Sustainability efforts are key in protecting our environment’s natural resources, ecosystem and atmosphere for future generations to ensure they have necessary items in years to come. Minimizing your impact on this Earth is the essential solution to sustainability.
The number one thing I do to maintain a sustainable lifestyle is utilizing reusable bags for shopping. I live in Denver County where it is a law for stores to charge 10¢ per single-use bags at grocery and clothing stores, so you are essentially saving money by bringing your own bags. Target offers a 5¢ discount for every bag you bring in yourself. Another way to save money while practicing sustainability efforts is bringing your own cup to Starbucks. They offer 25 bonus points on your account and a 10¢ discount per reusable cup. If you don’t bring your own bag or cup to these stores then you are losing out on money you could be saving
Another way to live a sustainable lifestyle is by utilizing public transportation or walking/biking to close places. I went 6 months recently without a car and while it was not easy, I saved money while helping our planet. Public transportation reduces the amount of greenhouse gases you are emitting into the Earth — as it is already running — so why not use it? Denver has an outstanding public transportation system, so I took the bus everyday to work and the light rail when going further distances. It took some time to learn the ropes but now I am an expert at it. Uber and Lyft even have electric scooters that are easy to function and go faster than you may think.
Reduce, reuse, and recycle are three things we have heard for a long time, but not everyone performs it properly. The most important of these three is ‘reduce’ as we do not want to have these single-use items in our environment anymore than we have to. As I previously mentioned, bring your own bags to stores even for picking out produce so you are not using the plastic ones provided. Almost 85% of all single-use bags are thrown away. If you have to use a plastic bag, opt for reusing them to pick up after your dog versus buying those cute small bags. Lastly, recycling is not always possible as people put items in recycling bins that are not supposed to go there, so the entire batch ends up being thrown out. Learn about your local recycling by going to the division’s website and seeing what they are able to recycle.
There are so many ways you can begin to help our Earth. You can start small by bringing your own bags to the grocery store and then move to larger things such as not using your car for a day or two. Let’s save our Earth one sustainable movement at a time.