Skyler O'Kelley
Feb 13, 2025
Many can get overwhelmed by all the negative news surrounding our environment, and some wonder how to help. In this week’s Digest, we go over some easy actions you can take to live a more sustainable life and reduce harm to the planet.
This article will be divided into six main sections, electricity, water, plastic, food, textiles, and recycling rules. There will also be a miscellaneous section of random tips that didn’t fit into one of the above categories. As you read today’s Digest, remember that you can do many of these things for free, you shouldn’t have to break the bank to help the earth. Look for free ways to live more sustainably. If you want more information, please don’t hesitate to do more research or reference other Digest articles for more ideas.
Electricity
Turning off the Lights - Energy bills are calculated based on watts per hour, so one hour with the lights off saves you money for that hour. Over the long term, this adds up to more money in your pocket and less energy used.
Vampire Energy - Vampire energy occurs when devices are plugged in and continue to pull energy from the grid, even if they aren’t being used. The biggest example is when you leave your phone charger plugged in. It’s still pulling energy being wasted because it’s not used for anything. So unplugging things like microwaves, phone chargers, and powering down computers will save a lot of energy and money.
BONUS TIP! Switching to Energy Star products when you need a new electronic will help you save 20% on your energy bill. These products use energy more efficiently and waste less energy.
Turning Down the Thermostat - 10% a year can be saved on heating and cooling by simply turning your thermostat back 7° to 10°F a day from its normal setting. This is because it takes energy to heat your home in the winter or to cool it in the summer. The Department of Energy says “During winter, the lower the interior temperature, the slower the heat loss. So the longer your house remains at the lower temperature, the more energy you save, because your house has lost less energy than it would have at the higher temperature.” So the smaller the difference between the indoor and outdoor temperatures, the lower your overall cooling bill will be.
Bike, walk, or carpool - Walk short distances (within a mile), bike for a 5-mile radius, bus, train, or carpool to distances outside that range. Reduces the amount of energy it takes to get from place to place. If you are incapable of walking or biking, please do not feel pressured to implement this, your health comes first!
Water
Laundry - 90% of the energy used by the washing machine goes towards heating the water. By switching to cold for 4 out of 5 washes you could save 864 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in a year. That’s equivalent to planting 0.37 acres of U.S. Forest according to the American Cleaning Institute. Plus, some of your clothes don’t need to be washed every time you wear them. Jeans can be worn up to 5 times before they need to be washed, assuming there are no stains or extra dirt. Look into the requirements for cleaning and see how much you can cut back. If you’re looking to spend a little extra, using laundry sheets to replace detergent and wool balls to replace dryer sheets are great options. For the laundry sheets, be careful to check the ingredients to avoid microplastics (like Polyvinyl Alcohol) being washed into the ocean. The wool balls will help reduce the waste from dryer sheets and save you money in the long run! You can also scent them with essential oils for an added kick.
Shorter Showers - The average 10-minute shower uses about 18 gallons of water (Northern Arizona University)! There are more than 300 million people in the United States. If each person reduced their shower time by one minute, we could save a combined 170 billion gallons each year (EPA). If there are any activities you do in the shower that can be done outside to save time and water, make that switch!
Brushing your teeth - You can save up to 8 gallons of water by turning off the faucet while you brush your teeth! That adds up to more than 200 gallons a month, enough to fill a huge fish tank that holds 6 small sharks (EPA). The water running while you brush does nothing for you or the planet, so switch it off! Switching to toothpaste tabs instead of tubes will also lower your impact.
Plastic
Reusable Water Bottle - Americans purchase about 50 billion water bottles per year, averaging about 13 bottles per month for every person in the U.S.! That means by using a reusable water bottle, you could save an average of 156 plastic bottles annually (Earthday.org). Every year, 15 million tons of plastic enter the sea at a minimum (Inspire Clean Energy), so we can reduce the amount of plastic entering the ocean. But why do we care if there's plastic in the ocean? Experts predict that there will be one pound of plastic in the ocean for every three pounds of fish by 2025 and that plastic will outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050 unless we change course soon (Beyond plastics). Since plastic can take a minimum of 500 years to biodegrade (Yale University) there is plenty of time for marine life to consume plastic (whether in full form or as little microplastics) and die off. Switch to a reusable water bottle to help out our marine life!
Reusable Utensils & Shopping Bags - You may think the nickel a bag isn’t that bad, but the average American family uses 1,500 plastic bags every year. At a nickel-a-bag, you can end up spending $75 annually (Yale University) on just those plastic bags. It is estimated that 1 million marine birds and 100,000 marine mammals die from plastic ingestion every year. This plastic waste kills wildlife indiscriminately by trapping, strangling, choking, and poisoning them. (Yale University). It is important to reuse bags and silverware instead of single-use plastic.
BONUS TIP! If you can’t afford or don’t want to buy a reusable silverware set, just take some utensils you have at home and wrap them in a dishcloth to bring with you. If you do choose to buy new silverware, go for bamboo varieties because bamboo is a fast-growing plant that causes a minimal amount of waste at the end of its life.
Food
Take Small Portions & Seconds - The less food you take the more likely you’ll be to finish it. If you’re still hungry, go back for seconds. This will reduce the amount of food waste that gets thrown away each year.
To-Go Boxes - Bring your own to-go boxes if you’re going out to eat so that you don’t have to use single-use to-go boxes and you can save food to eat later.
Meatless Monday - Meat production is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. You save 133 gallons of water with each meatless meal. This reduces your carbon footprint by eight pounds with each meatless Monday you participate in (Colorado University Boulder). If you want more information on why going vegetarian/vegan is helpful for our planet, check out the Digest article on it!
Plan your Shopping - By meal planning you can reduce the risk of throwing away food you didn’t eat at the end of the week. You’ll also save money because all the food you buy you’ll eat instead of throwing it away!
Composting - Composting is a great way to reduce food waste that ends up in landfills and can provide some wonderful fertilizer for your garden. Additionally, creating your own compost will mean less water is needed to make good fertilizer than if you bought it commercially, and it reduces your reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. If you want to compost but don’t have a use for it, you can look at apps like ShareWaste to find places to donate your compost or reach out to your neighbors or nearby farms to see if they’re interested.
The importance of reducing food waste - In 2020, landfilled food waste was responsible for an estimated 58 percent of the total methane emissions from MSW landfills, emitting approximately 55 mmt CO2 & methane, based on a 100-year global warming potential (EPA). A lot of food waste can result in worsening the issues presented by climate change.
Textiles
Fast Fashion - In very brief terms, fast fashion is horrible for the planet. This quick output of garments demands a sizable volume of raw materials fed into the industry, creating a significant amount of waste, pollution, and degradation of air, water, and wildlife habitat (Center for Biological Diversity). According to an analysis by Business Insider, fashion production comprises 10% of total global carbon emissions, which is as much as the European Union. It dries up water sources and pollutes rivers and streams, while 85% of all textiles go to dumps each year. Even washing clothes releases 500,000 tons of microfibres into the ocean each year, the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles. This is not even to mention the labor issues that arise in the fashion industry. Avoid companies like Shein, Zara, and any other brands that offer new styles extremely cheap and quick.
Thrift & Donate - A great alternative to buying new clothes is buying secondhand. It reduces demand on companies to produce new items, secondhand items are often cheaper, and you save CO2 because it takes less carbon to thrift than to make something new. After you’re done with your clothes you can donate them so someone else has the chance to find a piece they love.
Mending - Learning to mend can help you extend the life of your clothes, and visibly mending them can add a touch of personal flare. Additionally, many fast fashion items are poorly made, so by taking care of your clothes and buying them second-hand, you can help ease the strain on landfills. You’ll also save money because you won’t be buying new clothes as frequently!
Recycling Rules
Reduce, reuse, recycle - There’s a reason it’s said in this order. Recycling is a flawed system that won’t solve our problems surrounding waste. The first step is to reduce the amount of material that you consume so that you have less going to waste. Then reusing items you already have instead of buying new will help reduce your waste and save you money. Finally, if possible, making sure to recycle or repurpose an item at the end of its life will prevent unnecessary waste. If you can divert things from the landfill, less will be wasted, less carbon emissions, less pollution, etc.
Curbside Recycling - If you’ve reached the point where you want to recycle something the first step you need to do is look up what is accepted by your local recycling company. Let’s take a plastic water bottle for example. Plastics come in seven different formats, on most items there will be a recycling symbol with a number on the inside. This number tells you what plastic type it is. Most water bottles are plastic #5. Now that you know the plastic type, you can look up your recycling company and see if they accept #5 plastics. If you see they do, great! If not, it will have to go into the trash unless you can repurpose it into something else.
Contamination - If you’re able to recycle it, make sure it meets all the guidelines for recycling. Take care to do these steps, otherwise it will all get thrown in the garbage! Additionally, if even one item in your recycling is contaminated or can’t be recycled, the whole bag will get tossed to a landfill, so take care when sorting your recyclables! The Waste Management website says that “a container is considered contaminated when your recycling bin contains trash, the materials are soiled by food/liquids, or items are placed in plastic bags. For recyclable materials to have a second life, they must be clean and free from contaminants.” Make sure you know the rules of your recycling company before you toss anything!
Miscellaneous
Saving money - You can save more than $9,000 a year by living a more sustainable life by doing things like cutting down on energy and water consumption by just 10% each, taking public transportation instead of a personal vehicle, and replacing single-use home products with reusable alternatives. Following the tips above will help you in the long run!
Arts & Crafts - There are plenty of fun ways to reuse waste and turn them into fun crafts. If you have any little ones in your life, this could be a great way to engage with them and teach them about sustainability.
Eco-Bricking - This is an activity in which you take squishy plastics and put them into a plastic bottle to be turned into a brick. There are more rules around it than that, but that’s the basic gist. For more information, check out this website. Eco-bricking is a great way to repurpose plastic that would’ve been thrown away otherwise.
Conscious Consumerism - Practicing a more mindful way of shopping will save the planet and save your wallet in the long run. Think before you buy, think if you need it, and if you do, look for second-hand items or ways you could make/upcycle it into your life. Think about where this item will go at the end of its life, and if it will end up in a landfill, look for other ways to get what you need.
Resources
TheSimpleEnvironmentalist - A YouTuber who gives realistic and cheap ways you can be sustainable
Commons - An app that provides tips for how to live more sustainably and provides rewards for doing so!
4Ocean - One of many amazing companies doing conservation work for the environment and repurposing ocean plastic.
Bite - One option for toothpaste replacement.