5 Eco-Friendly New Year’s Resolutions That Everyone Should Have

One of the most important things you can do this new year is to create eco-friendly New Year’s resolutions to help the planet. This is more important than it ever has been before. With the current climate crisis, extreme weather events, and animals going extinct, there has never been a more urgent time to change.

Here are a few New Year’s resolutions that you can adopt to help make your environmental footprint a little bit smaller. 

1. Start Recycling

Recycling is a complete no-brainer, when it comes to doing your part to help save the environment. Not only is it incredibly easy, but it is also vital to help save the planet.

Many places in the US even offer recycling as an option attached to your other garbage services, making it a free option that should be taken advantage of.

Just the small effort of recycling can make a huge difference as it at least helps some kinds of garbage to be reused and recreated into something else. This can significantly reduce your environmental impact by lessening how much of your garbage contributes to landfills.

Just make sure you look into your local recycling rules to make sure you know what to recycle and how to recycle it. Otherwise, your items may not get recycled properly or mess up the system.

2. Avoid Single-Use Plastics

Avoiding single-use plastics may be the biggest eco-friendly New Year’s resolution that everyone should try to adopt. This is such an important effort to make if you care at all about the environment.

Not only are single-use plastics highly polluting, but they also fill up landfills and threaten our food, the soil, the environment, and wildlife. 

This is one of the worst things for the environment as single-use plastics don’t simply decompose into the earth. There has been so much research on the lifespan of plastics and how they eventually make their way into our food and water. If you cut anything out of your lifestyle this year, it should be single-use plastics.

3. Use Less Energy

Another great eco-friendly New Year’s resolution to have would be to use less energy and try to conserve what you can. This would include using more energy-efficient appliances as well as only using energy that you have to have. This could mean cutting out certain kinds of technology or appliances in your life to conserve more energy.

You could also start to use fewer lights and limit your indoor heating and AC to conserve energy. Another great option would be to dry your clothes outside to avoid using the drier every week.

There are lots of small ways that you can limit how much energy you use as well as cut out none necessary sources of energy. This is a great way to help out the environment and develop more responsible habits.

4. Eat More Plant-Based Foods

The meat industry contributes to massive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and Pollution. Thus, if you are going to commit to one dietary goal this new year it should be to reduce your meat intake and start to eat more plant-based foods.

If you aren’t already vegan, you can make a significant difference by cutting meat out of your diet. From there, you can start to experiment with more plant-based foods and alternatives until you can replace all animal products. Even simply limiting your meat intake to the weekends can make a huge difference if enough people do it. Download Food Monster, the largest plant-based Recipe app on the App Store, to help reduce your environmental footprint, save animals and get healthy. You can also buy a hard or soft copy of our favorite vegan cookbooks.

5. Make Instead of Buying

One amazingly effective way to help out the environment is to try to make it instead of buying. This can apply to all kinds of things from food to beauty products to cleaning products.

By making things at home, not only are you saving money, but you are also reducing your material footprint and reducing waste. So much waste goes into creating and transporting things, so it is often much better to make things at home.

This could mean making your own food at home instead of ordering delivery, which includes car Pollution as well as plastic waste. You could also start to make your own soaps and lotions instead of buying plastic-packaged ones. There are all kinds of things that you can make at home that would help you to limit how much you contribute to waste and pollution. 

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Easy Ways to Help the Planet:

• Eat Less Meat: Download Food Monster, the largest plant-based Recipe app on the App Store, to help reduce your environmental footprint, save animals and get healthy. You can also buy a hard or soft copy of our favorite vegan cookbooks.
• Adopt-a-Pet: Visit WildWatchers, a watchdog platform specifically designed for animal, earth, and wildlife warriors to actively give back, rescue, and protect animals and the planet.
• Reduce Your Fast Fashion Footprint: Stand against fast fashion Pollution by supporting circular brands like Tiny Rescue, which create cause-based collections using recycled, zero-waste clothing designed to be returned and remade, ensuring it never ends up in a landfill.
• Shop Sustainably for Your Home: Visit SustaiNOBLE.org, an eco-friendly and ethically sourced home decor store that will empower your home with luxurious fair-trade, and sustainable products made by global artisans. 
• Support Independent Media: Being publicly funded gives us a greater chance to continue providing you with high-quality content. Please consider supporting us by donating!
• Sign a Petition: Your voice matters! Help turn petitions into victories by signing the latest list of must-sign petitions to help people, animals, and the planet.
• Stay Informed: Keep up with the latest news and important stories involving animals, the environment, sustainable living, food, health, and human interest topics by subscribing to our newsletter!
• Do What You Can: Reduce waste, plant trees, eat local, travel responsibly, reuse stuff, say no to single-use plastics, recycle, vote smart, switch to cold water laundry, divest from fossil fuels, save water, shop wisely, Donate if you can, grow your food, volunteer, conserve energy, compost, and don’t forget about the microplastics and microbeads lurking in common household and personal care products!