It is a sad fact that we are losing and destroying the foundations of human life at an alarming pace. Every year, millions of hectares of forest are cut down leading to the disappearance of wildlife species and worsening environmental pollution.
The World Environment Day 2021 calls for emergency actions to restore our damaged ecosystems. Ecosystem restoration is a global job to a massive extent, but it also includes small steps to take every day.
To respond to World Environment Day, we will check out these great but easy tips for sustainable living in this article.
Consuming less meat and eating reasonable portions
Global food waste accounts for 8% of greenhouse gas emissions. In Vietnam, the amount has been recorded up to 8.8 million tons, corresponding to 694,000 tons of meat, 804,000 tons of fish and seafood, and 7.3 million tons of fruit and vegetables that are wasted every single year.
Therefore, people should reduce meat consumption and have reasonable meal portions. These actions will somewhat help to reduce unnecessary waste. The simplest way is that you can assess appropriate portion sizes before going shopping. Besides this, people can check out the menu of An Lanh Hon e-book, which encourages people to eat less meat and more vegetables. The team has implemented this e-book already.
Reusable fabric shopping bags
Nowadays, people usually have a habit of using plastic bags when going shopping, which need up to 500 years to decompose into micro-plastics. Hence, if each person reuses one bag, the amount of plastic that ends up in the natural environment can be decreased significantly. The simplest way is by putting one or two reusable fabric shopping bags into your car trunk to use whenever you need to buy stuff.
Using a loofah instead of kitchen sponges
Since kitchen sponges are usually made from plastic, they do not biodegrade. Therefore, you should consider sun-dried loofahs to replace common kitchen sponges. Now you can buy loofah products at crafts stores or from e-commerce websites.
Replacing disposable food packaging with eco-friendly lunch boxes
Standard disposable food containers are made from polystyrene- a type of plastic that causes negative impacts on human health. When plastic packaging contains hot food, it can leach harmful chemicals, causing cancer. Besides this, 80-90% of plastic that ends up in the sea is derived from products such as disposable food containers, plastic bottles, caps, etc. Therefore, when you gradually change into using eco-friendly lunch boxes made from metal or glass, you protect both your health and the environment.
Using natural soaps
In ordinary soaps and foam ingredients, there is a significant amount of microbeads. If you use these products, you have unintentionally released them into canals and other waterways.
You can consider using some alternatives such as homemade natural soap bars made from things like almonds, walnuts, coffee beans, or soap nuts to reduce the number of microplastics put into the environment.
You can buy these products at homemade stores like Lai Dai Refill or do it yourself by referring to online recipes.
Reusing old clothes
Fashion has been and continues to be an industry that causes negative impacts on the environment. According to statistics, producing a basic T-shirt takes up to 2,700 liters of water, equivalent to the amount of water used by an adult in 900 days. Therefore, we should limit the need for buying new clothes. Instead, let’s mix & match old clothes to turn them into new versions. You can also recycle your old clothes into other items such as doormats to avoid throwing things away so quickly.
Using Ecosia search engine
Almost all people use search engines. Therefore, we would like to introduce everyone to a search engine called Ecosia. It uses 80% of its profits to plant trees. Moreover, the energy used to run its servers is from solar energy, so there are no greenhouse gas emissions. Ecosia’s address is attached below.
