Hello everyone!
Did you know that April is Earth Month? And tomorrow, Saturday, is Earth Day: a day we can use to raise awareness of the state of our planet and what actions we can take to care for it.
Most of us were raised doing things a certain way because it’s just the way our culture does it, or it’s just the way certain aspects of our world have been made easy, but a big thing that environmentalism promotes is doing things consciously. Meaning, doing things like eating, buying, and taking care of our needs in a way that we find ethical, good, things that don’t have a negative impact on the environment.
And of course, we can find places to eat, buy, and more, that just do things right.
Right on Maps!
In this post I bring you some ideas of places you can look for to commemorate the special date, so you can make some time this weekend or what’s left of the month (or whenever you want!) to try these kinds of services and products that reduce our carbon footprint, and then introduce them to your life.
First I want to briefly introduce an important environmental concept that I also shared in my Love Bottles post last year, that is on the title of this post:
“The three Rs - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - is a rule of three steps we can take to take care of the environment by changing our habits, reducing our consumption of unnecessary materials or products, reusing what we own, and as a last option, recycling what we can’t use anymore.” - written by me in the mentioned post, I don’t think I can explain it better.
(Yes, I’m reusing this image too 
)
And now, knowing what each word represents, let’s get right to it!
Places likeCero Market are a great way of reducing your use of single-use materials, and and reusing recipients like jars and bottles:
Cero Market has been on my favorites list ever since I discovered it years ago. It is allegedly the first market that works with a zero waste experience in Argentina, eliminating completely plastics on their store.
It uses a very simple system:
- You bring your own recipients, and weigh them there, writing it’s empty weight on a paper tape on each one.
- You use them to grab whatever you want from the store like ingredients, food, or even cleaning products. In Cero Market, we also have to write the code of each product on the recipient’s paper tape.
- When you are done, the cashier just weighs the recipients again and calculates how much of each product you have, based on the starting weight.
- And that’s it! You put the recipients back in your pantry, and do it all again when they are empty.
Being able to buy things using zero no plastic or single-use materials just feels amazing, it honestly feels like it’s the only way products should be sold.
Another way ofreducing your consumption and reusing existing products is buying used clothes.
Here in Buenos Aires we have many thrift shops, with lots of cool vintage clothing to choose from. I put the most popular ones in this list: 
Reusar: ropa
If it’s hard for you to find things in those kinds of shops, you can consider investigating on Google about the ethics of places you want to buy from. Unfortunately there are businesses that continue doing things like throwing waste in nature, just because it’s the cheaper way.
Did you know that the production of food is responsible for a third of the gases emitted by humans that heat the earth? And guess what, food based on animals causes twice the pollution of producing food based on plants!
Imagine how much we can help combat and reduce global warming, and the direct pollution it causes, taking meat and all animal products from our diet. Even eating less animal-based products would make an impact, by diminishing the demand they have.
I know that it is a big change and you might not want to because of habits and such, but it does bring lots of benefits to our bodies, regardless of the great effect this diet has on the environment.
Of course, you know you can look for vegetarian and vegan spots on Maps, and even use lists like these ones I made to keep them organized: Plant Based en BA 
What about other kinds of products you need? Try to buy reusable products, to reduce your consumption!
Well, if you haven’t got one already I’m sure you can easily find places to buy reusable bottles in your area. I know it’s tempting to have more as they are so cute, but a part of reducing it is minimizing the things we buy, and thinking if we can reuse something else to avoid the purchase.
I find that in my city the best places to buy sustainable products, that don’t come in single-use materials and also are plant based, are vegan shops. You can get toothbrushes made of bamboo, and even reusable hygiene products there.
As much as you can buy reusable products from places you find on Maps,a big part of reusing is giving things a new use that was not its primary intent. For example, if I buy a product in a glass bottle or jar, I keep it for any other use I might have in the future, like putting flowers, painting it and turning it into decoration, or taking it to a zero-waste market.
One post I love about reusing is @SilvyC ’s#LetsRecycle post: where she writes about transforming boxes in many creative ways, reusing them for her cats.
So, what aboutrecycling?
I know that in some countries supermarkets and other businesses are prepared for you to drop off glass bottles or other recyclable or even reusable recipients.
Some countries, or cities like mine have places just for you to take things you want recycled. I bet many of them are already on the map and even in lists by fellow Local Guides or by the organization that created them. If not, it’s your opportunity to do it! Besides creating lists, you can add that information on your review maybe, and of course upload photos of it.
If you are looking for ways to contribute on Maps that also help, I think @DeniGu ’s post sums various ways perfectly!: 5 easy ways to help the environment on Maps
Lastly this way might not be on Maps itself, but it is related to it: create and participate in environmental meet-ups.
You can try all of these things together, or just eat plant-based food as eating seems to be what all of us mostly enjoy , or just talk about the ways to care about the environment with others.
You can join or host an @ErmesT ’s Clean The World meet-up. If you prefer, you can just join an organization that already has encounters to clean areas and ask them if Local Guides can join, like we are doing tomorrow! @Cecilita arranged this kind of CTW tomorrow, and to finish this sustainability-focused month off, next weekI am hosting a special meet-up to invite the Buenos Aires community to do experience some of the kind of places I mentioned on this post, so look out for the recap once the month is over 
To finish this off, you might notice from my Love Bottles post or this one that reducing is what I find best as it takes care of things right from the start, but one thing I will always emphasize is that any action counts: like on Maps, every contribution matters.
So of course it would be ideal to reduce our consumptions and live a zero waste life, but that life is very hard, or impossible to achieve for most of us. So if for whatever reason you find it hard to reduce what you consume or are overwhelmed to do everything that is considered better for the Earth (which is a lot!), just try to do what you can.
For most of us, sustainable life definitely is too much to take up at once. A sustainable life is a long term process in which you make small changes in your life one at a time, and keep going once you are comfortable. Just like it works with any other habit, it’s better to just attempt it one at a time or at a small pace and don’t try it all at once.
And you can put your own limits to what is right for you too, if you start actively changing your habits to lower your carbon footprint, it’s not mandatory that you end up performing all the best actions for the planet all the time. You won’t be judged by people that also care for the environment, that empathize with humans and the different situations we can be in, and people that know how hard it can be to take the most sustainable route in some situations.
Here are some questions for you to answer if you’d like, I’d love to know:
- Do you know any places similar to the ones I described, near you?
- Do you know any other kinds of sustainable places? Please recommend them to us!
- What are some things you do to lower your carbon footprint?
- Have you ever tried vegan food? How was it?
Thank you for reading! I hope you choose more places that do what’s right for our world, they are right on Maps 
Jesi
. 
saludos.
… y luego llegó el COVID y tuvieron que regresar a los plásticos de un solo uso 
, poco a poco la gente lo ha estado retomando pero no es tan común como antes.
. I was on