Are you wondering how to lessen your carbon footprint on this planet we call home? Curious about composting? Ever considered hand-me-downs from your grandpa?! Read on below for five easy tips that encourage a sustainable lifestyle!

1. Start composting at home.

Photo Credit: Zero Waste Store

If you are looking for a low-cost, low-fuss way to go green, look no further than your own food scraps! Composting is a wonderful way to practice sustainability, and you can do it throughout the year, regardless of season changes.

There are many great benefits to composting. For starters, when we compost our food scraps instead of throwing them into the garbage, the food will decompose and turn into nutrient-rich soil, which can then be used in your own garden. Composting also eliminates food waste ending up in landfills. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), food scraps make up around 25% of our landfills. Additionally, when food is trapped in landfills, it causes the emission of methane gas, which is a very harmful greenhouse gas that is directly related to climate change (EPA).

You can absolutely build your own composting setup in your backyard, which is pretty low-cost. Check out The Spruce for some DIY compost bin ideas. Or, there's a good chance that your local town or municipality has created a compost initiative that will handle the actual composting for you! All you have to do is collect your food scraps and then find your local drop-off spot to get rid of the goods. Here in Rochester, NY, I utilize Impact Earth.

It's really straightforward - I collect my food scraps in a bin that I keep in my freezer (I use the one from Zero Waste Store). When the bin is full, I empty it into the bucket that Impact Earth provides me (it is sealed tight, so I keep it outside). When the bucket is full, I swap it out for a new bucket. That's it, I'm done!

Composting doesn't have to be an arduous, expensive process. I take pride in knowing that I am doing my part to protect our planet. If you are curious, explore some local options!

2. Goodbye, paper towels.

Photo Credit: Zero Waste Outlet

Now, this may seem like a hard one to give up automatically, but if we can limit our paper towel usage, we are taking action to reduce our footprint on our planet. The US is the highest consumer of paper towels worldwide, making up for nearly half of all paper towel consumption (Squishful). We end up throwing millions of tons of paper towel waste into landfills each year. Similarly to food scraps, paper towel decomposition leads to the release of methane gas, which is much more harmful than carbon dioxide (Intelligent Hand Dryers).

If you are looking for a way to make your home more eco-friendly, investing in reusable towels is an incredible option. While paper towels feel super convenient and less of a hassle, they are extremely unhealthy for our planet. In order to produce just one ton of paper towels, we need to cut down 17 trees and use 20,000 gallons of water (Eco Family Life). So while the easiest and quickest way to clean up a spill on the counter may be a paper towel, it will have longer-lasting consequences.

I am a big fan of UNpaper Towels through Marley's Monsters, but there are plenty of great brands out there for reusable towels! There's no doubt that buying a stack of reusable towels will be more expensive than buying a few rolls of paper towels. However, in the long run, a one-time larger purchase of reusable towels will quickly balance out, as you will not have to constantly buy more paper towels.

3. Buy used/second-hand clothing.

One of my favorite thrift finds from Curtsy!

Enter: your grandpa's sweater (but actually, I have a few of my grandpa's old sweaters, and they are the most stylish vintage finds). In all seriousness, though, buying used or second-hand clothing is a great way to reuse resources. Whether your wardrobe is made up of mostly thrifted items, or you have a few staple finds from your favorite vintage shop, you can take comfort in knowing you are limiting your carbon footprint. Let's break it down.

If you love jeans as much as I do, this statistic is a bit shocking: On average, creating a single pair of jeans requires 1,800 gallons of water (Treehugger). So while it can be exciting to buy a new pair of jeans (I am very guilty of this), trying to find second-hand jeans is a great sustainable choice. I enjoy shopping online at Curtsy or Poshmark for previously-owned pieces. Added bonus is that second-hand is often much more economical as well!

We have probably all heard the saying, "Reduce, reuse, recycle," and that is really the goal of shopping second-hand. When we buy a previously-owned item of clothing, we reduce the amount of textile waste that ends up in our landfills (for the US alone, that is around 15 million tons of waste every year.) Discarded textiles in landfills mean greenhouse gas emissions. Let's stop this cycle in its tracks - start rocking that vintage fashion, my friends!

4. Support local food sources.

When it comes to buying our food, local is always better. It is believed that on average, food travels around 1,000 miles from where it is grown/produced to where it is sold. If you focus on getting your produce and meat from local farmer's markets or a public market, you are significantly reducing those food miles.

Not only is shopping locally better for the environment, it is also much more affordable, and it directly supports local farmers. Depending on the season, you will be getting some of the freshest produce possible!

If you do eat meat, I highly encourage you to buy it locally. Buying local meat is a much more sustainable and ethical practice. Besides cutting down on the food miles needed for you to buy the meat, giving your business to local farmers means less money is fueled into factory farms. Factory farms are an exploitive, abusive, and cruel way for livestock to live, and they take away business from local farmers that have no way to keep up with the competition.

I believe that knowledge is power. While being vegan works well for me, I am fully aware that it is a commitment and will not work for everyone. That being said, making smarter choices regarding where your meat is coming from is an important step toward a more ethical and sustainable lifestyle!

5. Weekly plant-based meals for the win!

Photo Credit: Rainbow Plant Life's Vegan Red Lentil Curry (it is incredible!!!!)

No shocker here - I am certainly a proponent of a vegetarian or vegan-friendly meal or two a week! There are so many great vegan cookbooks, blogs, and accounts available that have seemingly endless recipes to try. Some of my favorites are Rainbow Plant Life, School Night Vegan, and any recipe created by Isa Chandra Moskowitz.

Going plant-based for one day of the week - or even one meal during a week - is a healthy choice for our planet. How? Well, roughly 20% of all global greenhouse gas emissions that we create come from the meat industry (Earth Day). That's HUGE.

I know it can be overwhelming to feel like there is only so much we can do to combat climate change, but going plant-based - whether for an occasional meal, a weekly shake-up, or for your entire diet - is taking action. A study out of the University of Oxford found that eating a fully plant-based diet has the potential to drastically shrink your carbon footprint by up to 73%. So, going plant-based is an absolute form of environmental advocacy. You don't have to be "all or nothing" when it comes to incorporating more vegan meals. Even a few changes here and there truly do make a difference.

If it is to be...

My mom taught me lots of great sayings when I was a kid. She always seemed to know a good way to put things into perspective. My favorite of her sayings is, "If it is to be, it's up to me." I have applied this to my life religiously, because I truly believe that if we want something - if we want to see change - then we have to go get it. Take control over what we can. Of course, there is inequity in accessing information and resources about environmental sustainability. And we may not have the financial means to invest in multiple sustainable products or activities.

Here's your reminder that we don't have to "do sustainability" perfectly. No such thing as perfection, anyway. However, if we are willing and able to make a few changes, we will directly impact our communal home, aka MAMA EARTH. Let's see what good we can do together.