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.
My partner and I have made more sustainable living a permanent choice. We built our small (600 sq ft) house mostly out of straw, earth, trees we cut ourselves, and other, mostly on-site or local materials. We live off-grid with solar panels and a microhydro system. We have solar and wood-heated hot water. We have a composting toilet and reuse our graywater. We are in the process of growing our own food, much of it from trees. Most of our water comes from our roof or a pond. My partner commutes to work with an electric bike most days (otherwise a Prius). We have already met the UN’s climate goal of an 80% reduction in carbon emissions, yet we pretty much still live a US middle class lifestyle (except that we don’t fly for vacations). It helps that we chose a rural area with permissive building codes, but many of these things are possible in urban neighborhoods and suburbs.
We have been empowered by taking control of our ecological and social impacts. By being more self-reliant, we don’t have to work at jobs we hate that are raping the planet. In addition, our lifestyle supports our health, with lots of exercise and good food. Individual choices like ours won’t solve the problems we face by themselves, but they are a crucial part of the picture.
This post was submitted by Rain Tenaqiya.
Lower the temperature on your water heater, you really don’t need burning hot water coming out of your faucet. It’s safer, too.
Put the lids on pans when cooking or boiling on the stove. You will find yourself able to turn the gas way down and still keep the food simmering, or boiling. You will have to watch the food to avoid boiling over, but you’ll feel good about yourself every time you have to adjust the heat downward.
This post was submitted by Andrea.
you write in your web site about using cloth diapers but I have an even better idea. One that is practiced in different parts of the world and used by some in the US. It is called elimination communication (EC) and it involves the gentle practice of communicating about eliminating. Babies give cues when they need to go but parents often don’t recognize them until they know what to look for.. There are also the easy times like when the baby wakes up from a nap or in the morning. Imagine the environmental impact if all diaper users could do with 1 or 2 less diapers a day! Imagine if some people decided to practice EC full-time!
I also consider breast feeding to have no impact.
This post was submitted by Rossana.
Turn off the water in between rinsing. Each minute you spend with the water running is 2 gallons of water used. If you turn of the water while you lather up, you can at least cut your water consumption in half!
Since doing this I’ve noticed that I also spend less time getting ready in the morning. My showers are just a lot shorter.
This post was submitted by Doug.
As a writer, I use a lot of paper at work. I do my best to only print when I need to, but a lot of what I print still ends up in the recycling bin anyway. So what I started doing was keeping a stack of paper clipped together to use as a note pad, since I also take a lot of notes. The extra paper is piling up in my desk drawer, but it’s better to get as much use out of it as possible before I throw it into recycling. I’m working on getting other people in my office to do the same rather than tossing out still-usable paper, buying expensive notebooks, and overusing Post-Its.
This post was submitted by Liz.