as travel or funnel the money to your retirement savings accounts. There’s just no way to lose when you make your home efficient.
Below are some of the actions you can take to reduce water and energy consumption in your home:
- Buy energy-saver LED light bulbs
- Wash clothes using cold water whenever possible
- Insulate your home to save energy on heating during the winter
- Increase ventilation and airflow in your home to save energy on cooling during the summer
- Install solar panels to make your home energy sufficient
- Unplug electrical appliances from power sockets when not in use
These strategies will help you save money and save the Earth at the same time. There’s no way to lose.
Optimize Transportation around Healthy Living
We spend too much time sitting down in the office. Sitting so much is unhealthy. If you can find a way to move more, you should probably embrace it. Instead of driving to work, you can use public transportation, carpool, ride a bike, or even walk to work.
Using public transportation ensures that you walk some distance every day to the public train or bus top. Riding a bike to work is a no-brainer if you can handle it as it will give you a cardio workout every time. If you can find a house or apartment close to where you work, walking is the best option.
In some instances, getting an apartment close to work may lead to more expenses in housing costs. The costs, however, can be offset by savings in commuting expenses as well as the increased productivity that comes with arriving to work early and not having to endure a very long commute to work.
Forego Canned Beverages for Homemade Drinks
Every minute, hundreds of thousands of aluminum cans are emptied around the world. While the cans themselves aren’t a problem because they are mostly recyclable, consumers’ bad disposal habits ensure that millions of aluminum cans end up in water bodies and other habitats where they pose a major threat to wildlife.
Further, the aluminum production process consumes inordinate amounts of energy. It takes 15 times as much energy to produce aluminum as it takes to produce a similar quantity of glass.
If you were to reduce your consumption of canned beverages and settle for homemade smoothies and fruit punch, you will help save the environment while also consuming drinks that are much healthier. Canned beverages have lower nutritional value because of the typical canning process. They undergo pasteurization treatment to kill pathogens and the side effect is that heat-sensitive enzymes crucial for bodily function also end up destroyed.
Reduce Trips to the Grocery Store by Rethinking the ‘Best Before Date’
Food wastage is a major problem in the Western world. In the United Kingdom, 7.3 million tons of food goes to waste every year. In the United States, an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the total food supply goes to waste. On any given day, Americans waste more than 150,000 tons of food.
When 40% of the food supply goes to waste, there’s a big problem. Not only is money being wasted, but a lot of carbon is being released into the environment from food production processes, food transportation, as well as waste management.
One of the significant drivers of this wastage is people’s misunderstanding of best before dates. People understand best before dates to mean that a food product is no longer safe to eat. The reality is that the labels simply indicate when a food item is no longer in its best condition. Many foods are still safe to eat a few days after the best before date indicated on the label.