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:
In other part of the word, people never use toilet paper but water. I asked an Iranian friend, who told me how to do it in our western society. Take a bottle that you will fill with water (I use always 25cl to 50cl of water each time). When it’s time to use toilet paper… take your bottle and wash yourself with the help of your hand. You don’t need to dry yourself after, but if this sensation is too strange for you, then use a personal towel (not of paper of course!). Finally, don’t forget to wash your hands! I took me time to get the habit of replacing toilet paper with water, but now it works and I even find this solution better. I feel cleaner and fresher. When I tell that to my friends, they say that I’m crazy and that they wouldn’t do it. But anyway, nobody looks at you in the bathroom!
This post was submitted by Charlotte.
My Mom’s mason jars have replaced plastic baggies in my house. They dont leak and are easy to sterilize. I also use them for beverages at home and on the go. Ice water, iced tea and lemonade just taste better in a mason jar and the ring and lid make a perfect on the go beverage. Leftovers can be stored and re-heated in the jars.
I also use a bedside commode in my bathroom. After using replace the lid. Once a day I dump and flush, rinse and sprinkle with baking soda.
My kitchen does not have a stove. I started using small appliances like rice cookers, crock pots and a toaster oven instead. After 18 months of not using the stove I got rid of it.The month I quit using the stove my electric bill dropped like a rock.
I splurged on the thermal drapes at the dollar store and they also reduced my energy consumption.
This post was submitted by Rosemary Rierson.
Most gardening experts make gardening too complicated. Get a caardboard box and fill it with dirt, plant seeds. Be sure to plant only vegetables that you really love. The hardest part is the dirt which can be dug up, or your compost or purchased.
In the area I live in the utility company charges once for water conig into the house and then doubles that amount for sewage costs making water very expensive.Several years ago I bought a backyard pool with a pump to use as a cistern. My Brother did the work to have the gutter drain pipe funnel rain water from the roof to the pool. On laundry day I used a garden hose and the pump to fill my washing machine from my cistern to wash all my clothes. If you’re handy around the house you could expand the idea to get more uses out of your cistern.
This post was submitted by Rosemary Rierson.
I started a blog kinda like yours, where you were writing about how you were trying to live greener. I am not going as fast as you did but I am trying hard to make it so we have a very small foot print. Anyway my blog says a lot more http://crystalclearmom84.blogspot.com/
This post was submitted by Crystal Scott.
Recycling is the best way to help the environment. My trash has reduced to less than 50% of what I used to send to the landfill everyday since I started recycling years ago.
This post was submitted by Candice.