Here is a short list of habits that I try to practice every day for the sake of ecology. Let’s be more aware of our consumption and wasting behavior.
Keep the Environment Clean
Respect the work of street and environment cleaners. They won’t stay out of work if you resist throwing away cigarette butts on the streets, dropping plastic cups in the fields of festivals, or leaving the trash in nature.
I liked the Fusion-festival example with a garbage policy. Every person entering the festival had to make a 10€ deposit and got a huge bag for the garbage. After the festival, you could retrieve the deposit only if you brought back the bag full of trash.
Sort and Separate the Waste
Even if you have heard gossips that they dispose of the sorted garbage in the same scrap-heap, sorting waste forms a good habit for the times of improved infrastructure in your city. Also, gossips are not necessarily true.
Avoid Unnecessary Plastic
Don’t worry about using long-lasting plastic things like chairs, dishes, drinking bottles, sandwich boxes, or toys. But avoid single-use plastic things like lightweight bags, straws, or disposable cups. Plastic that gets out to nature over long years is dissolved into microplastic and eventually comes back to you inside the food.
Dismantle Carton Boxes Before Throwing Away
When you throw away any boxed packages like the ones from milk, juice, corn flakes, or tea, at first, dismantle the box. It will take less space in the garbage container, and in the long run, there will be less energy consumed for sanitation, as the garbage truck will need to come to collect the garbage less often.
Cut any Plastic Rings that are Used for Packaging
Plastic rings from beer six-packs, bottle stoppers, handles for cups, Tetra Pak stoppers, and others usually become a disaster for wild animals. Lots of birds, turtles, and sea animals get stuck in those rings and die suffering.
Before throwing away any plastic ring, cut it with a knife or scissors so that no living creature could get stuck in it.
Call to Action
What are your daily habits that help us save the planet? What new did you learn from this blog post? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Pictures by Guillaume de Germain, Anna Shvets, Magda Ehlers, Brian Yurasits, Logan Weaver