Rebuilding your life in an ecofriendly way

June is the month of “rebuilding your life.” Generally, people wait for holidays such as New Years to make resolutions and promises, but in honor of rebuilding your life month, we thought hey, why not start today?

You can rebuild your life in a few ways. You can transform your sleep patterns, your exercise habits, your thought processes, etc. But what if you completely rebuilt your life in an ecofriendly way? What is it like to turn your life around in order to do things that are not only better for yourself, but also better for the environment?

Step 1:

Start with food. Analyze your plate at each meal to determine what you’re eating. How much packaged food do you eat per day? How many vegetables verses meat do you eat? Do you choose a calorie free sweetener or an all natural sugar to sweeten your coffee? Try keeping a journal and documenting daily about your meals. This isn’t to count calories or to lose/gain weight. This is in order to make sure you’re eating habits are ecofriendly and beneficial to your body and the environment.

Step 2:

Next, look at your trash. Sounds appealing, I know. Start analyzing how much waste you are making per day. Try starting in the morning with your coffee, or beverage of choice (I’m aware not everyone drinks coffee, I just still can’t grasp how they do it). Do you bring your own mug to the coffee shop or do you settle for the paper cup, and then throw the cup away later on. Do you bring your lunch to work or do you grab a to go box lunch using a plastic to go box, paper napkins and plastic utensils, all being things you would later throw away.

Step 3:

Now move to your beauty/shower regimen. The triple berry blast fusion shampoo may smell great, but try turning it around and reading the ingredients. Count how many ingredients you recognize. As for the others, look them up and determine whether or not that should be something you’re putting on your body, or letting run down the drain.

Step 4:

What about your commute? Do you drive to work? Take the subway? Walk? If driving, take a look at how much you’re driving. Live near any coworkers? Suggest a carpool to cut down on that carbon footprint trailing behind your car. Give it a try walking or skateboarding to work one day, if it’s not to far. (Yes, you can still skateboard over the age of 50; my dad is a prime example.)

Step 5:

Bills and paper mail can lead to excess waste going straight from your mailbox to the trash. Try unsubscribing to ads and magazines that you automatically throw away. As for bills, most companies have a “pay online” option that’s quick and easy, plus there’s a less likely chance of your payments being late!

Rebuilding your life can happen in all kinds of different ways. Give the ecofriendly lifestyle a try and see how you like it. Who knows, maybe you’ll inspire others to get on the ecofriendly bandwagon.