Do you want to try to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle in 2024? It’s a great goal to have, but you might not know exactly where you should start.
Fortunately, there are all kinds of things you can begin to do to live sustainably. By doing something as simple as shopping less, you can help to save the environment.
Today, we’re going to show you how to embrace sustainable living by reducing your carbon footprint. Your carbon footprint is a number that refers to the number of greenhouse gases that you’re contributing to the world on a daily basis.
You can start to live a more environmentally-friendly life by bringing this number down and keeping it on the lower end of the spectrum. Here are some tips on how to reduce your carbon footprint without putting in too much effort on your part.
Start Eating a Healthier Diet
There are millions of Americans who make eating a healthier diet a part of their New Year’s resolutions. If you want to eat healthier so that you’re able to be a healthier person, there is nothing wrong with doing it for that reason. But you might also want to do it in an attempt to embrace sustainable living.
There is a lot of energy that must be used to make processed foods. All of this energy can contribute to your carbon footprint.
You can also make your carbon footprint higher than you might want it to be by eating things like meat and dairy all the time. Livestock are big contributors to the world’s global greenhouse emissions, so you’ll be hurting the planet by making meat and dairy a big part of your diet.
Instead, you should stick to eating fruits and vegetables as often as you can and make water your preferred beverage. It’ll reduce your carbon footprint in a major way.
Try Not to Waste Too Much Food
Regardless of what you choose to eat every day, you should try not to waste any food if you can help it. Every time you throw out perfectly good food, you’ll be doing a disservice to the planet since energy will have been wasted helping to create it.
You should be able to steer clear of wasting as much food as you might be wasting now by planning your meals better. You can also do it by investing in foods that you know you’re going to want to eat instead of trying to force yourself to eat foods that you don’t like for one reason or another.
Buy Clothes That Will Last
Believe it or not, the average American throws out upwards of 80 pounds of clothing every single year. They get rid of clothes when they go out of style and replace them with new clothes in many instances.
Rather than doing this, you should do what you can to purchase clothing that will last longer. Your clothing should be as high-quality as it gets, and you should shy away from buying too many trendy clothes that will only last for a season or two.
You might also want to look into buying more clothes from thrift stores and donating clothes when you’re finished with them. Doing these things are going to make living sustainably a possibility for you.
Look For Ways to Use Less Energy at Home
There are literally dozens of ways in which you can use less energy at home day in and day out. You can do it by:
- Turning off lights when you aren’t using them
- Adjusting your thermostat so that your HVAC system isn’t always running
- Dialing down the thermostat for your water heater
You might also want to look into replacing any older appliances that you have with energy-efficient appliances. It will bring your utility bills down quite a bit and help you do your part to save the environment.
Walk More Places
Before you get behind the wheel of your car to drive two blocks to a friend’s house, you should give some thought to walking there. Every time you drive your car, it’s going to release harmful emissions into the air.
In this day and age, it’s almost impossible to get away with not having a car unless you live in one of the country’s big cities. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t scale back on how much you drive by walking to places that are in the general vicinity of your house.
Walking will help you get into better shape overall and is one of the many keys to sustainable living. It’ll also help your car last so much longer than it would otherwise.
Purchase Carbon Offsets
No matter how hard you try to embrace sustainable living, there are always going to be times when you’ll contribute more greenhouse gases to the world than you might like. It’s almost unavoidable at this point.
With this in mind, you might want to look into purchasing carbon offsets, especially when you know you’re going to be doing something that will increase your carbon footprint. If, for example, you’re about to build a brand-new house, purchasing carbon offsets will make you feel better about doing it.
You might also want to look into supporting companies that are figuring out how to capture carbon to stop it from impacting the planet. It’s just one more way to live sustainably.
Make Sustainable Living a Bigger Part of Your Life
As you’ve seen here, there are so many things you can do to embrace sustainable living. And this is really only just the start!
If you’re interested in reducing your carbon footprint, you can do it in tons of ways throughout your regular life without affecting it too much. By being more mindful of how you can live sustainably, you can decrease your carbon footprint in no time at all.
Get more tips on how to save the environment by browsing through more of our published blog articles.
