3 Easy Ways to Save the Planet
The debate as to whether it’s the consumers responsibility to “save” the environment comes up whenever there’s a discussion around lifestyle change.
One side argue that the consumer can’t be expected to change their ways. And what difference would it make, anyway? It’s the big companies that should make a change.
While there’s certainly truth in that statement — that being, the impact a large company can make on the environment will grossly outweigh any individual action — the use of that as justification to live a wasteful and exploitive lifestyle is, well, an excuse.
It’s an attempt to shift blame somewhere else.
And when we do that, we end up in a situation where nobody takes responsibility, and nothing changes. Companies blame individuals, and individuals blame companies.
We could argue for days about whether individual change is meaningful or not, or whether it’s our responsibility, and certainly there’s valid reasoning on both sides of the debate.
Regardless, I do believe there’s value in individual lifestyle change.
The actions I propose in this essay are three examples of many actions that be undertaken to help reduce your consumption and waste.
And the benefits of these actions are two fold:
- You’ll be helping to save the environment and setting a good example for others to do so, in turn encouraging them to change, which will ideally start a snowball effect.
- These actions will also benefit you as an individual as well as the planet at large. They’ll help save you money, or can be good for your health. So, even if you don’t believe that you’ll make much difference in the grand scheme of things, it’s always possible to look with the narrower view of the impact on your own personal experience.
So without further ado, here’s three easy ways you can help to save the planet.
Action 1: Give up single-use plastics
Give up single-use plastics. It’s the best thing you can do for the environment.
Single-use plastics are ubiquitous in the modern world, to the point that it is believed there isn’t a place on earth now that is completely plastic free.
Takeaway coffee cups, plastic knifes and forks, straws, carrier bags, and everything else, litter streets, clog up our landfills and seep into rivers and oceans.
The infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest of five accumulations of ocean plastic on the planet, is three times the size of France. It measures an immense 1.8 million square kilometres, and consists of over 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic — 250 pieces for every human in the world. That collectively is estimated to weigh about 80,000–100,000 tonnes.
And it’s only going to get worse, with an estimated 1.15 to 2.41 million tonnes of plastic entering the oceans every year via rivers.
This isn’t surprising considering we use nearly 2 million single-use plastic bags every minute, half a billion straws daily, and annually we go through 600 billion paper and plastic cups and 480 billion plastic bottles.
And how much of that waste biodegrades? None of it.
If it gets throw into a landfill, it doesn’t biodegrade at all.
And in the ocean, the results are even worse.
The sun breaks plastic down into smaller and smaller pieces — micro plastics. These micro plastics are then ingested by the ocean’s wildlife. In fact, plastic is expected to supplant wildlife soon enough, with estimates that the ocean will have more plastic than fish by 2050.
Further still, every single-use plastic has a carbon footprint. In addition to the virgin oil that is needed to produce these wasteful goods, we emit CO2 for every straw, bottle and plastic bag that we produce.
The average car in 2019, according to research from the European Environmental Agency, emits 122.4 grams of CO2 per kilometre driven. The production of single-use plastic bottle emits 33.1 grams, according to one study. A kilogram of straws produces 4.86 kilograms of CO2, and a coffee cup and lid will produce about 11–12g of CO2.
In summary: it’s a mess.
And though there’s no major changes happening that’ll reverse this catastrophe — like, say, a ban on single-use plastic — things are starting to shift.
We’ve seen the UK government introduce the plastic bag charge, Bundanoon in South Wales Australia became the first town in the world to ban single-use plastic bottles, followed by Toronoto’s city council, Massachussets US and the Indian state of Maharashtra, which imposed a ban on a number of single-use plastics, later extending it to include PET — i.e. plastic bottles.
This is a response to a change in mindset. We’re waking up and realising that the convenience of the daily world comes at a price. Even in the developing world, where access to clean water via water bottles is often a lot safer than, say, tap water.
So, which single-use plastics should you give up?
Simply put, where possible, we need to give up on all single-use plastics. As Anna Cummins, executive director of non-profit organisation 5Gyres argues, “a focus on single products, while it’s important, is not going to move the needle to the degree that we need.”
While specific items can have a major impact, it’s only one portion of the story. Many people and organisations seems to believe that once one major item has been dealt with, they’ve “done their part”.
For example, plastic-straw bans have taken the limelight recently as they’ve been banned across the world. While this is great progress, we can’t let a ban on one single product give us a ‘moral licence’ (as Jim Leave, co-director of the Stanford Centre for Ocean Solutions put it) to feel we’ve done enough.
My list, while not exhaustive, focuses primarily on plastic bags (particularly cheap polypropylene bags), plastic cutlery, takeaway cups and lids, plastic straws and, last but certainly not least, plastic bottles.
Each of these items can be manufactured from different plastics — PET, PS, PP, HDPE, LDPE, etc — but none of them will biodegrade in a landfill. They just sit there.
Well, what about recycling?
Most of these items do not get recycled according to Forbes. They’re often too small, or contaminated with food waste. And polystyrene, which is often used for plastic cutlery, is not widely recycled.
Even when they are recycled, plastics can only be recycled once or twice before they’re inevitably sent to the landfill.
So, what’re the alternatives?
In recent years, a number of plastic-alternatives have emerged. Particularly in the form of bioplastics and organic alternatives.
Bioplastics are produced from cornstarch or other organic material, and are often used as an alternative to plastic for takeaway coffee cups and lids, and cutlery.
However, bioplastics can be problematic too.
Even though they’re plant-based, they need to be disposed of in an industrial composter. You can’t compost them at home.
And although the popular bioplastic brand Vegware argue that their products decompose in a landfill without producing methane (whereas most organic material in a landfill does produce methane when it decomposes), one study found that bioplastics produced significant methane in a landfill, while another claims that they don’t decompose at all.
Worse still, if these bioplastics find their way into the ocean, they behave exactly as regular plastic — breaking down into smaller pieces, and causing tremendous trouble for wildlife.
If the waste can be managed, and the bioplastics can be disposed of in an industrial composter, then they’re a great alternative. Otherwise, they can be just as dangerous to the planet as regular plastics.
Not to mention that these too have a hefty carbon footprint to produce.
Another alternative — for cutlery, at least — is wood or bamboo.
Though these are problematic too. They also have a sizeable carbon footprint (though some producers have a smaller carbon footprint than plastic-based options), and they also produce methane when disposed in a landfill.
Then there’s things like paper bags instead of plastics bags. At first glance, it seems obvious that paper bags would be an eco-friendly alternative to plastics. But, as it turns out, a paper bag has four times the carbon footprint of a regular single-use plastic bag.
So, although there are some contextually viable alternatives to regular plastics, we need to stop thinking about alternatives for single-use plastics, and move away from the notion of single use entirely.
Single-use plastic are the worst, but single-use everything is a problem too.
We need to focus instead on reusables.
Re-usable carrier bags, re-usable water bottles, re-usable straws (or omitting the straws entirely), re-usable coffee cups and even re-usable cutlery (known in some circles as simply “cutlery”).
Reusable is always better. For instance, a reusable plastic bag is better than a single-use paper bag. Assuming, of course, these products are actually re-used.
This is the downside of reusables. Because they’re often made of much studier and higher-quality resources, their carbon footprint dramatically outweighs that of single-use items.
So here’s the key: reuse what you already have!
If you’ve already got bags, it doesn’t matter if they’re cotton or plastic, just re-use them. Already own cutlery? You don’t need to invest in a fancy travel set, just carry around a knife, fork and spoon in a tea towel or bag.
If you don’t own something like, say, a re-usable coffee cup, find a used one, or purchase something that is a) going to last, and b) has the lowest carbon footprint.
Paradoxically, plastic is often better than stainless steel or glass when it comes to a lower carbon footprints.
If you do invest in these products, make sure that you use them. Otherwise, you could be doing even more damage.
Are there any other benefits of giving us single-use plastics? Absolutely.
For one thing, it’s more economical.
Sure, if you need to invest in a good water bottle, that’ll have a larger upfront cost than a single-use plastic bottle. But if you spend just £20 on a decent water bottle, you’ll only need to use it about 30 times to make up the cost you’d have spent on water bottles at the average UK price of £0.65.
You can also use the Refill mobile app to find businesses out-and-about who will fill your water bottle for free.
With coffee, it’s a similar story. Many outlets in the UK — including Starbucks, PAUL and Costa — provide discounts if you bring your own cup.
And think of how much you’re wasting on plastic bags at every shop. Plastic bags cost at least 5p, but many supermarkets no longer stock the basic 5p bags, forcing you to purchase their own-brand “bags for life,” which can cost upwards of 20p.
Truth be told, you’ll get some looks for carrying around your own cutlery. I do it, and I’ve had some odd questions. But, it’s also really handy. I much prefer eating with metal utensils than with wooden or plastic.
And remember, for most of human history, plastic (at least, as we know it) has not existed. It was common practice to carry round your own cutlery. You’re just being retro.
Then there’s the potential health benefits. Plastic water bottles, for example, are not meant to be re-used as they can leech BPA and DEHA — the latter of which is a potential carcinogen.
Tl;dr — plastic itself isn’t bad. It’s the single-use culture that’s the problem. Re-use what you have. If you don’t have it, buy it used, or invest in a product made from responsibly sources materials with a low carbon footprint. Give up single use plastic — it’s better for the environment, safer for your health, and you’ll even save a little money, too.
Action 2: “Leftovers Day”
Food waste — that is, food wasted at the “retail and consumer” level — is a massive issue in society.
Individual households in the UK waste an estimated 4.5m tonnes of edible food every year, with a total value of £14 billion.
What kind of waste do I mean, exactly?
“We mean the last few bites from your plate that you couldn’t quite manage, or your bread crusts, or potato peelings — all stuff which could have been transformed into something delicious,” says Sarah Clayton of Love Food Hate Waste.
“This really matters because it is untenable that we carry on wasting food on such a monumental scale when we are seeing the visible effects of climate change every day, and when nearly a billion people go hungry every day,” argues Marcus Gover, CEO of WRAP.
Other than the economical impact on the individual household, why does food waste actually matter?
How can throwing away potato peelings impact the climate?
Food production requires lots of fresh water, land and labour to produce, and energy to transport.
Different foods have different emissions, but every scrap of food has some emissions. It all depends where and how its farmed, where it’s going, and, of course, what is farmed and its impact on the land.
Transportation is a massive contributor. Think about how ubiquitous the banana is. And yet, most of the world can’t grow them. Most bananas are grown in Costa Rica, Ecuador or Guatemala. They are all then transported to Europe, the US, and other locations across the world.
Think about how much fuel that requires. Plus, they’re refrigerated en route, resulting in even more carbon emissions. In fact, transport contributes 62% — 67% of the total carbon footprint created during the life cycle of the banana value chain.
If we wasted less food, we’d partially reduce the demand on the world’s agriculture, thereby reducing the emissions produced.
Plus, hunger is still a problem, even in the UK. According to foodshare.co.uk, 8.4 million people in the UK are struggling to eat. How can we waste food when we know there are others in the world who could benefit from it?
Finally, when that food is wasted, it’s often disposed of in the regular waste. That waste is then sent to the landfill.
As we’ve already discussed, organic matter in the landfill produces methane, a gas estimated to be 28–38 times as potent as carbon dioxide over a 100 year period.
The landfill compresses everything as much as possible, and leaves the waste without any oxygen, which is essential to breaking the food down properly.
And, since an estimated 20% of everything that goes to the landfill is food, these emissions are huge.
Plus, landfills use a lot of resources generally. It’s expensive to transport waste and to manage the waste itself. Not to mention the actual land that’s required. The IPCC estimates that between 5–20% of global human-caused emissions are produced via landfills. That’s around 1–4% of total greenhouse emissions. The less we can send to the landfills, the better.
So, what can you do to tackle needless food waste?
First, you should try and become aware of your waste.
This applies not only at home, but at restaurants and other eateries too.
If you’re not going to be able to finish your meal, don’t order it, or opt to share it. Or take it home to eat or re-purpose later. If there’s a side on the dish you won’t eat — because, for example, you just dislike it — ask for it to not be included.
Yes, it’s a bit of a fuss — but it’s better than it being wasted.
At home, the easiest way to avoid waste is to reduce the opportunities for waste. That can be achieved by planning your meals in advance.
When you go to the supermarket, instead of buying random ingredients and products hoping you’ll be able to concoct a meal from them, you should know exactly what you need. Make a list before you leave.
The bonus here is that you have greater control of what you’re eating — which is great if you’re looking to manage your weight — and you’ll save money.
Even still, there’ll be waste. You’ll have ingredients that didn’t make the cut, as well as leftovers, and maybe life got in the way, and you weren’t able to cook one of the meals you planned.
This is where my tip come in — a leftovers day. A “leftovers day” is one day in the week that you set aside to prepare a meal from only leftovers that you’ve got in the house.
That means whatever ingredients are left over from the meals you cooked that week, whatever half-eaten meals, whatever ingredients are in the cupboard and the freezer that you’ve not been able to use yet.
Let’s say you’re got some leftover mushrooms in the fridge. You know you’ve got some rice. Perhaps you’ve got everything you need to make a risotto. Or maybe you’ve got a few spoonfuls of curry paste left, you could knock-up a Thai curry.
There’s plenty of benefits.
First, it’s an opportunity to experiment. At the very least, you can always throw together a stir-fry or a pot of roasted veggies, or a soup. But, if you’ve got the right ingredients, you could give a complex recipe a try.
If the ingredients were going to go to waste anyway, why not?
Or, it’s an opportunity to learn new recipes. There’s a number of websites online where you can input your ingredients and it’ll offer some recipe suggestions. Or just Google the ingredients, and see what comes up. Remember, you can always use substitutes, too.
Second, you’ll save money. You’re basically getting a meal — or a number of portions — for free, from the byproducts of what you were already making. The average family of four can save just over £60 per month by reducing their food waste.
If you live with other people, get them involved. Pool together your leftovers and see what you can make.
You’ll be doing both your finances and the environment a favour.
As a final tip — you may want to give composting a go. Whereas in a landfill, your food waste will produce methane, this isn’t the case with home composting. It means that the food that needs to be thrown away (either because it’s generally inedible or its too far gone to be reuse) is less dangerous.
Plus, you’ll end up with compost that you can use to plant your own produce, or give away.
Action 3: Wash clothes half the time
My third and final tip is simple but effective — where possible, wash your clothes half the time.
Instead of throwing your t-shirts, dresses, trousers or whatever else into the washing machine after you’ve worn them once, if they’re still acceptable (i.e. don’t have a fowl odour or stains), set them aside and wear them again the next day, or in a few days.
Of course, I caveat this by saying “where possible”. There are, of course, certain clothes that can’t be re-worn without washing — you’re not going to want to wear sweaty socks twice.
But think about your day-to-day life. How many times have you put a perfectly clean jumper or pair of trousers in the wash?
If you wore your clothes an average of twice before washing them, as opposed to washing them every time you wore them, you’d cut your wash cycles in half.
Why does that matter?
Well, let’s talk about water.
Water is essential to human survival. And yet we take our access to this limited resource for granted, especially in bountiful places like the Europe and parts of the US.
But in fact, the resource isn’t as bountiful as you may have thought. Less than 1% of the world’s water is “freshwater” (i.e. drinkable water pumped from lakes, rivers and underground aquifers) and available for us to consume (i.e. not trapped in glaciers).
Less than 1%.
Further still, out of all the fresh water that we use globally, 70% is used in agriculture to irrigate crops and the like.
No wonder we’re facing water shortages.
As of 2018, 844 million people — that’s about 1/9th of the world — lack clean, affordable water within an hour of their home. Nearly 300,000 children under five die annually from diarrhoea linked to dirty water and poor sanitation.
Aside from mortality, there’s a knock-on effect for those people effected. For example, women tend to avoid education in these circumstances as schools are often unable to provide adequate sanitation when puberty hits.
And as populations grow, the demand for water will naturally increase — a demand on both drinking water and also as water for agriculture as more food will be required to support the growing populace.
A growing population coupled with increasing temperatures due to climate change is putting our freshwater supplies under severe pressure.
Fresh water is being drained faster than it can replenish.
This isn’t some far-off distance prophecy. This is happening now.
Different parts of the world have different “water stress” levels. When droughts strike, those with the higher stress levels are vastly more likely to feel the pinch.
In response, the government limited individual use to just 50 litres per day. For reference, average daily use in the UK is 140 litres.
The Guardian reported that “capetonians started showering standing over buckets to catch and re-use that water, recycling washing machine water, and limiting loo flushes to once a day.”
In the end, the city narrowly avoided “Day Zero”. But, surely their experience serves as a wake up call to the rest of us.
Wealth isn’t enough to stave of climate change.
The developing world is disproportionally impacted by climate change, but the “developed” world is not save either. California, for instance, routinely faces drought, and even Southern England faces the risk of significant water shortages by the 2050s.
The response from Cape Town showed that human water waste plays a huge role in water stress.
By reducing water waste, they saved themselves.
But as a society, we waste water all the time. One estimate claims that a third of water taken from the natural environment in the UK is wasted through leaks, treatment losses and, of course, in the home.
“Industry must innovate and change behaviours in order to reduce demand and cut down on wastage — and we all have a duty to use water more wisely at home,” says Emma Howard Boyd, chair of the UK gov’t-sponsored NGO Environmental Agency.
The alternative to fresh water is to reuse water that’s managed as a wastewater facility.
But, while producing clean water in the first place requires energy, the footprint of water from a wastewater treatment facility, whether for drinking or irrigation, is 5–7 times more expensive. There’s also a massive salt by-product that needs to be used somehow.
The best case would be to reduce the demand on our water supplies in the first place, instead of relying on alternative sources.
So, by undertaking little steps, like reducing the amount of clothes you wash, you’re helping to alleviate water stress, which in turn reduces your carbon footprint.
When you do actually wash your clothes, you should have wash more clothes in fewer cycles, and wash for less time on a lower temperature.
In addition to the environmental benefits, it’s also more economic for yourself, especially if you’re using a water meter.
Your water bill will be reduced and your energy bill will be reduced — less washing means less energy used. Your cleaning products will last longer and, if you wash your clothes less and on a lower temperature, your clothes will last longer too.
It’s worth calculating your water usage to see how you’re performing.
There’s a few other ways you can reduce your water waste. In addition:
- If you have any leaks in your home, make sure they’re dealt with urgently.
- Take shorter, colder showers.
- Don’t overfill the kettle — i.e. only boil the amount of water you need.
- Don’t leave the tap running when brushing your teeth or soaping your hands.
We’ve heard them all before. We’re taught this stuff as children, right? But now we at least have a why.
Conclusion
Give up single use plastics, re-purpose your leftover food with a “leftovers day,” and wash your clothes less.
These tips are just three examples of the countless small ways in which you as an individual can live less wastefully, and save money and the planet at the same time.
By incorporating these changes, you can set an example for those around you, who may in turn be inclined to follow suit. It’s through small changes like this that we create the major societal shifts that shape our culture.
Yes — there are bigger problems in the world, and bigger players who can solve them, but does that really mean we should ignore our individual responsibility? We are, after all, consuming these products. And we’re consuming them in a way that we know isn’t sustainable.
Just because they’re there, doesn’t mean we need to take them. We, as humans, naturally take the path of least resistance. When the world puts convenience under our noses, we wolf it down like a dogs scoffing meat from their food bowls.
But it doesn’t have to be so.
You can still make a difference, even if it’s as small as saying “no” to a plastic spoon, or saving one vegetable from the landfill.
