7 Eco-Friendly Ideas For A Zero-Waste Lifestyle

by | Lifestyle Advice

Earth Day is just around the corner and Mother Earth is asking you to reflect on your environmental habits.

She’s sad about our current use of plastic bags. Did you know that plastic bag grocery bags take 15 – 1,000 years to decompose and that only 1-2 percent of plastic bags are actually being recycled in the USA?!?

Stats like those are good to hear because it sends a little shockwave down your body. The thing is, we don’t NEED to use plastic! There are other alternatives out there.

But that’s not the only thing. There are 7 small changes you can make in your life right now to reduce your carbon footprint.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has”. – Margaret Mead

So I encourage you to take 10 minutes out of your day to watch the video below on how to be eco friendly – a few small changes will keep Mother Earth happy.

P.S – I also have a quick tip on how to reuse those essential oil bottles you may have lying around the house :)

Let’s be more environmentally responsible. Here are the links from the video:


Transcript

Hey everyone, it’s Lindsey Victoria here from A Life Well-Balanced. This channel is all about how we can be a tiny bit better at this beautiful thing we call life in a more balanced and positive way. If that sounds like something that you are interested in and want to keep learning about, please hit the subscribe button up there so we can notify you when a video is released and I would certainly appreciate it.

Today what I want to talk about is environmental responsibility because Earth Day is coming up very shortly and I think Mother Nature has given us more than money could ever buy. So it’s important that all of us do small and conscious things every day to reduce our carbon footprint and to ensure that our planet is clean and beautiful for the rest of the world and future generations to come.

So these are couple things on how to be eco friendly that we’ve just incorporated into our life and I think it’s really reduced our carbon footprint:

1. Reusable shopping bags. A couple of stats for you. Plastic bags take between 10 – 1,000 years to decompose and at the current rate only 2% of plastic bags are actually being recycled. Those are huge numbers so that means if they go to the landfill, they’re not decomposing. So we have some reusable shopping bags we use. Actually you could get them from your grocery store, but I have these totes. They’re cute. I keep them on me all the time so that way I don’t ever have to get a plastic bag. Just get some. You’ll notice a lot of big stores are actually giving out cloth bags rather than plastic bags so keep them in your trunk for when you go grocery shopping. It’s just a quick and easy way and you’ll accumulate a lot over time.

2. Reduce food waste. There’s a couple things that we can do for this. It’s really important that you know how much you’re going to buy so you don’t over consume. So one way is really just to plan out your shopping list and have a budget.

We personally have a budget of $150 for two people for an entire week of eating for food. We plan out our meals. I actually cook for four people so that we have leftovers. The thing with leftovers is if you’re going to do that, make sure you actually eat them :)

But also we did a lot of research to determine what would be the best way to keep our leftovers stored and we found these:

  • PopIt Glass. I really like them because there have triple uses.
    • You can microwave them
    • You can put them in the dishwasher
    • You can also bake with them because they’re glass

So there are three ways. I don’t have to go out and buy a lot of bakeware if I just want to put some these in the oven. They’re oven resistant so I think these are really good. I’ll put a link below.

  • Food Huggers. What happens when you cut up a tomato or you cut up your vegetables is you put it in the fridge probably with saran wrap which is plastic. Rather than doing that, you can get these. There are different sizes, they fit snugly on your food and they keep your food fresh. I got them on Amazon. You can put them in the dish washer and they keep your food fresh so you’re automatically reducing food waste as well as other waste.

3. Repurpose and reuse where possible. So a lot of times, what happens is we get so many things that come in boxes or packages. See what you can use around the house.

I got this little box of sweets from somebody. I made that into a tea tin.

If you’ve been watching my channel you know how much I love essential oils. So I wanted to show you how you can repurpose and reuse these bottles.

I happened to be traveling somewhere and got this little spray thing. A lot of times the pump tops tend to fit these bottles. So what you do is you take off the top, put the pump top in and it fits perfectly. What I like about this is whenever you get to the bottom of your essential oil bottle, you can fill it up with water and put a tiny bit of alcohol to help the essential oil last longer in the air and then use these as fresheners. You can keep it in your bag if you want to make a peppermint spray. I use Purify and I spray my shoes and the closet with it.

There are so many uses. You now just basically have travel size little toiletries. So that’s a really good way to reuse your essential oil bottles.

4. Use fewer chemicals.

This is why essential oils are great because essential oils have so many properties and I’ve done a video before about how I make my all-purpose all-natural kitchen cleaning spray.

I got this bottle on Amazon, it’s glass, I can put essential oils in it safely. I’m just using water, vinegar, and essential oils and I’m cleaning my kitchen counters with it. I think I’ve reused this probably a hundred times and now I don’t have to go to the grocery store and buy more products.

So again, I’m reducing the amount of waste I have. The other product that I’m making now is wood polish. This is olive oil, vinegar, and some wild orange. I have videos for all of these and I will put down the link below and I will tell you exactly where I got these bottles. I think they really cost maybe $8 for two of these, you can get them on Amazon. We can go to wherever anywhere close to you.

So that’s one way to which you can use fewer chemicals. Make your own cleaners with essential oils and reuse the bottles. You’re already saving a lot, saving the environment.

5. Get a water bottle. I highly recommend Swell. The reason why I like Swell bottles is because I like the designs. They have a ton of them, you can get this size and you can get a bigger liter size. But they’re double walled aluminum or stainless steel. So inside, you can put 1 – 2 drops of essential oils with ice cubes and you can keep reusing this bottle. This way you always have a reminder to stay healthy and hydrated and you’re not using plastic bottles, which again plastic takes a really long time to decompose. So that’s another trick.

6. Recycle where possible. I live on Miami Beach and we have a really good recycling program, but all you need to do is to go straight to Google, type in ‘recycling program near me’ and find out your city’s rules and regulations for recycling.

A lot of cities have different regulations about what you should be sorting and what can go with what and how you should do it. When I have boxes coming from Amazon I just put that in my kitchen and I put all my recycling in it so I can easily take it out to the recycling man when he comes.

7. Try organic gardening. I have a whole video where I’ve just talked about how you can grow your own balcony garden. But one way that you could do this is by composting your food.

We’ve already talked about how to reduce food waste. If you do happen to have leftovers, it’s quite easy to compost it.

There are a couple of composters that are great for if you live in an apartment. I personally haven’t used any but I know a couple people who have and I will put a few links to the ones that I’m researching that you can put your compost in and it actually makes the soil. Then you can make your own balcony garden and grow fresh herbs or plants or whatever you can. I have a whole video on balcony gardening.

As you can see, these are all intertwined. I just wanted to put them all together.

8. And then for my business friends, I have an eighth tip. Business cards are a big thing but I think business cards are a huge waste until one of my good friends, the owner at Miaerba, got these awesome business cards. I wanted to share this with you because you can actually plant these cards to grow wildflowers, which is great! You can give your business card to somebody and then say “Hey, by the way, go plant it and you’ll grow wildflowers.” I think that’s awesome and that’s giving back to Mother Nature and you’re able to run your business sustainably with these cards. The place that you get this is called Botanical Paperworks. I think that’s a really awesome idea and I think that’s a cool way that you can be environmentally responsible if you have a business and you have business cards.

So these are just the seven right things that I think are conscious steps that you can take to be a little bit more environmentally responsible and environmentally friendly. It’s much easier than you think.

There are little things you can do on how to be eco friendly every day and I hope these gave you a couple tips on how you can incorporate it in your life.

If you liked this video please like it, leave a comment, share it with somebody.

Also, I’d love for you to tell me if you’re doing any other environmentally responsible things that I did not cover and that you think I should know and you want to share with the community.

Have a great one and I’ll see you next time.

 

 

Lindsey Victoria

Lindsey Victoria

Lindsey is the author of A Life Well-Balanced, a lifestyle blog dedicated to helping people live a more balanced life – physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

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