A few weeks ago I announced the launch of the Sustainable Living Challenge that I will be working on over the next year. You can read all about it here in case you missed it (and you probably did because I had a blog glitch going on for a couple of days after it posted). In a nutshell, I have decided to embark on a year-long challenge to live a more sustainable life focusing on one “mission” a month to reach that goal.
I am SO excited to see what kinds of changes I can make – and what you are doing in your life if you join along. So much change can happen through the accumulation of small steps!
Make Less Waste
To kick off this challenge, I am starting with the mission to #makelesswaste. It’s incredible how much waste one person can generate – through food packaging and food waste, paper waste, clothing and other textiles, etc. It all adds up and unfortunately most of it accumulates in landfills rather than being recycled and reused elsewhere. I have been inspired by some instagram accounts that focus on going zero waste, and realize that although I may not be ready to reduce my waste to zero right now, I can make a lot of changes to get me closer to that end of the spectrum.
Ideas for Reducing Waste
I already have tons of ideas for how I want to tackle this month’s mission. My biggest goal is that I want to go paperless at home so I’ll be back later this month to talk about all those details. The list of ideas that I created for myself is below if you’re looking for some more inspiration to get started. I’m not sure if I will do everything on this list, but it gives me a lot of space to improve.
Food-Related Waste
- Create a weekly meal plan to make sure I use up food
- Compost
- Buy wholesale
- Bring my own “take out” containers when eating out
- Use reusable bags at the grocery store
Household-Related Waste
- Use cloth napkins
- Wrap presents with gift bags or other materials that can be reused
- Use reusable cleaning materials (example: rags)
Paper-Related Waste
- Unsubscribe from junk mail
- Think twice before printing
- Confirm all bills are paperless
- Unsubscribe from magazines I don’t read
If you are looking for other ideas, I’ve created a whole Pinterest Board specifically for this month’s mission, which you can check out here.
In order to help keep myself accountable, I created a little tracking calendar. Because I like information, I want to be able to not only “check off” the day, but also write what I did to meet that month’s mission. If you would like to use my tracking calendar, you can find it here: June Mission Make Less Waste.
Let me know if you’re working on making less waste as well! Don’t forget to use the hashtag #sustainablelivingchallenge when you post to social media so I can follow along with you!
Do you have any habits for making less waste? Please share in the comments! 🙂
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