4 Items in Your Home to Get Rid of for Encouraging Green Living

The easiest way to go green is your daily life is to make a pact with yourself that you’re going to purchase less energy-intensive, polluting materials. Plastics and paper bags are terribly convenient, but they’re not the best thing for the environment. That’s why two of the three pieces of the reduce-reuse-recycle trifecta that you often hear about have to do with buying less of what’s harmful (reduce) and finding ways to reuse things that you already have. Below are a few tips that you might consider letting go of, donating to charity, or reusing to further reduce your environmental impact.

Plastics

Look around your kitchen and you’ll probably find a lot of plastic. Plastics get into the home in a number of ways, including that plastic bag that followed you home from the grocery store and the plastic straws in your cupboard. Though a lot of people’s minds immediately go to these items when they consider the amount of plastic in their homes, many or most of the food products available at the grocery stores these days probably comes in plastic containers. To sidestep a lot of this plastic consumption, consider ditching a lot of this store-bought stuff and visiting local farmers’ markets with your cloth bag in tow. Consider bringing along a plastic bag to the grocery store. To reduce your consumption of harmful plastics, look for responsible waste removal so that your actual garbage container is green too.

Incandescent Light Bulbs

Energy-efficient light bulbs last up to 12 times longer than regular incandescent bulbs. What’s more, energy-efficient light bulbs, like LED and CFL lights, cost much less to operate, which means that the local coal-powered electrical plant in your area won’t have to work overtime to power your home.

Coffee

You certainly don’t have to swear completely off of coffee, or what some have affectionately called “black gold.” the thing to do is look for fair trade coffee and organic beans. Doing so promotes environmental conservation and fair wages to laborers in developing countries.

Paper Towels

Buying about a half-dozen bar mop cloths is the first step towards never having to use paper towels again. Paper towels are a scourge for the environment, so consider limiting or eliminating them and having purpose-specific bar mop cloths instead.

Generally, the benefits to reusing items that you already have reduces the environmental impact of manufacturing, delivering, and further polluting landfills. To get started being more environmentally friendly in your home, you may need a skip bin to get rid of items that are hindering you. Take the first steps and live an eco-friendly life.