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People are always looking for ways to do more with less, make life easier, and deliver gradual improvements. With today’s article, we’ll share a few ways to help you have less impact on the environment. Some of the suggestions are smaller and easier to implement, and others will take more time and effort. However, the outcome will surprise you.
While helping the planet and doing your bit to assist the environment in healing, it’s possible to save money at least a good part of the time too. This wasn’t always thought to be the case; possibly because eating healthy is generally more expensive than junk food often is, so people tend to think the same of being respectful of the environment! Yet that’s not actually correct – not at all.
Let’s run through a few of the ways that you can reduce your environmental impact to make your life friendly to the planet.
Getting Solar Installed at Home
Solar power, wind power and other alternative ways to generate power have been a huge success. They got off to a slow start initially, but they’re now doing very well as a sustainable source of electric production while being terrific for the environment too.
For the individual homeowner, how do solar panels stack up against just continuing to use the power grid (and maybe gas for cooking) to supply power to your home and outdoor areas? The good news is that solar power is now so efficient that it is capable of generating sufficient energy from a single installation for a single-family home to power the heating and air conditioning for many hours a day without difficulty.
Intermittent sunshine isn’t an issue either. The panels, when installed properly and set up with a battery bank system, can convert the sun’s rays into usable power that can feed into the batteries ready for use. Not only does this lessen the dependence on the utility companies (and lower their bills over the lifetime of the solar system) but it means a power cut doesn’t leave you in the dark!
Getting the right installer is important. They can help you select the right panels to fit on your room and advise on how many batteries for battery storage should be installed too. Semper Solaris is staffed with several former military personnel, including the founder, who bring their same dedication to results to their valued customers, so they are definitely worth checking out.
How Flexible Are You with Transportation?
We all must get from A to B for work, to pick up the kids from school, to do the shopping, and for many other purposes. What type of transportation you use and what alternatives are possible partly depends on if you have a family already and how friendly your city is to other forms of transportation.
Here are a few possibilities to consider making transport less energy hungry and polluting:
Electric Scooter
An electric scooter is legal in some cities and states, so you’ll need to check on that. It’s possible to buy one of these or rent from Bird, Lime or one of the other short-term scooter rental apps. This can give you a taste for using one to get around the city with a daypack to store your business essentials or to fill up when grocery shopping.
When buying your own, it’s not expensive to recharge it overnight. Then you’re ready to hop on the next morning.
Carpooling
Carpooling is becoming more popular as the absurdity of one person being stuck in traffic in their car queued behind many other people doing the exact same thing becomes too much to bear.
For people who are neighbors and work nearby, or co-workers who are willing to go around the city picking up and correspondingly dropping people off after work, it can be a real stress reliever to not deal with traffic. It’s also cheaper than paying for gasoline to drive in yourself every day and deal with the stress about finding parking spots if your employer doesn’t provide one.
One Car Families
Dropping from a two-car family to a one-car family makes sense for the environment and certainly on a financial basis too.
The rapid depreciation on a second car, paying to insure it, and get it checked for issues (not to mention repairs) are a series of possible headaches that are no longer a concern when you only have one car to consider.
Yes, it does mean a little less independence during the week, but for couples, it just requires a bit of cooperation to make it work. The cost savings can fund the annual vacation, something set aside for a rainy day or to escape needing to take out an auto loan to buy a new car every few years.
Foldable Bicycle
A foldable bicycle is another way to go to keep it eco-friendly by letting your legs do all the work.
These types of bikes fold down to be light enough to carry into work to store under your desk, ready to take out when returning home. They can also be brought onto a train to travel a distance and then cover the “last mile” using your bike. There are many different models including those that focus on being the lightest, or folding down to the smallest possible size.
Other Ideas to Be Better for the Environment
When it comes to environmental concerns, there’s always more you can do to have less of a negative impact.
In your garden, having plants that survive heavy rainfall or droughts for days or weeks at a time means you won’t need to keep replanting. A compost bin ensures the soil for your garden is nutrient-rich, so don’t forget to use it. Be sure to buy gardening equipment and supplies that haven’t been produced using considerable energy to do so. Products using biodegradable materials or recycled wood are ideal.
For the home, the usual suspects are energy savers like not leaving every electronic tool on while you’re at work if it’s not needed (security obviously is important). Otherwise, is it necessary to leave that laser printer permanently on every day when you only print out a few sheets each week? It’s using energy that others could benefit from and draining money from your pocket at the same time. Most of these things happen due to being focused in other areas. But when you bring the mind back to the here and now, it’s possible to get your energy footprint down in many small ways which have a big impact overall.
It doesn’t take much to be impactful in a meaningful way on the environment around us. Each of us is capable of doing a few things – whether big or small – that can improve our lives and planet, so while still enjoying a great lifestyle and feeling good about how we live our lives.
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