Look, you don’t have to be a radical eco-warrior to make a positive impact on the environment. By introducing even a couple of these simple habits into your everyday life, you can help make our planet into a cleaner, healthier place.
1. Don’t drive a bulldozer through the forest to get to work: Think twice next time you have the urge to cut through the forest on your bulldozer in the morning to shave a few minutes off your commute. Or, at the very least, consider plowing through the woods in a more energy-efficient vehicle.
2. Reuse your hats instead of throwing them away at the end of the day: Even though it’s a little inconvenient, wearing the same hat two or even three times before throwing it away can do a lot of good for the planet.
3. Turn off the lights every time you blink: You don’t need light when you’re blinking since your eyes are closed, so why not quickly switch the lights off and then back on every time you blink? It’s a great way to save power, and it helps you save some money, too. All you have to do is station yourself near your light switch at all times, and you’re ready to go!
4. Buy used beef: If more people bought secondhand beef instead of brand-new beef, we could cut global carbon emissions by upwards of 25 percent every year. Next time you need some beef, check eBay or thrift stores before buying it fresh.
5. Spend just one hour a week geoengineering: It’s only 60 minutes of your time, but it makes a huge difference in the long run. Seeding just one cloud with aerosolized sulphur or fertilizing just a single square mile of the ocean with a few tons of phytoplankton-attracting iron could offset thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide. That’s definitely worth it!
6. Only kill as many polar bears as you can eat: With climate change destroying their habitat at an alarming rate, polar bears are becoming increasingly endangered. That’s why it’s important to only harvest the number of them that you need to eat every day and not a single polar bear more.
7. Tip over any garbage trucks you see: Garbage trucks thrive on our trash and actively encourage wasteful consumption habits. But if we tip them all over so they can’t go around collecting trash, people will have no choice but to start recycling more. Bonus if you can tip the garbage trucks into a pond or levee, where there are plenty of hungry fish who’d be eager to feast on all the discarded bags of food scraps that would otherwise end up rotting in a landfill.
8. Plant a tree for each time you use your computer: If you’re taking from Mother Nature, it’s only fair that you give back. Planting a tree after each time you use your computer will not only help the environment, but will make you think twice next time you unnecessarily want to check an email.
9. Resist filling any parts of your car with gas that aren’t the gas tank: While it’s admittedly a nice luxury to have a glove box or backseat full of fresh, warm petroleum, filling up the interior of your car with gas is a treat you should think twice about before indulging in, as it is actually fairly wasteful and harmful to the environment.
10. Never exhale: This one’s so easy there’s no reason not to do it. By only inhaling and never exhaling, you can easily reduce the carbon emissions coming from your mouth to zero.
