Going eco-friendly is the need of the hour. One way is to not use plastic and find alternative materials for it, and for the materials that are not biodegradable. But doing just that is not enough. Beyond replacing plastic, there are other innovative yet simple ways of being an eco-friendly citizen. Most of these start in your home, right in your kitchen and certify you as a responsible Earth-friendly being.
Cycle Up The Errands
Treat yourself with little cycling breaks; let the wind blow your hair. Ride up to the local shops for little errands instead of taking your vehicle. Exercise will keep you healthy while making our planet wealthy. After petrol hitting over Rs 100 per litre, this will save your fuel cost too!
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Nurture Nature
Go green is the basic mantra of adapting to an eco-friendly lifestyle. Rather than going all out and planting a hundred saplings in one day, a better idea would be to nurture nature on daily basis. Level up the green in your house as much as possible. Starting with your kitchen, plant your herbs on the window sill; besides, what better than adding fresh herbs to your recipes? Decorate your hall with indoor plants. Create a green ’grammable wall in any of the open spaces at home using aesthetic creepers such as bouganvilles.
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Composting
"I believe composting is the best method to regenerate the planet. Close to 60 per cent of our daily waste is from the kitchen which is not garbage but soil wealth," shares environmentalist Vani Murthy. Composting is an art; a natural process of turning green waste like vegetable peels into valuable fertilisers. A zero-investment method, it begins with storing your daily green waste in any container found at home. It could be an old bucket or a cracked flower pot. Cover it with a lid, add natural enzymes like buttermilk from your kitchen and allow the process to happen. After a few days, you will notice the waste turning into black soil. This black soil is a natural fertiliser that will make your soil wealthy. Make sure you put some holes for the compost to breathe otherwise it will start smelling foul.
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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
One of the major aspects of eco-friendly lifestyle is to reduce carbon footprint. According to WHO Carbon footprint "is a measure of the impact your activities have on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) produced through the burning of fossil fuels and is expressed as a weight of CO2 emissions produced in tonnes." India accounts for 6.8 per cent of the total emission of greenhouses gases in the world. Ranking third in the list, an average per person carbon foot print of an Indian is 0.56 tonne annually. One of the easy ways to reduce carbon footprints are to simply set out a pattern of ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’. Start borrowing things you need than buying new items. This will minimise waste in totality. Maximise utilisation of our natural resources. Reuse items for instance, replace paper bags with cloth bags made out of clothes you don’t use anymore or make table runners from your mother’s sari instead of throwing it away. Recycle by contributing to organisations like H&M who recreate outfits from waste fabric.
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Change Little Habits
The best way is to stock up your house with eco-friendly products, such as bamboo toothbrush, clay utensils, pure cotton sheets and more. This way all that you use starting from your toothbrush will be environment friendly. You don’t need to take a big leap into becoming revolutionary environmentalist. Just make small switches like start using bamboo brush, take a bucket bath instead of shower to save water, finish your lipstick or your blush before you buy a new one, adapt Ayurvedic products, use earthen pots to store water instead of bottles, be a minimalist – buy less, use more. Many tiny habits can make a big change!
