Every day, we see scary headlines about mankind’s environmental impact. It can be overwhelming trying to work through how exactly we can make a measurable impact. But everything you do has an impact. These are 5 simple eco-friendly tips that actually have a pretty huge impact!
Recycle your cans.
Here’s an exciting fact: recycling just 1 canned beverage conserves enough energy to power a television for 2 hours. How exactly does recycling one can result in so much energy saved? Doesn’t it also take a lot of energy to recycle too?
It’s true that recycling can be an energy intensive process, but recycling used materials requires much less energy than extracting raw resources, like ore in this case, to make your beverage can. The process of making aluminum ore used in your cans requires a huge amount of heat and electricity, which is why recycling already processed aluminum so much less energy intensive.
Carpool
Carpooling is an age-old eco-tip, we’re sure you’re aware that taking one car instead of two is good for the environment, but how good is it? Think about this: if every commuter car in the United States alone carried one extra person, we’d save around 8 billion gallons of gasoline a year.
Just one gallon of gas results in 19 pounds of carbon pollution released into the atmosphere. You’d need to plant 3 billion trees in order to offset the same amount of carbon pollution each year.
Bike to work.
Even more impactful than carpooling is hopping on your bike for your commute to work. Cycling 10 kilometers to and from work every day would save around 1500 kg of carbon pollution each year. That’s the same carbon neutralizing effect as planting around 70 trees!
Patch your pants.
Question: Would you stop drinking water for a year in order to help conserve water? Of course not! A person can only live a few days without water. Fortunately, you don’t have to go to crazy lengths to save that much water. Patching a pair of jeans and continuing to wear them instead of buying new jeans conserves about 500 gallons of water, roughly what one person will drink in about a year and a half.
Line dry a load of laundry.
According to research by The Guardian, choosing to line dry 1 load of laundry prevents 1.7 kg of carbon pollution from being released into the atmosphere. If you lined dried a full load of laundry 100 times in a year, it would have the same carbon sequestration impact as planting 8 trees.
