Do you know that sustainable living is not just good for the planet, it can even be good for your wallet. So if you are someone who wants to take a few small steps to lower your environmental footprint and increase your savings, you can take some of the good steps mentioned below to get started.
- Switch Off instead of Sleep Mode: The washing machine, microwave and other appliances keep using electricity when they are not in use, you can save up to 10% on electricity consumption by switching off once you finish using them.
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Save Water: Most common places you can look into
- Fix Leakages.
- Don’t leave the tap running.
- Reuse water used for soaking grains to water the plants.
- Wise Shopping: Carry a sturdy and reusable bag. You will be surprised with the amount of bags you avoid carrying back home and dealing with them. The more often you use the same bag, the lower your environmental footprint.
- Don’t Make the Small Snip: Do you know that one of the reasons why the drains, and water bodies get clogged? Of course, there are big items interfering with their normal flow but small pieces of plastic are everywhere obstructing and they are very challenging to collect/remove. So what can we do? Don’t snip the edges of plastic packets of milk, curd, tetra packs etc. Give a horizontal cut or any direction easy to pour with entire packet intact. And rinse and dry and give it for recycling. In case, you do end up snipping, put the cut piece inside the original plastic bag or tetra pack so it can still be recycled instead of landing up in a landfill.
- Recycle to Upcycle: What may be waste to some may actually be resource to someone else. So give your discards on Plastics, metal, paper for recycling. Give it to your raddiwala or any collection drive, which happens in your society. Plastic recycling drives are happening at a lot of societies. But also next time Don’t throw away your aluminium cans of Coke, Pepsi etc. Recycling of aluminium cans saves 95% of the energy required to make the same amount of aluminium from its virgin source.
- Go Paperless : Paper is not just bad because it is made by destroying trees, it also consumes a lot of resources to make. Avoid using paper to the extent possible. Print only if you must and ensure you use both sides as much as possible. Make Office Notepads from the Single Sided Prints lying near the Printer instead of buying new ones.
- Refill and reuse: Switch to refillable items. Reusable bottles/jars to refill your supplies.
- New Life to Old Clothes: Use them as reusable kitchen towels instead of paper towels. You can always wash them off.
- Food Waste to Cleaners: Bio Enzymes are simple to make and make a great cleaning solution. Next time, instead of spending money to buy a chemical cleaner, opt for bio-enzymes. Simply put these are natural cleaners made from fermented kitchen vegetable and fruit peels which act as natural cleaners. Watch out for the explainer video on our YouTube channel.
- Segregate to Reduce Waste: Segregate your waste into wet, recyclable, hazardous and medical so that they can be reused or disposed of in a better manner.
