Collectively, small lifestyle changes can make a huge impact on the environment–and your life. Looking for happiness and health? What’s good for the environment is also, it turns out, great for you. Here’s a collection of tips from the No Impact community.
Do you have a video story from your No Impact Experiment? Share your story below:
I’ve started making my own deodorant. In thinking about how to cut back on consumption and waste, this seemed like an easy way to buy less plastic and keep that same plastic out of the landfill…I use a recipe from the book Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World, by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen. All you need is olive oil, beeswax, and a few essential oils to make it smell nice – better for your body (no harmful aluminum), better for the environment, better for your bank account. That, my friends, is a triple threat.
This post was submitted by Kelsey Alexander.
Cloth napkins in the kitchen, cloth diapers on the baby, cloth hankies for our noses, cloth rags for cleaning. Cloth is better. It is washable and reusable, better on my wallet and healthier for my family. Wool Dryer Balls reduce dryer time and replace fabric softener. Line drying is better, but I don’t always have time to do that. I switched to natural laundry detergent for all our clothes: borax and super washing soda. It is super cheap and cleans our clothes well. You only need two tablespoons per load. Next, how to get rid of trash bags… the answer: cutting down on trash. I have started with a bin for paper and a plastic ice cream bucket for food scraps in the kitchen… We have a dog, so she can eat a lot of the food scraps, which cuts down on buying dog food. We are starting a compost bin this year, and much of our paper trash can be composted. We can recycle cans, but there are no other recycling facilities in our area or within 50 miles, so we will have to find other ways… Any reusable containers can be saved, even bread bags can be reused as sandwich bags for lunches.
This post was submitted by Zleah.
Most of us wash our vegetables, even though we buy organic. It’s just more reassuring, right? Well, instead of wasting all that pure precious water, you can put a basin (or a large pot) under the faucet when you wash the veggies. Even water with “veggie-wash” in it will be okay for plants in small doses. So I use it to water the house plants. Or to simply let dishes soak: which helps use less water to clean them later. The Basin also catches water that you let run to get hot or cold, so we have one for the bathroom sink too. This water can also be used for hand washing clothes, mopping or even flushing toilets. I kind of felt like a fanatic at first, but now when I read about how little fresh water there actually is on our planet, I certainly do sleep better for it!
This post was submitted by Barbara Weber.
Using a bread machine to process whole wheat flour into bread replaces other uses of flour with excess sugar and fat– cookies, cakes, etc.
I do not find 100% whole wheat bread without unneeded additives available.
Only 25% whole wheat content is needed to legally call it whole wheat bread.
This post was submitted by Daniel L. Pelzl.
I started a green initiative at the last three companies I worked for. I bring in cotton towels for the kitchen, get metal cutlery from goodwill and hide the plastic knives/forks and I bring in a compost bucket that I take home to empty and clean once a week. Then I encourage my bosses to go green and replace candescent light, add auto off switches and we just got a nest to reduce heating/cooling usage. Next I have to tackle employees who are refusing to undestand the meaning of recycling and the ‘blue bin’.
This post was submitted by Anne.