Personal Action
Introduction
As the average person has become more aware of climate change, pollution, and the many other issue facing humanity companies have worked hard and pumped epic amounts of money into campaigns that shift blame to consumers. After switching from reusable glass bottles to single use plastics, they ran adds encouraging consumers to stop littering. They told us to recycle, even though our infrastructure recycles less than 10%, and recycled plastic bottles have been found to leach dangerous chemicals into our bodies. They even invented the carbon footprint to encourage every day people to look at our own habits, instead of considering the damage they were doing, or the lobbying to make our transport and other systems less effective.
This can all be wildly frustrating and make a person wonder "What's the point!?"
The good news is that studies have found that if people believe they can make a difference, and are told concrete ways to do so, they make a measurably bigger difference than those who are told that things are hopeless.
Full disclosure: Personal action or "Level 1 Action" is generally going to be less impactful than levels 2-4.
That said, level 1 actions can help you learn important things that will then be easier to share with others (you'll be able to talk about what worked for you, what problems you might have run into, and tips for overcoming or avoiding those issues). Personal action can be a source of satisfaction, as well as improve your mental heath by reducing anxiety and depression.
Better yet, level 1 actions can help you save money and other resources. Simple living can reduce daily stress, minimalism can help you declutter to a point where you mind feels clearer and big life changes can be made more easily.
If you are able to change your method(s) of transport, diet, etc. you may also notice yourself becoming fitter and healthier, further saving money one health care costs.
When I first started out with environmentalism, most of what I knew was the same things most of us have had drilled into us: recycle plastic, turn off the faucet when brushing teeth, take shorter showers. I wasted time and effort on things like changing lightbulbs and hand washing my clothes, without any understanding of which actions would actually have a meaningful impact on the environment.
By the time I was a new parent, working a fulltime job and putting myself through college, I was wasting more energy than I had, and totally burned out. I started to question what the point was, what even made a difference, and if anything I did mattered, or was I just making everything worse?
When I finally found the answers to these questions, I realized that the most meaningful actions we can take were almost never talked about, and some are still rarely talked about.
Personal Choices
Reduce Emissions
High Impact
According to the article and graph above, the high impact choices we can make to influence our carbon emissions are (from greatest to least) are to have less children, live car free, avoid flying, buy green energy, switch to an electric car, and to eat a plant-based diet.
Medium Impact
The majority of home energy use are used in Heating and Cooling the spaces inside, closely followed by the energy needed to heat water for activities including laundry and bathing. Fortunately we're living in the midst of an energy revolution where regular people are increasingly (re)discovering the empowerment that comes with harnessing alternative energy. More of us are finding solutions that fit our location and needs, saving money and the environment just by getting along with daily activities such as putting laundry on a line, installing solar panels, building solar dehydrators to dry snacks or extra garden produce, even bathing with water that the sun heated in your new rooftop solar heater.
On the topic of personal care, companies have marketed an ever-growing number of disposable and chemical-laced products that harm the environment, and sometimes us too!
By switching to some simpler chemicals and reusable instead of disposable implements, we can not only save the emissions needed to produce all that waste and it's packaging, but also reduce the emissions used to constantly ship ingredients, transport products to retailers and homes, then transport the used items to waste facilities.
Check out the following topics to see how you can save money and emissions:
Low-Impact
Actions like this often take a bit more time, energy, planning, and coordination than higher impact things. I used to waste a lot of time and stress focusing on minute details then getting frustrated and discouraged. Being forgetful I sometimes spent hours or even days on multi-step preservation and cooking techniques, then a few minutes of distraction sometimes ruined the entire batch.
Consider these suggestions to be "fun and educational", possibly options to improve your health and maybe even save some money, but not "hard rules" that you have to live by.
The following resources focus on topics from most impactful (emissions-wise) to less:
Save Water
High Impact
According to Truth or Drought, "Only 2.5% of the world's water is freshwater."
"Currently up to 90% of all managed water is used to grow food."
"On average, a vegan, a person who doesn't eat meat or dairy, indirectly consumes nearly 600 gallons of water per day less than a person who eats the average American diet."
That's down from a daily 100 gallon average meaning a vegan would potentially only use around 400 gallons per day on food, industrial goods, and home use.
For those who don't use gallons, that's 378.5 liters a day down by 227 liters per day for those with vegan diet to only 151.5 liters per person.
According to the data we have gathered on our Water page, the major uses of water (from greatest to least) are diet, industrial goods, followed by domestic use.
The following buttons offer resources that will have a far greater impact on water consumption than turning off faucets when brushing or taking shorter showers.
Medium Impact
Industrial Production is the3rd greatest consumer of water, meaning the products we buy, clothes we wear, excess packaging, and so on are a good place to look for medium-level impact on our water use.
Instead of endlessly buying product that often don't even improve our lives, it's good to consider if you need a new item or if you can live a satisfying life without. If you do need something, can borrow from a friend, family member, or a local library? Can your rent it or find it second hand? Refurbishing uses less emissions than making something new, buy sustainable materials can also help reduce our impact.
The following resources are alphabetically ordered.
Low Impact
Domestic water use includes things such as watering a garden, showering, and cleaning clothes.
Domestic water use is one of the lesser ways we use water, but one that we have a unique power to control. For those who are lucky enough to have gardens, watering can be a household's largest use of water, making water harvesting solutions including grey water systems a particularly good solution.
You can find more ways to reduce your domestic water use in the Home Use segment of our Water page.
Harvesting Water
Fight Deforestation
We've all heard that it's great to plant trees, and that's not wrong, buuuut it totally ignores the fact that subsidies that promote deforestation far outstrip any amount of money spend on conserving wild spaces or on replanting trees. At current rates countries like Venezuela may have less than 3 years left before their rain forests are gone forever. With all the greenwashing and distractions, most people don't have a clue who the worst deforesters are, or which products are causing the most damage.
High Impact
Based on the data we have managed to gather on our Deforestation page, we offer the following resources to help you combat deforestation with simple choices.
Medium Impact
Replace reusable paper products with reusable alternatives:
Install a bidet or use a similar device to reduce or eliminate toilet paper use.
Cut stained or ripped clothing into cleaning rags to replace paper towels (or wet wipes which will reduce your plastic consumption).
Stop buying paper tissues, and invest in a couple or more cloth handkerchiefs.
These solutions might require a bit more water to make in the first place, but washing and reusing them will lower your overall water footprint.
Buy antique or second hand furniture instead of new.
Refurbish old furniture instead of buying new.
If buying new furniture, to try buy from a local, sustainable source, instead of buying cheap plywood furniture from companies like IKEA.
Low Impact
Avoid biofuels - Ethonol has been found to be worse for the environment than fossil fuels and biofuels pose a huge threat to forests if more companies, turn to them.
Don't by more clothes than you need, and take care of them to extend the life of each piece.
Washing clothes on the cold setting when appropriate
Air dry clothes to reduce wear
Repair damaged textiles by darning, patching, and sewing ripped seams.
Re-dye faded textiles
Learn how to sew on buttons and replace zippers.
Learn how to tailor clothes if you lose weight or buy a size too large. If you can't do this, take the item(s) to your local tailor.
Reduce Land Use: High Impact
The majority of humanity's land-use goes to agriculture, with 77% of that being used to graze livestock and grow feed crops for them. Despite all this they only produce around 18% of the world's calories, and around 37% of the world's protein supply.
This is why the best thing most of us can to to help return land to nature while ensuring enough food to all of us is to avoid animal products and find plant-based alternatives. Next on the list would be growing crops indoors (which provides additional benefit such as reduced water use), and creating wildlife-friendly gardens, roof and wall gardens.
Avoid living in large, spread out homes. Small and close together means we use less space, less resources to build our homes, then energy is needed to heat and cool our living spaces. Roads and parking spaces are a growing threat to wildlife, so condensed living spaces mean we can access people and places hassle free, without displacing or killing wildlife.
Understanding Activism to Increase Effectiveness
If level one activism doesn't feel like enough then, we've made an attempt to gather information that we found helpful and that hopefully you will too!