saving the planet

Life-Hacks/ small things for less waste in daily life

Our rubbish destroys the planet, that’s clear. Everywhere you go, you can find plastic bottles, packaging and other rubbish from us, the people. Consequently it´s our turn and responsibility to change something. We have to reduce our rubbish generally and, in the nature, prevent more ill animals. The tiniest things can become dangerous, so the tiniest changes from our side are important.
There are a lot of small things you can do to reduce your waste in your daily life. To avoid packaging, especially the plastic ones, is very helpful. At your next trip to the supermarket try to buy products with as little plastic packaging as possible and bring a reusable shopping bag or basket with you. For example, yogurt in glass jars or sweets without many layers of plastic. Moreover, you can buy your fruits and vegetables in a cotton bag, not a plastic one. Another helpful hack is to avoid products in smaller packaging, big sizes are better and often cheaper. In big sizes there is less packaging for more product but it only makes sense when you need all the product.

by Janne, Jannick, Max & Marieke

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If there are alternatives with natural or recyclable material, for example paper folders or a bamboo toothbrush, use these. Furthermore, metal or glass straws are better, they are reusable. For less plastic bottles, use reusable bottles (glass, metal or hard plastic). If possible, use the tap water from home so you don’t have to buy water in bottles. Additionally, use reusable coffee mugs for your drinks, when you are out and about. Many shops fill your mugs with your drink. If you want, shop in special unpacked stores, farm shops or on the market. Often, they are organic, use less packaging and sometimes they put your shopping in for example cans, that you brought with you.
In the end, even the smallest things can make a difference, so it´s worth trying to live more environmentally friendly with the help of these hacks.

A smoothie full of Life-Hacks:

1. 𝙻𝙴𝚂𝚂 𝚄𝚂𝙴 𝙾𝙵 𝙿𝙻𝙰𝚂𝚃𝙸𝙲

Our planet is full of plastic, even in the most remote places in the world you can find the economic rival. Even here in Germany, there is far too much plastic waste, which is often simply cremated and not recycled to a high quality. Therefore many people have come up with different alternatives in recent years to minimize plastic consumption to the lowest possible value.

One alternative that could help the country the most would be the "plastic-free shop". You shop in these stores with your own plastic free containers and it costs even less than health food stores. It's much more environmentally friendly and if more were invested in such shops nationwide, plastic consumption could be minimized by quite a bit.
Here on the right you can also find a video about such shops and how to deal with them.

2. 𝙴𝙽𝙲𝙾𝚄𝚁𝙰𝙶𝙴 𝙿𝚄𝙱𝙻𝙸𝙲 𝚃𝚁𝙰𝙽𝚂𝙿𝙾𝚁𝚃𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽

Secondly, we have the emissions caused by the use of transport. These Co2 emissions have a terrible effect on our environment. As an alternative the use of public transportation, as well as riding your bike or walk decreases the co2 emissions and on the other hand increases your health.

3. 𝚂𝙰𝚅𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝙴𝙽𝙴𝚁𝙶𝚈

There are countless ways to reduce the high use of energy and it's quite simple, if you don't need the electricity at the moment - you can simply switch it off. For example, overnight when you sleep, where you don't use electronic devices anyway, so you can just turn off an extension cord for the night

Or, for example, turn off the water when brushing your teeth or don't open the windows at the same time as the heating. As already mentioned there are a lot of ways there, but in short; save electricity, water and light as much as possible.

4. 𝚅𝙴𝙶𝙴𝚃𝙰𝚁𝙸𝙰𝙽/ 𝚅𝙴𝙶𝙰𝙽 𝙻𝙸𝙵𝙴𝚂𝚃𝚈𝙻𝙴

The last topic could be discussed a lot, it´s the vegetarian or even the vegan lifestyle. The main reason for that would be that you wouldn´t support factory farming anymore. Of course we are not in the position to force someone to completely give up meat or diary products, although there is a need for that. However, you can still reduce the meat and diary consumption and there are many adequate alternatives for this. There are both organic products and enough organic shops for this lifestyle. There are also plenty of foods that look just like meat or dairy products and taste just like that, just don’t contain any meat or milk.