It’s essential to put our planet first by making eco-friendly decisions every day. Now is the time to start coming up with ways to live a greener life!
This year, there are many fun and inspiring activities you can incorporate into your life that are both environmentally conscious and engaging.
As you begin to celebrate our planet more, try out some of these inspiring eco-friendly ideas!
1. Revamp Your Garden
A great way to spark some eco-friendly inspiration is by renovating your garden. With Spring here, there are many ways you can change things up and celebrate Mother Nature.
An easy way to make your garden more eco-friendly is to add some solar yard lighting. This will reduce your electricity usage and your impact on the environment.
If you’re someone whose garden is mostly floral, try your hand at planting some fruits, vegetables, or herbs.
Growing your veggies is a rewarding and calming hobby that is sure to leave you feeling in touch with the Earth. Whether you add in some extra garden decorations or plant more seeds this season, giving your outdoor space a bit of extra love is a perfect, simple, way to take better care of our planet.
2. Try Cruelty-Free Brands
While it may be hard to believe, there are still many brands that practice cruel testing methods. Statistics show that animal-testing is not even close to decreasing. An essential part of taking care of our planet is also taking care of the animals that inhabit it.
A great way to make an impact this year is to encourage yourself to try more cruelty-free brands. By supporting companies who are putting animals and our planet first, we are one step closer to seeing a decrease in cruel testing practices. The best place to start is with beauty and toiletry products.
The next time you’re looking for at home hair color, try out a vegan, cruelty-free color conditioner. From hair dye to hand sanitizer, there’s an animal-friendly brand out there for all of your must-have products!
Make our animals your priority by doing some more research on the companies you regularly buy from.
If you’re someone who is not ready to switch up the products you use, another great way to help our animals is to volunteer at a local shelter. You may even find yourself falling in love, and adopt a rescue of your own!
3. Repurpose & DIY More Often
Let your artistic side shine and look for things you can repurpose this Spring. Incorporating more DIY into your life helps our planet by preventing old items from ending up in landfills, and by reducing the purchasing of newly manufactured products.
That old trunk you have buried in your basement? Turn it into a coffee table! Locate the shabby chic items in your home and transform them into something beautiful.
You can even decorate your garden with some recycled materials as well. If you are looking for some new items to add to your home, shop at your local thrift store or to hit up some garage sales.
Buying used items to repurpose helps the planet and gives you something to do on the weekend. Get in touch with your creative side this Spring and make something amazing!
4. Have an Unplugged Day
One of the ways we can take time to appreciate our planet is by shutting off the screens we usually have in front of us. Take a day this month to unplug from everything, and get outside. While this idea may be one of the hardest to put into practice, it’ll be amazing how inspired you’ll feel by the results.
Designate a basket for the phones in your home, and leave them there. You can embrace this process by turning the lights off in your home as well. Anything you use that requires electricity, ditch it. Eating dinner by candlelight might not seem so bad when surrounded by your loved ones!
Getting outside to experience all that nature has to offer without the distraction of a smartphone will help you feel more Earth-friendly than ever.
On top of this, the side effect of having a day with no screens is that the less electricity you use, the smaller your carbon footprint will be. If you do complete a full day of being unplugged, be sure to write down how the experience benefitted you.
5. Take Action
Let’s be honest; embracing change can be difficult. This year, hopefully, the activities above will inspire you to want to take action in your own life. Putting our planet first is a process that starts at home with you.
Educate yourself on the ways you might be hurting our planet more than helping it, and take action to fix them. From using less water at home to turning the lights off when you leave a room, the changes do not necessarily have to be life-altering.
Take action by supporting brands who use recycled materials for their products and refuse to test on animals. Most importantly, take action by educating others on their impact and their carbon footprint, because we all have one.
The more educated individuals are on how to help our planet, the more we can all do our part to put the environment first each and every day!
6. Create a garden with Recycled Products
Why buy new products when you can use recycled ones? In fact, using recycled materials in your garden is a new trend that is going on, and it is cost-effective as well.
You can display your creative sides by using recycled items to create a garden of your dream. They also give you the chance to strengthen the character and aesthetic of your property. There is no dearth of ideas for using used and upcycled items like used boots, old wheelbarrows, discarded water cans, and so on.
So, the next time you want to upgrade your garden, take out the old bicycle from your garage and use it as a recycled planter. It will surely add a touch of a whim to your green oasis.
7. Use Eco-Friendly Materials
What can be a better way to make your garden eco-friendly than using eco-friendly materials? The sustainability of the garden is enhanced by the use of eco-friendly materials that are produced and acquired from the neighborhood. Additionally, they also add a local flavor to your yard. These things also contribute to lowering carbon emissions, which, in a way, improves the status of the world temperature.
So be sure to include items like cob, woven willow, wooden fences, rammed soil, straw bales, etc., on your list of materials to add to your garden the next time. Please keep in mind, though, that working with conventional materials could necessitate specialized knowledge. You might want assistance if you lack the requisite skills.
8. Go Natural
There are multiple ways you can adopt natural processes for gardening and cut back on chemicals. Below are our take on the top three ways you can adhere to natural gardening processes.
Compost Naturally
Our first take is on composting naturally to enhance the soil quality. Composting with natural materials will not only use fewer chemicals but will also divert about 35% of household waste from the trash, decreasing the amount of waste that ends up in landfills.
However, your decision will determine what goes in your compost. But remember that things that can be composted contain carbon or nitrogen, although the ranges will differ.
This table lists the resources you can use along with their content.
| Materials | Content- Carbon or Nitrogen |
|---|---|
| Leaves | Carbon |
| Wood pallets | Carbon |
| Straw/ hay | Carbon |
| Table scraps | Nitrogen |
| Kitchen wastes | Nitrogen |
| Coffee grounds | Carbon |
| Egg shells | Carbon |
| Wood ash | Carbon |
| Flowers, cuttings | Nitrogen |
| Chicken manure | Nitrogen |
Pest Control in Non-Chemical Ways
Where there are plants there will be threats of pests. But to control them, you do not always need to resort to chemicals. What if we tell you there are some amazing natural ways to control pests in your garden? Yes, you heard it right.
Natural Pest Control Techniques
- Use a jet of water to wash off pests
- Manually remove insects like caterpillars
- Attract beneficial predators to feed on pests like wasps, hoverflies, etc.
- Attract birds that feed on insects like caterpillars
- Practice companion planting and pair plants that ward off pests by emitting strong smells
- Build a pond to attract beneficial insects
- Ward off weeds to ward off pests
Weed Control Non- Chemically
Weeds are those pesky plants that can pop up in any corner and invade your whole yard if not controlled. Although herbicides become essential when there is a serious weed issue, it is not the only solution. If you keep a close watch on the weed growth in your garden, you can use the manual as well as non-chemical methods to eliminate these plants.
Non-Chemical Weed Control Ways
- Manual weeding
- Using a trowel or shovel to dig out weeds
- Mulching
- Using vinegar
- Mowing regularly
- Solarizing weeds
- Using boiling water, etc.
9. Choose Eco-Friendly Plants
It is essential to pick the appropriate plants to design an organic or eco-friendly garden. In addition to producing organic food, the correct sort of plant will draw in and shelter beneficial creatures.
For instance, pick berry plants like hawthorn or herbs like dill and parsley to entice birds and insects into your garden. As a result, pollination will be improved, and your garden will become a haven for beneficial species.
Making hedges rather than building walls is another tactic you might use. Birds and beneficial insects will build their nests in hedges, protecting your garden from predators.
Which eco-friendly idea are you most excited to try out this year?