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 re-purpose some of our old items or find new ways of using existing things. Some examples: 1) Instead of buying an artificial Christmas tree (common over here), I got some fallen bamboo branches in my backyard, placed them in a vase on a table, covered the table with a red bed cover, sprinkled some tiny pine cones on them and put some trinkets on the branches. 2) I used an empty Starbucks bottle as a decorative jar on my shelf. 3) I re-purposed some baby mattresses and a bed cover to make a little couch in my son’s room.
This post was submitted by Mich Nicolas.
I recently read that there is more lawn than wheat growing in the USA. I’m sure the stats are similar for Canada. With a growing urge to expand my urban garden, we decided to plant squash, pumpkins and beans along the fence line at the side and front of the house. The neighbouring children noticed us and helped plant and water them. Of course we will share the bounty with the children and teach them about the garden as it grows. We also hope to expand the garden/lawn.
This post was submitted by Shelley Essaunce.
For the sake of our planet, I went vegan 4 years ago after learning that:
-it takes 16 pounds of grain (often GMO) to produce a single pound of meat.
-animal agriculture is the #1 cause of deforestation and oceanic dead zones
-farming animals produces more greenhouse gases than, well, anything else because methane is 23x more potent than CO2
I then began to only by organics at the grocery store… and decided to reduce the amount of packaging my products have… then I began going to the farmer’s market.
Now, I don’t buy ANYTHING in packaging. All of my food comes the Whole Foods bulk bins (in reused bags) or form the farmer’s market, and I can honestly say I don’t miss anything, I have so much fun cooking and meeting my farmer friends.
This post was submitted by Kitty Jones.
I refill my:
-raisin
-nut
-cerceal/granola
-flour
-sugar
-pasta
-beans/lentils
-rice
-ect
bags in the bulk bins! Check the bulk bins before you buy stuff in packaging! It’s usually cheaper!
This post was submitted by Kitty Jones.
As most people probably know already, plastic consumption needs to be decreased.
I no longer buy bottles of water but instead invested in a metal flask to fill with water from home and use time and time again.
This saves me money as I no longer have to buy bottled water (saving you time also), is better for the environment and is also healthier as most water bottles are made from the kind of plastic that leeches into liquid over time, and especially with reuse (PETE 1, HDPE 2 especially - if it’s PP 5 then you’re alright).
If you get a metal flask make sure it’s a stainless steel one as aluminium made containers are known to be harmful.
I also had a bit of fun with this by etching a design into the exterior metalwork and adding a paracord lanyard for personalisation and identification (no one’s mistaking it for theirs!) purposes.
No brainer!
This post was submitted by Jayc Dryden.