The time has come once again where capitalism pretends to care about the Earth while they are the main cause of the speedy destruction of our home. Here’s some small things you can do to help the planet! I know we can’t do everything but the more of us that do what is within our means the better the outcome will be, and we can lead by example. I’m NOT shaming anyone who can’t do thing on this list, but there’s always something we can do.
Repair clothing and other things until they can’t be repaired anymore.
Avoid synthetic fibres such as acrylic and polyester.
Use every scrap of your craft supplies.
Buy the ‘ugly’ produce as it get thrown away at the end of the day because people avoid it, it’s just as good as the rest of the food.
If possible avoid plastic packaging, if you can’t then try to get recyclable packaging.
Recycling is a broken system but it’s better than adding to landfills. Learn what is and isn’t accepted by your local recycling program if you’re lucky enough to have access to one.
Use none plastic bags. If you crochet you can actually make yourself some net bags with cotton crochet thread for large items, or if you sew you can make yourself some tote bags and produce bags from old t-shirts.
Avoid takeout coffee/tea/hot chocolate cups. As we are still dealing with the pandemic, it’s not accepted everywhere yet to use your own travel mugs for safety, but if it’s possible to use them and you have one, use it. You also tend to get a small discount at places that allow you to use your own cup so it pays for itself over time.
Shop second-hand. This is more than just clothing, you can find craft supplies, books, homeware ect. Of course there’s certain things you should never buy second-hand, safety and sanitary comes first!
Buy wild seeds that are for your region and spread them, especially in those odd patches of grass and dirt that the government neglect. (NEVER use none native wild seeds, you could cause damage)
Pick up trash that you see laying around and dispose of it. Be very careful though, make sure you have hand sanitiser and don’t touch anything sharp, don’t put your health in danger please.
If you’re good with plants, rescue the damaged plants from the store and see if you can save them, otherwise they’ll be disposed of.
That’s the most crucial stuff I remind myself everyday. I’m not saving the planet nor can I. This amazing planet which was here before me and will be here after I’m long gone. It’s about a better balance between us and the planet for the sake of all living things. It’s our home so looking after it is looking after ourselves.
I definitely want to do more of that, and just have to bring myself to do it.
Very proud that we can use technology to both create a better experience for crafters and reduce our carbon footprint simply by not printing patterns. Win-win!
Another thing you could do if you use twitter is if you come across an area with a large amount of trash you can take a photo of it and tweet it at your local council or whoever takes are of arranging the street cleaners with the location of it.
If you have plastic bags laying around you could keep one or two in your pocket/bag with hand sanitiser and a pair of gloves (sadly not recyclable but safety first), then you always have something on hand to pick up trash and put it in the bag as you wander around and then put it in the bin (or recycling point if you have one). Another option would be if you have children or friends you could make it a competition to fill up a bag with trash first, make it fun
Those are all great ideas! I recently saw an elderly woman picking up trash near where I live so I just thought “if she can do it - what’s my excuse?”
I have to admit that I find it easier to pick up trash near where I live rather than when I’m away. Unless it’s a beach or somewhere where it’s very visible.
But you are totally right it should be done safely either way!
Sadly due to the way society works with publicly shaming and judging people for doing things that aren’t common tends to stop us from doing something as simple as picking up trash. Use that nice old lady as inspiration and who knows, maybe someone will see you cleaning up and feel inspired to do it too?
When it comes to feeling easier to take care of the area around where we live it makes sense, our brains see the local area close to our homes as part of our home and so we’re more likely to be compelled to help take care of it. And that could actually be a good place to start, cleaning up your area and then slowly branching out as you gain confidence and start to shed that feeling of being viewed as “being dirty” by picking up trash.
I don’t know if the app and website ‘Next Door’ is available where you live, but it’s similar to facebook except you don’t add friends and you can only see posts from people in your area. Any type of local group could work (such as a facebook group or something) and you could post about wanting to start taking care of the area and be like “on Saturday the 23rd I’ll be at this place at this time to do some litter picking if anyone wants to join”, make it a community thing.
Plus maybe you could just hike on a trail for fun, and just simply pick up trash along the way. In any case those are often the places where people leave trash unfortunately.
Yeah, I understand that there’s obviously a lack of trashcans in those areas but people should learn to hold onto their trash until they get back. But if we all work together we can normalise picking up trash, if anything it might shame people who drop trash into not dropping it XD
Something else one could do along the same lines as wild seed is look for organizations that help with the planting of trees to help repair deforestation and clean up the air. I’ve done it be fore in the past and it does in some small way make a difference.
As well, if something is no longer usable for it’s initial purpose maybe you could find something else that it could be used for? Or see if it has salvageable parts to repair other items?
Sadly the idea of planting trees isn’t accessible and isn’t as helpful as people think, it’s good don’t get me wrong, but in order to actually make any difference we would need to plant over a million trees a day because of the rate of deforestation.
But if you want to have a way of planting trees without access to money to donate, use the search browser Ecosia, they earn money from you using it and then use that money to plant trees.
My dad and I won plants many plants in our gardens. We always give our leftovers to animals and I use all my yarn scraps as stuffing. We should all do our part in protecting out Earth. Its the reason we’re thriving
