Though the Earth Day is celebrated on 22nd April every year, but I personally feel that it is a day to be celebrated everyday. Its not a day to be celebrated only for one day and forget about it rest of the year. April 2023 is not yet over but the heatwaves have already started all over in Europe and in many parts of Asia. I’m from India and in the northern part of India heatwaves have already increased the temperature till 42 degrees in certain places.
I came to know about earth week or earth day back in 2014 and since then I have been celebrating it consciously. I always tried to give something back to the planet and I’m still on the same mission. Here are few of my ways to execute Earth Day everyday at home.
- I don’t throw the water away after par boiling my vegetables. Rather I use the same to water my plants. Vegetables have lot of nutrition and you can add the same to your plants. This way you are reusing water and providing nutrition to your garden too.
- I always carry cloth bag with myself whenever I’m going to fetch vegetables, fruits and groceries. This is a very useful tip to avoid usage of plastic carry bags which is harmful for the environment.
- Use biodegradable garbage/trash bags to throw away garbages. These won’t harm animals if by any chance they are eating it. It won’t damage the soil too.
- Cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner is sort off mandatory everyday. But instead of hanging out in the kitchen for so long, you can cook the curries and few more stuffs once and can eat it twice in a day. You are saving up time and also adding less to the carbon footprints. If you are cooking more, you are also wasting fuel. Hence, you can reduce the pollution level.
- Switching to a plant based diet could be very helpful for you, animals and for the planet as well. Humans can eat plants and can get enough nutrition they required. You can throw away the plant wastes and herbivorous animals can easily consume them. Plant based cooking consumes less time, so you can save your time and fuel pretty easily. Meat, fish and eggs take more time and water while cooking.
- You can switch off the lights or other home appliances when they are not in use. Saving the power consumption can also reduce carbon footprints gradually.
- I stopped using plastic containers at my home. Specially in the kitchen, most of us are using plastic containers to preserve all the kitchen ingredients. Instead of that you can use wooden, bamboo or glasswares at your kitchen.
- Instead of throwing the cardboard courier boxes, you can reuse them to store light stuffs at home. If you are parents, then you can transform those boxes to some make-shift toys for your kids.
- My dad loves to have tea at least 3-4 times a day and I take green tea in the evening. We never throw away the tea leaves. Rather we put it in the flower pots, which provided enough soil nutrition and it’s a great way of composting the stuffs.
- You should also switch your overall lifestyle in using recyclable materials. Generally we throw away the shampoo and liquid soap bottles and it adds to the pollution level. Instead of that, you can invest in purchasing environment friendly brands which makes the containers biodegradable or at least they can be recycled. In India, you can trust the new brands like, St. Botanical, Kirimica, Daughter Earth, Love Beauty and Planet and so on.
Generally, people think that we need to do hell lot of things to protect our planet. But they barely follow the simple instructions. The above mentioned tips are all very simple and you don’t need to invest a lot of money to follow them. You must also teach the same rules to your kids so that they can follow the same and can also spread awareness among their peer. Cooking in adequate quantity can also help you in saving a lot. Start following these simple rules at home today and you can figure out the changes on your own very soon. Happy Earth Week and make the planet liveable, breathable and wearable.
Keywords: Earth Day, Earth Week, biodegradable, environment friendly, worshipveganism