As millennials, we love to say we care about the environment and that we want to make a change in its current path to destruction. However, what we say and what we do don’t always align. Here are seven ways that you can reduce your impact on the environment in a big way by making tiny little changes to your daily life!
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Bring your lunch to school
As annoying as it may be to pack a lunch every night, its impact on the environment and your wallet is extremely positive. By bringing your own homemade food in tupperware, with reusable utensils, you are saving the environment from takeout packaging, plastic utensils, transportation of goods to the restaurant in question, and not to mention you are saving yourself a lot of money.
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Don’t print your teacher’s PowerPoint presentations
Many of us have lengthy powerpoints every class describing the teacher’s lecture for that class, and I always see students that have these slides printed out in order to take notes on top. However great that is for your grades, there are so many other ways to do it now. With technology, you can even have your laptop open in class and take notes in a separate word document. A tip if you like writing your notes by hand: take notes during class in a word doc, then copy your the PowerPoint slides in your notebook with the notes you have added. Printing 5-10 PowerPoints slides per class is really unnecessary.
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Ditch the plastic utensils!
I mentioned it a little before, but whether we’re talking about in your lunch or when you eat takeout or simply when having a BBQ at home, try to never use plastic utensils. The option of reusable utensils is always available, and all you need to do after is throw them in the dishwasher. It’s a small change that can reduce your environmental impact by much more than you would think.
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Don’t leave your chargers plugged in
We all have a tendency to leave our chargers for our laptops and phones plugged in, in order for them to be easy to access when we need them. Well, it only takes about three seconds longer to plug in your phone if you need to plug it into the wall first, but this makes a big difference on your energy consumption, according to Vanessa Vadim of the Mother Nature Network.
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Go through your clothes once a month
I’m not talking about a giant garage sale type of sorting, but just a simple looking through of all your clothing. See you haven’t worn a particular item in over two months, and admit that maybe it’s time to throw it out. Rather than throw it out though, make a bag with all these items and when it’s full, bring it to a local women’s shelter or nearby charity to give back to your community and reduce waste.
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Make it a habit to use public transportation
Most students do use public transportation, but a lot of us still drive into town if its not rush hour or if we have a night class or an event. Unless you live in a really remote part of the Montreal suburbs, public transportation is available and likely already covered by your OPUS card. It may be annoying at times but all it takes is planning accordingly to the schedules. By using public transportation, you’re saving a lot of gas money and you’re getting on a bus or train that is going to run regardless, no matter if someone is on it or not.
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Buy local!
This is something we are beginning to really hear a lot about these days, but how does it benefit you? Well, if we are talking about food, according to Vern Grubinger “Local food is better for you. The shorter the time between the farm and your table, the less likely it is that nutrients will be lost from fresh food.” But even if we look at random goods like t-shirts manufactured locally, this means they had to go through minimal transportation to get into your hands. This reduction in transportation is another extremely positive impact on the environment from buying local.