I was reminded by @ErmesT in his Environment Challenge that was to occur in the week of 6 Mar 2020 to think of some way in which we can help care for our environment and be conscious of our human impact on the planet.
Well, I would like to share with you some of the ways in which we do this as a family. These are simple everyday things that we do and have adopted into our daily lives.
To help us do this, we ask ourselves these questions before we throw something into the bin for landfill or even for recycling:
Can we reuse the item?
Can we re-purpose it?
Can we recycle it?
The photo collage above shows some ways that we help care for the environment. But even as I write this I am aware of other things that I have not taken photos of. I’ll add them here below anyway.
- We use a thermos to store any left over hot water from the kettle that we boil - in this way we reduce our electricity consumption
- We wash our glass jars to reuse them to store things
- Yoghurt and Ice cream containers (the blue container in the picture) can be reused as doggie water bowls
- We wash out used yoghurt containers to be repurposed as water scoops in the garden
- We collect rain water (in water tanks and buckets) to use around the garden (see the black buckets in the picture)
- Large laundry detergent containers are re-purposed to collect water in the garden as well
- Cardboard, paper, metal etc are recycled if they cannot be re-purposed in the home or garden
- Notices etc that have been printed on one side and are no longer relevant are cut down and turned into shopping list note pads and scribble pads
- Plastic trays that come with supermarket packaged meats are reused in the garden as flower pot planters - they keep the plants happy in summer especially as they can hold a lot more water than a shallow planter
- We plant lots of plants in our garden to help keep the planet green
- We plant flowering plants to feed the birds
- We have plants inside the house as well
- We have changed our regular light globes into energy efficient LEDs
- Turning off lights when we don’t use them
- Kitchen green waste are collected to feed the worms - less landfill
- Instead of buying more plastic to line large garbage bins, I bought a smaller container to use as a garbage bin so that I can reuse the small vegetable plastic bags we get from the supermarkets when we buy our vegetables
- Reduce our packaging by purchasing products that provide refills (e.g. hand wash)
- And here’s a biggie, use a reusable water bottle - and if we happen to buy bottled water (on the very rare occasion), we are careful to dispose of it correctly
- Recently we joined an initiative to collect bread tags which are sold and used to purchase wheelchairs (https://www.facebook.com/aussiebreadtags/)
Being environmentally conscious is a daily choice and lifestyle - it’s not just for one day of the year. But it’s good to be reminded annually that it’s important to care for our planet and be thoughtful about our waste - before they become landfill, can they be reused, re-purposed or recycled.