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Climate change, extinction, social rights, and environmental challenges can be complex, intimidating topics, but they are more crucial than ever for people to understand if we want to be effective in dealing with them. For this reason we try to break these concepts into easily accessible segments along with simple ways we can deal with them effectively.
We felt it was important to let people explore these issues with visualizations whenever possible. This site is an aggregate of content from scientific sources and organizations working to help our planet. We include resources ranging from studies to articles, while helping to connect people with valuable tools like
Apps, tools, and communities
How-to guides
Challenges and competitions
Calls to Action
Grants and other funding or tax-break info according to subject
Contact info and voting info by country or region
Directories for zero-waste businesses, clean energy companies, recyclers, charities, etc.
Mode of Organization
A growing majority of people agree that climate change is real and that action needs to be ramped up to deal with climate change, so we feel it is important to try breaking information into hierarchies, so that people and institutions know which issues to tackle first, and which actions will have the greatest impact.
Some sections on this site, such as our directories are listed by location and alphabetically. We've attempted to include notes in our introduction sections to alert readers to which type of organization is used on each page, or in specific sections.
On this page we have high, medium, and low impact actions for communities, as these have a greater impact than personal choices.
Then we have a section or high to low impact actions for personal choices or smaller groups such as families.
The green buttons serve as links to our other resource pages. Images may take you to other websites, but we have no adds on this site. Links to specific companies or products are only meant as sources and examples. We try to pick trustworthy examples, but always advocate for doing your own research before donating or buying.
Pathways for Action
We also attempt to include details such as the pathways that, which can give activists a clearer understanding of what actions might have the biggest impact in prevention as well as clean-up measures. For example many problems associated with livestock farming, overfishing, and fossil fuel production would be most effectively curbed by removing the subsidies that artificially prop up corporations. On the other side of the issue, we offer resources for finding eco-friendly jobs that will help build the alternatives to currently problematic systems.
We try to pinpoint the most harmful human activities, while listing affordable, practical, and eco-friendly solutions that will help the average person instead of fueling the most harmful systems on the planet. When we talk about the dark side of an issue, we try to pair the information with another section or page with solution, such as our Alternatives to Livestock page to help people who might want to get out of that industry, hopefully getting them out of debt amid other benefits.
The Seven Pillars of a Planeteer
This video outlines the 7 Pillars of the Planeteer Handbook, a global community centered around good earth stewardship through the sharing of resources and information.
Circular Economy
In the video we talk about circular economy, which is more or less a new name for an ancient practice, and used somewhat as a shorthand for a variety of similar practices that can help save money, resources, and the environment.
We want to suggest people also look at options adjacent to circular economy such as share culture, community gardens paired with local composting, and reducing consumption instead of potentially buying lots of greenwashed items. These actions can contribute to de-growth which has the potential to help communities thrive, in opposition to the harms caused by rampant consumerism.
Refuse/Reduce
This is the most powerful practice we can use. It incorporates mindfulness, practicality, and strategy.
Minimalism instead of consumerism can reduce emissions, save money, reduce stress. There are a variety of mental health benefits, financial, and more. Many who explore this practice find "less is more", and money saved on wasteful purchases frees up more funds for fun experiences or big ticket purchases like eco-friendly appliances that can genuinely help reduce our ecological impacts.
Avoid Stockpiling Owning what is needed for basic quality of life, instead of stockpiling till a home becomes dangerous and products go bad before use or being forgotten.
Simple Living This is beneficial no matter your age. Both kids and adults can end up overfilling their lives with too many activities, clubs, etc. than is actually healthy. Humans need time to relax and unwind, but constantly driving around to clubs, competitions, sports practice, plus events puts a great strain on both us and the environment. Science and personal experiences have helped people understand the value of scaling back to just a couple of hobies or group activities, instead of constantly pushing for "excellence"
When we live intentionally and think about what we really need for quality of life, instead of "keeping up with the Jones'" or impulse buying things because of advertising, we can improve our wellbeing without overspending or overconsumption. Understanding what "enough" means for each of ourselves can help us focus our time and energy on the things that matter most.
A smaller percentage of people cause far more emissions than others due to frequent air travel. Visiting a sick or dying relative is not the same as enjoying frequent international vacations or doing in person business trips that could be replaced with a video chat call. Some greener alternatives to current flights are listed on our Air Travel page, as well as land-based travel alternatives.
Car ownership is a big problem when
Libraries can offer far more than just books, including tools, camping gear, cooking equipment, toys, puzzles, and more. These amazing services help remove the need to clutter your home with items you might only use once or twice, maybe a few times a year, then having to clean or manage them. Libraries may offer space to use their items, and many offer help in learning how to use them, if you haven't before!
Reuse
Reusable items should replace single use products whenever possible. This may include a bidet to reduce deforestation caused by toilet paper, or using squares cut from an old T-shirt as a reusable rag instead of endless rolls of paper towels.
Donating/Sharing reduces the need for production, reduces the need for virgin materials, and helps ensure people can access useful things no matter their financial situation.
Right to repair needs to replace planned obsolescence.
Learn repair and maintenance skills
Support local repair, refurbishment, and resale businesses. These can include:
Tailors to refit and repair clothes. They may also repair or upcycle things like bedding, curtains, and more. Your local craft shop or dry cleaners may be able to help you find a tailor.
Cobblers repair shoes, boots, belts, and bags.
Knife/Blade Sharpening Services may be available via your local craft shop, kitchen ware supplier, or hardware shop.
Reupholsters can rescue, repair, re-stuff, and recover furniture and soft furnishings.
Upcycle/Recycle/Compost
These are the main principles covered by circular economy, but these systems can cause dependence on the waste from problematic industries, produce pollution including emissions, so they should be actions of last resort whenever possible.
Composting can be done at home, or through a composting service.
Upcycling generally uses the least emissions and causes less pollution than fully recycling products.
Recycling generally uses energy and water, often producing pollution in the recycling process. Recycling substances such as metal and glass reduces enough emissions and ecological harm to make it worth while over virgin materials. The majority of plastic is never recycled, even if you do put it in the right bin.
Guidelines for Policy-Makers & Communities
Multiple Opportunities for scaling up climate action. Panel (a) from the IPCC shows the potential impact, cost ranges, and feasability of different actions. The guide is designed to show policy makers which actions will have the greatest impact, and help determine which are most worth perusing. We are using guidelines such as these to present
Climate Change - Personal Choices
This section focuses on high-impact choices we can make with a focus on climate warming gases, but other pages on this site focus on topics like reducing consumption, harvesting water and reducing our impact on water supplies.
The most effective individual steps to tackle climate change aren't being discussed (Article and Graph, 2017)
"Those of us who want to step forward on climate need to know how our actions can have the greatest possible impact. This research is about helping people make more informed choices."
"We found there are four actions that could result in substantial decreases in an individual's carbon footprint: eating a plant-based diet, avoiding air travel, living car free, and having smaller families. For example, living car-free saves about 2.4 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year, while eating a plant-based diet saves 0.8 tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year."
"These actions, therefore, have much greater potential to reduce emissions than commonly promoted strategies like comprehensive recycling (which is 4 times less effective than a plant-based diet) or changing household lightbulbs (8 times less effective)."
High Impact Actions
The following are level 1 activism actions, but can be expanded to level 2 when you involve friends, family, classrooms, offices, or other small groups of people. They become level 3 activism actions when they are used to make decisions for organizations like school boards, corporations, charities, or community leadership (for example an advocacy group or town council vowing to only offer plant-based foods at future events, and offering public transport options to discourage driving or flights). Level 4 activism examples might include governments choosing to remove livestock subsidies, implementing nation-wide public transport updates/expansion, offering low cost or free contraception and science-based, age-appropriate reproductive education through schools.
See the Levels of Action page for more info.
Reduce Family Impact
Living Car Free
Plant-Based Diet
Avoid Air Travel
Climate Change - Actions you can take now!
Vote! Vote! Vote!
Our governments have the potential to make a huge impact on our planet, both for the good or (if our voices aren't heard) the bad!
Use the power of your vote to help elect officials that support climate initiatives, equal rights, and legislation that will keep us all safer.
Contact Your Government Representative
While individual actions are important and can help make a difference, we won't be able to solve this problem on our own. Contact your Representative, Senator, MP, etc. and let them know Climate Change is important to you.
Moderate Impact Actions
Laundry
This section includes electricity free suggestions for drying clothes as well as various ways to reduce your various footprints while extending the life expectancy of your clothing. This in turn helps reduce the amount of resources we need to constantly make and dispose of textiles.
Click the Laundry button to learn how simple changes to your laundry methods can help the planet while saving you money.
Waste Management & Recycling
If you already Reduce and Reuse, then the final step in an items lifecycle is to properly dispose of or preferably recycle the materials so they can be used again in new objects or foods.
Click the Waste Managment button to learn about ways to reduce your impact, including recycling, composting, and more.
Visual Guide to Topics on This Site
Personal
The job finder page also includes some training opportunities.
Family
Consume Responsibly
This page focuses on passive (electricity-free) and low-energy cooling designs, techniques and options. Methods that don't use refrigerants.
Some of these solutions are the same as we suggested in Cool Buildings. Learn how to save money and the environment.
Preserving food can help reduce food waste, and while some methods are very resource intensive, there are also a number of methods such as air drying and sun drying which can save nutritious foods without creating additional emissions.
This page includes calculators that will help you better understand how different cooking methods influence out emission footprints. We also offer some suggestions about which cooking appliances can help save energy, and tips to help increase efficiency further with items like pots, pans, and solar cooking equipment.
Heating water is one of the most intensive uses of energy in the average home (right behind heating and cooling). Fortunately there are methods of water heating that can reduce your electricity or gas bills, sometimes without even converting energy into electricity first.
This section is still under construction as we've been adding new pages faster than we've been able to keep up with updating this guide.
Sorry for any inconvenience!