Reducing your energy consumption can help keep the environment clean while benefiting you personally. For example, using less electricity can save you money by decreasing your electric bill. Your CO2 emissions will also decrease.
Turn Off the Lights
A simple way to reduce your energy consumption is by turning off the lights when you are not in a room.
Utilize natural light from the windows in your home or apartment instead of relying on electricity.
Get Rid of Vampire Energy
Another way to reduce your energy consumption is to eliminate something called "vampire energy." Check out the infographic below from Payless Power.
Vampire energy is the energy that electronic devices use when plugged in unnecessarily (either because they are turned off or aren't in use). Everything connected to an outlet draws energy from the grid and costs you money. It also puts unnecessary stress on the environment.
To help keep the environment clean, you can start by unplugging electronic devices that aren't in use. You can disconnect your cell phone, laptop, coffee machine, microwave, television, or printer.
If manually unplugging your devices is too difficult, it might be helpful to set up your electronics so that they turn themselves off.
Automate Your Energy Savings
Homes, businesses, and offices can automatically save energy by using smart plugs.
Smart plugs can save energy automatically by turning off devices such as lights, fans, and appliances.
Most smart plugs allow you to control your devices from anywhere using an app on your phone.
Placing the appropriate items in the recycling bin is a small action that has a big impact.
How to Recycle Effectively
Start by having the appropriate waste collection bins in your home and office. Fortunately, recycling bins are inexpensive and don’t have to take up a lot of space.
For instance, there are recycling bins that are light-weight and collapsible which makes them easy to use.
Once you have the correct bins available, it is just a matter of getting people to use them.
In your household you could encourage your family members or roommates to recycle at meal times. It is important to make this a daily habit so that it becomes muscle memory.
For young children it can be helpful to praise the action when you seem them utilizing the recycling bin. For older kids and adults it can help to explain the impacts of recycling and describe how it hurts the planet when we don’t recycle.
This short, family friendly, video below could be helpful.
Provide Clear Instructions
For businesses and offices, it might take a little more coaxing to encourage people to help keep the environment clean through recycling.
According to Stanford University, people are more likely to recycle if there are clear instructions on how to do it along with an urgent message that describes the negative consequences of not recycling.
An example of helpful instructions and messages that you can print out for your employees or co-workers are below. It might be useful to place these above the trash can and recycling bins to spur people to recycle.
Commuting is a necessary part of life. However, there are some options that individuals can try that could decrease their environmental impact and help keep the environment clean.
Carpool
For instance, it might make sense to carpool with family, friends, or co-workers. That way, there is only one car on the road instead of three or four.
A lot of couples or family members use this method if their jobs are relatively close together.
Public Transportation
Another potential option is to use public transportation. This is an easy option for people that live in large cities with robust train systems. Cities usually have bus lines, subways, or lightrails that aid in commuting in an environmentally friendly manner.
Other Eco-Friendly Commuting Options
Some people have found success biking or even skateboarding to work as they combine their commuting time with their exercise time.
The most important thing is figuring out what works best for you, your job, and your family.
*Bonus Tip*
6. Use Bamboo Products!
Try using products made of bamboo instead of traditional plastic or paper.
Bamboo Toothbrushes are biodegradable and don't use any plastic!
Comment below and let us know how you keep the environment clean!
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Our writers come from all over the world, but one thing unites them - their passion for sustainability.
Leave a Comment:
10 comments
Taylor Bishop says
April 26, 2019
I wanted to thank you for going over some tips to have a clean environment. I’m glad you mentioned that you should try to change how you commute to work, like by carpooling or by cycling. It sounds important to think about what transportation options that are available to you, so you can figure out which one you can do to help protect the environment.
First of all, I would like to say thanks to you for such a nice and informative article about the environment. At this time environment is a really crucial part of our life. Because the clean environment is really important to make safe this earth. We should care about it. I really get huge information from this post. I would like to apply your suggestion to make the environment clean. Thanks again for write about such an important topic. I would like to share your post link on social media.
I found it helpful when you said that having appropriate waste collection bins could allow you to effectively encourage your household to consider recycling. My husband and I will surely do this because we want to take part in keeping the environment pollution-free. Maybe, we can consider having our damaged computers and small appliances recycled, too.
Even though every individual can do something to help the environment, there are a few easy tips that will help keep our planet clean. Thanks for sharing.
