Habits are easy to make and hard to break. We all know that the smallest steps can sometimes add up to make the biggest difference. The Swap.com team is all about spreading Green Ideas, so here are five quick green habits you should get into now (so you’ll never even have to break them):
1. Bring back the lunch box: Pack your lunch for the office or school. Buying lunch everyday consumes an incredible amount of unnecessary resources. Not only do you get to bring back the rocking lunch box, but this also has the added bonus of getting you a slimmer body and a fatter wallet. It’s a win-win.
2. Recycle your recycling: This can apply in a few ways. First, very literally, do not throw away your recycling. If you are in a location that does not have a recycling option, just hold on to the plastic until you can find one. You might get a few strange looks, but it will all be worth it when your extra effort helps save the planet.
Second, re-purpose your recycling. Glass jars make great storage containers, tops of milk jugs get you a cheap scoop, and beer bottles double as vases for any poor college kid.
3. Buy a reusable water bottle: Stop wasting so much plastic, and money, and buy a reusable water bottle. Enough said.
4. Download your software: Ever notice how you have to open box after box just to have to rifle through a pound of papers to get to the disc you need to install new software on your computer? Then all that junk just sits in your closet until you’re forced to throw it away to make space for more software boxes. Thankfully, most software can now be downloaded online. At last, you can break free of all the boxes!
5. Use cloth shopping bags: I can’t stress the benefits of this enough. Without cloth bags, each grocery store trip can yield, depending on the size of your cart, somewhere around 5 to 10 plastic bags (that’s if you don’t double bag). If you shop once a week, you are using between 20 and 40 plastic bags a month, and 60 to 120 plastic bags a year. That’s an insane amount of plastic, especially when you consider how much that amounts to overtime. In short, spend the dollar and buy the reusable bag. They are sturdier, they hold more groceries, and are so much less wasteful.
Do your part, make good habits now, be green. Every little bit counts.
(Photo by epSos.de)
Swap.com Mobile is a free iPhone is app that lets you scan items into your HAVE and WANT lists, manage your account, see what you can get for your stuff, and participate in swaps.
