The 22nd April 2021 is Earth Day! Earth Day happens every year and helps to raise awareness about the protection and conservation of our Planet. It is a day we can make changes in our lives to help the environment and our Planet. Not sure what to do to celebrate Earth Day? Life’s Little Things brings you 5 little things we can all do for Earth Day 2021.
1. Make a food swap
In my previous blog post, 5 little things we can all do to help the environment, I talked about avoiding products with palm oil in them. I will be writing a more in-depth post about palm oil in the coming months, but in a nut shell, the production of palm oil is absolutely devastating rainforests. It’s destroying trees, animals habitats and is endangering species. So many of our everyday food items at home contain palm oil and we don’t even realise!
For Earth Day 2021 you could choose to swap one of your food items at home for a palm oil free alternative. I chose peanut butter for our first swap. We swapped from a supermarket own brand of peanut butter which contained palm oil to Pip and Nut Peanut Butter. The new product is more expensive but is less oily, absolutely delicious, and most importantly has no palm oil! Our next swap is going to be from a supermarket own brand of sunflower spread to butter that contains no palm oil.
2. Make a household product swap
Many items around our homes are made of plastic or materials that can’t be recycled, don’t biodegrade and will sit in landfill for hundreds of years once we are finished with them. As much as I would love to, we can’t afford to just go out and replace everything in our homes for eco friendly substitutes in one go. Like many people we have budget constraints. But what we are going to start doing is as and when we need to replace items we will be looking for environmentally friendly replacements.
This week I came across a great little shop online called My little Eco Shop. I found environmentally friendly bamboo make up brushes that were half the price of other plastic ones that I had found! I also bought some bees wax food wrap. This is something I have been wanting to try for a long time as I hate having to use cling film to wrap up food. Is there anything that you need to buy soon that you could get an environmentally friendly version of?
3. Unsubscribe from junk mail. Go paperless!
Do you get letters, magazines or bank statements in the post that you don’t read or can view online? A great way to help cut down on paper waste is to go paperless. Although paper can be recycled, the demand for paper has a very damaging effect to our planet. Every year more that 75 million football fields worth of forest is cleared to be created into paper.*2 This amount of deforestation has a very damaging effect on our planet. Trees help reduce the effects of global warming by taking in carbon dioxide and giving out oxygen that we breathe. Unsubscribing to unnecessary junk mail that comes through your door is a great way to help save paper and trees.
4. Shop Local, support small businesses
Something I have been very keen to start this year is shopping more locally. By that I don’t just mean my local supermarkets, but local small businesses. Not only does this support local businesses in my area, but also reduces my carbon footprint. I started off with a few small changes, like buying some of our meat at a local butchers. I slowly increased it so that we now buy all of our meat from our local butchers. Then week by week I have been adding other items like locally sourced free range eggs, milk and cheese. This can be a difficult thing to do as many of the items are more expensive than what is available in a supermarket, but what I have been finding is that we are getting much better quality for the money we are paying. If your budget doesn’t allow for it, that’s ok! Just do something small and make one change as and when you can.
5. Walk or cycle instead of taking the car
Research has found that in the first 5 minutes of a car journey, a vehicle can emit up to twice as much pollution as it would once the vehicles pollution control system has warmed up.*3 In 2019, 34% of carbon dioxide emission in the UK came from transport alone and was the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions. Are there any short journeys that you take in the car that you could walk or cycle instead? Not only is it better for you to walk or cycle as it is great exercise but it saves you money and also helps the planet!
Thats it! 5 little things we can all do for Earth Day 2021! All of these are only small actions. You could just do 1 or 2 of them or all 5! Or could you make some bigger changes in your life? Sir David Attenborough said at the end of the documentary ‘Extinction: The Facts’, ‘If we make the right decisions at this critical moment, we can safeguard our planet’s ecosystems, it’s extraordinary biodiversity and all its inhabitants. What happens next, is up to every one of us.’ If all of us make many little changes in our lives, it could add up to some big changes for our planet!
See you all in 2 weeks for the next blog post! In the mean time check out the Life’s Little Things Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest accounts for more posts.
Take care,
Jem X