There are all kinds of things you can do to live more sustainably. This is a term that means you’re taking actions that don’t damage the environment very much. If all of us get in the habit of doing these things, we have a much better chance of preserving our natural resources.
If you have children and care at all about their future, living sustainably makes sense. We’ll talk about some actions that you can take right now that fit this lifestyle. You will probably find that doing the things on this list won’t impact your life or inconvenience you all that much.
You Can Take Public Transportation Whenever Possible
Taking public transportation is very high on the list of things you can do to reduce your environmental impact and live sustainably. Most people still have either hybrid cars right now that run partially on fossil fuel, or else they have vehicles that run entirely on gas. Unless you own and operate an electric vehicle, you can’t say your vehicle options are truly sustainable.
Taking public transportation might be a little less convenient sometimes, since you may have to wait for a train or bus on certain occasions. That might not be the worst thing in the world, though, since if you take public transportation, you don’t have to drive. There are some people who don’t like operating vehicles very much at all, so you might be okay with this.
In many parts of this country, high traffic accident rates exist, so you may feel happy to get away from driving yourself around and letting someone else take you to where you need to go. For instance, in 2014, in Georgia’s Fulton County, there were 46,887 reported traffic accidents. That number went up by 33% by 2017.
When you think about that traffic accident increase, it might sound great to you to start taking public transportation rather than driving yourself. If you’re not a confident driver, driving seldom, or not at all, may be the best move for you.
You Can Replace Real Meat with Other Options
You can live more sustainably by replacing real meat in your diet with some of the other options that are out there. There are almost no kinds of meat you can get that you can’t replace with a vegetarian option. These options look and taste very much like real meat, but companies make them from soy and other vegetable-based alternatives.
You can get plant-based meat that looks like ground beef and make burgers out of it. You can get plant-based sausage or hot dogs as well. Many restaurants offer these choices at this point, as well as your grocer’s freezer.
You can enjoy coming up with new recipes with things like Impossible Meat. This is a lot healthier for you, as the replacement options often have less saturated fat and cholesterol.
You Can Get an Electric Car
If you decide you want to continue driving your own vehicle instead of taking public transportation, you might choose to get an electric car instead of a gas-powered or hybrid one. Some cities don’t have many public transportation options, so this may be the best thing for you to do.
Electric cars are not all that expensive these days. The cheaper ones cost the same as a brand-new hybrid or gas-powered vehicle.
The real drawback is that there is not all that much infrastructure to support these vehicles yet. You should expect to see more electric charging stations roll out over the next few years, though.
In the meantime, you might charge up your vehicle at home, and you can take it only on short trips instead of cross-country excursions. For longer trips, you might rent a car or fly instead of driving.
You Can Recycle
It would surprise you how many items you can recycle these days. Just about any trash service you can pay for now will also offer recycling. These programs make a huge difference, and you can do your part for the environment when you participate.
You can check on each item you use to see if you can recycle it. You can recycle newspapers, magazines, milk gallon containers, many take-out food containers, etc.
If you get some take-out food, you can wash out the container when you’re done using it and toss it in your recycling bin. These sorts of actions only take a few seconds, and they increase the number of recyclable items you’re putting out each week.
You Can Compost
You can also figure out which food items you can compost, and you can do that throughout the year. Composting helps your soil quality. If you compost, that makes it easier for you to plant flowers and other nice vegetation in your backyard that add ambiance and increase your home’s value.
Composting also allows your soil to retain much more water than it otherwise would. This prevents runoff and better establishes vegetation. It reduces or even prevents erosion as well.
Composting improves your downstream water quality. When you do it, you reduce pollutants like fuels, nitrogen, heavy metals, pesticides, and herbicides.
When you compost, you’re doing your part to assist in stormwater maintenance. You conserve water, and you’re combating climate change in a very real and meaningful way.
You will probably find that none of these activities change your life very much. You will enjoy a healthier existence by doing things like walking and riding your bike more instead of driving fossil-fuel-burning cars. These small lifestyle changes do make a big difference, and it’s imperative that each one of us does our part.
You might not see what impact your life changes have, but you can be sure when you combine what everyone is doing, that’s what can help the planet. Every time you look at a young child, you can see that there is hope for the future, and you need to refine your current actions for them.