12 Ways To Help The Environment
Photo by Loe Moshkovska from Pexels of person holding I Am Earth card from the I Am Power Deck illustrated by Brittany Burkard with Yucca desert-scape in background
Updated 2024.07.22
In this post, we’ll go over a few ways you can help your local environment, and in turn, the global environment.
Beyond reducing your ecological footprint, there are many ways you can improve the environment.
The first thing to do is remember that you are an essential part of the environment.
You are connected to and contributing to ecosystems around you and around the world just by being alive. Think for a moment about the plants you see out your window and birds you hear on your daily walk. These are the beings with whom you share your environment.
Any being we share our environment with, are those with whom we can share mutually beneficial relationships. Trees give us oxygen so we can breathe. That is one way trees benefit us.
Humans also contribute to the environment in many positive ways.
We participate in ecological restoration programs, we care for wildlife, and we continue to learn about the benefits of the other species we share our planet with, which helps us become better stewards of the environment and better neighbors to those with whom we share interspecies space.
The below tips are just a few ways you can continue to benefit the other beings in your environment, such as the trees, or the birds. As you read the tips that follow, remember with every shift in behavior, you can benefit a single being and make a big difference.
When our actions benefit even just a single being, by contributing to resource conservation of its habitat, or by sharing the resources more wisely, know that being is connected to a web of other creatures, which make up the collective environment.
The benefit provided to this being, can improve its life and in turn, the lives of all the creatures it is connected to. In other words, small actions matter when you are helping the environment. Pat yourself on the back for even just thinking about what you can do to help the environment.
Just thinking about what you can do has led you here, which is a single action towards helping the others you share the environment with and the environment itself.
So without further ado, here are 12 ways you can help the environment -
Earth Day Tips - Photo by Loe Moshkovska from Pexels of person holding I Am Earth card from the I Am Power Deck illustrated by Brittany Burkard with Yucca desert-scape in background with text overlay - 12 Ways To Help The Environment
1 - Learn the recycling capabilities of your local community or provider
Sign up for recycling if it is an option and affordable to you. Find out if other forms of recycling and composting are available to you, then sign up for those.
2 - Find out where your water flows to when it leaves your home
Understand where the water goes. Knowing where your water goes can help you follow it through the hydrological cycle, of which you are a part.
When you can see the cycle of water coming from your home you may choose to reduce the amount of water you are using, or change the solutions and products you are putting into that water stream.
Reducing the amount of water you use or shifting what you put into that cycle can benefit more than the aquatic environment, it can also benefit everything that consumes water on Earth.
3 - Evaluate everything going down your drains
It all goes somewhere. When putting something down your drain, a good question to ask is, “Would I want to swim in this?”
If the answer is no, see if there is a more eco-friendly product that you can switch to.
You can identify the environmental risk of all products at websites such as SkinDeep, via the Environmental Working Group. While this site focuses on cosmetics, you can enter any chemical into it and find studies related to its impact on the environment.
4 - Identify the native plants in your area
Plant some of these things in your yard or window planter.
Native plants are palatable and digestible to insects and birds of the area, helping to increase the populations of both, by being a food or habitat source. By planting natives you can increase local biodiversity, which stimulates the natural, mutual forward evolution of the local environment.
5 - Participate in river, stream, and park cleanup days
These events continue to be held in communities across the world, usually in the Spring and Fall seasons in your local area. During them, volunteers working together can take thousands of individual pollutants out of the waterways and forests.
6 - Reconsider your philosophy on wild animal feeding
If you are currently feeding wildlife, assess if it is still right for you and your current environment. For example, if you are feeding feral cats, is this affecting your bird population? Or attracting carnivores? If you are leaving out bird suet, is this calling in bears?
Once you think about your wild animal feeding routine, adjust your wildlife interactions accordingly.
Photo by Markus Spiske from Pexels of environmental sign reading, Ask Not What Your Planet Can Do For You, Ask What You Can Do For Your Planet
7 - Minimize trash coming out of your home
Start by noticing what type of waste you tend to have, and reduce or recycle it, where possible.
8 - Go through your cabinets and find out how each product you have is made
Look up the company of all your cleaning, skincare and food items and see if you can find out about the product’s origins.
If the product’s origins don’t align with environmental or sustainability values, consider switching to a new brand next time you’re at the store or writing to the company and requesting cleaner or more transparent practices.
9 - Ask questions of your waste management company
See if they are truly recycling items. They may not be.
Sometimes recycling is combined with trash when certain recyclables aren’t in high demand or when there are high surpluses of a recyclable and the recycled content cannot be resold.
You may also want to ask if your waste management company has specific instructions to be able to recycle certain products. For example, cans may need labels removed before being added to the recycling system.
If your recycling isn’t going where you think it should, if you can, switch providers or buy items that are bottled in a more high-demand recyclable product package.
10 - Decrease your paper product use or switch to more environmentally friendly brands
The good news is that going environmentally friendly on things such as toilet paper may be a pleasant experience. Well made paper products can also be eco-friendly.
11 - Read the ingredient label while at the supermarket
When you are at the grocery store making a decision, turn around the label and see the ingredients sound good to you, especially with skincare products or bottled items.
If you can’t identify the ingredients, in some cases, know it could be a chemical of environmental safety concern. Pause the buy, until you find out what it is.
Two great places to identify chemicals are on EWG’s chemical database called Skin Deep (mentioned above) or in COSDNA’s Ingredient Search Bar.
If a product includes an ingredient listed that is of chemical or environmental concern, see if there is a similar product you can find locally that is absent that ingredient.
12 - Install a Rain Garden
If it is legal to capture rainwater in your area, let the water that flows across your property soak in with a Rain Garden.
A Rain Garden is a native plant garden installed in a depressed area which captures overland water flow, allowing surface water pollutants to soak in to the groundwater and soil, filtering out the surface water pollutants before they reach a waterway.
Overland water flows, which occur during rainstorms, contain pollutants that can affect aquatic life. Rain Gardens capture these pollutants, along with the water, and remove them from the hydrological cycle.
Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels of faceless person planting seedling into soil
Okay, so these are twelve ways you can help the environment.
Some of these actions are big, like installing a Rain Garden, but others are small, like putting a product back on the shelf until you’ve checked up on that yet unknown ingredient.
Either way, they all consist of little actions that in the end make the difference.
To begin helping the environment, focus on one little action that jumps out at you from the list above and start there.
Each action you take may benefit at least one being in your local environment and because this being is part of a web of other creatures that make up the collective environment you live in, every step counts.
Now over to you -
Which action above speaks to you the loudest?
Is there anything you can remember from your upbringing that can help you, help the environment?
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