Easy habit shifts

Finish what’s on your plate

and in your fridge. Food is the single biggest source of global carbon dioxide emissions, and an alarming per cent of those emissions stem from food waste. Buy reasonable quantities – local, seasonal, plant-based ingredients are ideal – and use what you’ve got, then compost your scraps.

Heat the person, not the house

Install a smart thermostat, and lower your energy use when no one’s home. In the winter, bundle up instead of blasting the heat. Similarly, use old-fashioned techniques to stay cool: install awnings and window blinds, position a fan to make the most of a cross breeze, take a quick cold shower.

Learn the recycling guidelines

in your location and follow them. Adding questionable items to the heap is likely to contaminate the whole collection and make it non-recyclable.

Use rags

instead of paper towels and cloth napkins instead of paper ones. Old T-shirts are ideal cleaning cloths, and you can easily make your own napkins by cutting squares of scrap fabric (hems are nice but not essential). Big family? Give each person their own pattern or colour, and add fresh napkins only as needed.

Conserve water

Launder only what’s really dirty. Instead of washing each dish under the tap, fill the sink or a bin with soapy water. Turn o the faucet while brushing your teeth and the shower while lathering up (leaving them on wastes thousands of gallons/litres of water per person per year). Collect shower water to use on your plants—and take an occasional sponge bath instead of a daily shower.

Say no to waste

Avoid buying products that come in single-use plastic and other unnecessary packaging, cancel catalogues, opt out of junk mail, bypass flyers and business cards, and carry your own grocery and produce bags, as well as utensils and co ee cup.

Replace your remaining incandescent light bulbs with LEDs

They require a fraction of the energy and last so much longer.