Lifestyle Activism
Table of Contents
Types of Lifestyle Activism
This type of activism often overlaps with Quiet Activism. You might not be able or interested in very type of lifestyle activism, but you can mix and match them, often finding that they have health (including mental health) benefits. Many such as bike ridership and ridesharing can save you money, or other options like Blogging and Investing can even help you make money.
The following topics are listed according to estimated impact: greatest to least.
Child FreeÂ
For those who want to make a massive impact on their lifetime footprint, there are supportive communities like this one. You can also click the Unwanted Pregnancy button to learn more about safely and conveniently managing reproductive health.
Bike RidershipÂ
Bike riding is great for your health, the planet, communities, tourism, and more. Bike, trike, and recumbent riding can give independence to people with physical and mental disabilities or other health complications. They boost income for shops with nearby cycling infrastructure, reduce crime rates, increase community engagement, and reduce air pollution. Communities and individuals can make a massive impact environmentally, socially, and financially by committing to cycling.
Click the Bike buttons to learn about Bikes & Bike Infrastructure, Local Advocacy Groups, and Walk/Bike to School Programs.
Veganism
This simple dietary change can help massively reduce your dietary land, water, emissions, and energy footprints. Vegan foods tend to be cheaper than animal products (unless you buy a lot of processed foods). Click the Plant-Based Diet button to find useful resources including apps, documentaries, recipe resources, food calculators, and more. The Livestock Alternatives button offers livestock-free suggestion and solutions for farmers and food producers.
If you are in the food production, processing, or sales industries, then you are in a prime position to help the planet by exploring how vegan agriculture and livestock alternatives can be implemented.
Whether you are a consumer or producer, the traditional milkman system can help reduce transit emissions for food in your community. Companies that use reusable glass bottles further help reduce emissions and landfill overuse.
Blogging
This can be a great way to document long term projects, creating/gathering communities, sharing expertise or historical data, and so on. Using a variety of photos, audios, videos, and written content can help make information more accessible to a wider audience including those with disabilities. Read more about communication techniques to ensure your message is accessible and effectively presented.
Boycotts
Boycotts have a history of pressuring businesses into better practices. With major corporations buying up smaller businesses, it has become increasingly difficult to avoid some of the worst polluters, supporters of slavery, and other shady business practices. Buycott helps you by letting you pick which campaigns you want to support or start, so that you can simply scan items in the shop, and support or avoid supporting companies based on their real life behaviors.
Public Transportation Ridership
Bike Shares
Citizen Science
De-Trashing
Do you take a daily walk? Many of us do, and take great pleasure in picking up trash as we go, knowing our waterways and wildlife are just a little bit safer from toxic cigarettes or being chocked by plastic.
FundingÂ
Automatic payments can be set up to give charities small, monthly donations that will help them do what they need to do. Or if you can't spare small monthly payments, someone you love might appreciate birthday or festive gifts from a charity they approve of like a symbolic animal adoption.
InvestingÂ
This can be automated with part of your paycheck or retirement money set to only support investment opportunities or packages that help our planet rather than hurt it. A growing number of investment firms are already making the switch, so check them out, or better yet, pressure whoever you already invest with to make the changes we need made to save the planet.
Mend
your damaged belongings, and help others learn these skills too. You can find information and inspiration on r/InvisibleMending and r/Visiblemending
Minimalism
We touch on this topic somewhat on our mental health page. Minimalism is a great way to practice consciousness about our consumption habits, reviewing personal priorities, and purging (this can include donating and recycling) unnecessary things to make time and room for the truly important things in our lives. Minimalism is often thought of as an aesthetic, but it is practical, helps save you money over time, reduces stress and decision fatigue.
Nudism
Reduce your laundry-related bills and chore load while reducing the demand for the fashion industry. Enjoy your freedom in your own home, at certain parks or beaches, or even at luxury nudist-friendly holiday getaways.
Outreach
You can casually drop outreach information at social events, while with friends or family, or while browsing online.
Ride Share
Simple Living
Vegetarianism
Tools & Calculators
North America
USA
Rewiring America: Track Your Local Pace of Progress "These projections from Rewiring America worked backwards from the emissions targets for 2050, and forward from current sales of machines for cooking, water heating, space heating, transportation, and rooftop solar to set a number of new clean electric machines that must be sold each year to reduce emissions from fossil-fueled machines. Type your city, county, or state into the search bar to get those numbers broken down for your area, by each machine category.
While creating this tool, one of things we found is that some individual communities and states are leading the way: their goals are bolder than the rest of the country and so don’t match the path laid out in our data. That’s a great problem to have. So our tool should not be considered the only source of its kind -- but one that reflects only one of the possible paths to decarbonization."
Maps
International
More People Care About Climate Change than You Think "The majority of people in every country support action on climate, but the public consistently underestimates this share."
Grants
International
Animal Charity Evaluators "ACE Movement Grants (formerly “Effective Animal Advocacy Fund”) is for anyone who is interested in making the animal advocacy movement more effective."
The Pollination Project (TPP) "is a vegan foundation that offers seed funding to grassroots activists working to build a kinder, more compassionate world for human & non-human animals.
TPP focuses on early stage ideas and funds individuals directly. Over the years, they’ve seen the power of bottom-up, community-led grassroots activism. Through “pollination philanthropy”– a democratic model of peer-to-peer decision-making — TPP works with a global network of grantees, community partners, and volunteer advisors to identify extraordinary project leaders who, due to the grassroots nature of their work, are often not in a position to receive funding from other foundations or institutions.
They make micro grants 365 days a year to grassroots global change agents and have a growing global community of 4,500 grassroots leaders in 150 countries. They support vegan outreach projects around the world, and have a special program for farmed animal activists in Brazil, India and Mexico. Their goal is to offer not just seed funding, but capacity-building support and connectivity with other activists working in the same geographic or issue area. "