50 Years Of Earth Day
It’s the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, an annual day on the 22nd April to give voice to environmental protection movements. It’s a time to reflect on your environmental impacts and evaluate what small sustainable swaps you could make and sharing your progress to inspire others.
100% of those we surveyed said their daily decisions and lifestyle is affected by climate change and 92% of us are trying to live more sustainably, but exactly how?
The first step to reducing your impact is to understand it and see where you could reduce. The Earth Rewards mobile app has a carbon footprint measurement tool, which can give you a baseline to work with and compare to your countries average.
Here are ten ways that Earth Rewards followers have been reducing their environmental impact!
1. Avoid Over-Shopping
Ally has been using up everything already in the cupboards, fridge and freezer and only topping up when necessary and with fresh food shops.
Not only does this save your emissions travelling to the shops and your dietary carbon footprint but your pennies too!
2. Reduce Meat & Dairy Intake
Following a vegetarian or plant-based diet was a common response, with ¼ of your carbon footprint coming from your diet, swapping out meat and dairy can half this!
If you’re unable to commit to a fully vegan lifestyle, like reader Alex, cutting out red meat alone can still drastically reduce your dietary carbon footprint! With flexitarianism on the rise, why not test the waters with #meatfreemonday?
3. Re-usable Makeup Wipes
Elizabeth has made the swap from disposable makeup remover pads to reusable cotton face pads, saving money and a huge amount of waste.
4. Reduce Your Food Miles
Oliver has been shopping locally to reduce his food and air miles!
5. Ethical and Conscious Shopping
Brooke shops with ethical brands and checks product packaging to make sure it’s recyclable before buying and uses public transport over driving.
6. Disposable Sanitary Products
With the average woman expected to use over 10,000 plastic wrapped disposable sanitary items why not make like our readers opting for waste-free reusable menstrual cups and washable pads?
7. Compost Food Waste
How about food waste? J has a wormery that most of his family’s food waste can be recycled through rather than going to landfill.
8. Sustainable Shopping
Users have been opting to reduce their shopping carbon footprint by buying with sustainable retailers, boycotting fast fashion, donating and even renting clothes! A single pair of trainers can add 11kg CO2 to your carbon footprint – that’s the same carbon impact as 22 pints of beer.
9. Recycling!
Simple but it really does make a difference. Check out out blog on what can be widely recycled but get creative – our users are recycling furniture, clothes and old tech.
10. Offset Through Earth Rewards
For lifestyle activities you cannot compromise or change such as using your mobile phone or car for the food shop, you can balance your impacts in the Earth Rewards app!
Simply complete our in-app quizzes and academies to earn environmental rewards to reduce your carbon footprint.
Have any more ideas? Let us know – getintouch@earthrewards.net