CARE5 Easy Ways To Reduce Your Mark On The World

Want to help save the turtles but not sure where to start? This article is for you.

We all know that guilty feeling when you’ve just picked up your Boost Juice and need to get another plastic straw. The turtles! And, while a waste-free vegan lifestyle sounds great for the environment and your body, it’s almost impossible to throw yourself in the deep end! It’s not hard to start reducing your contribution to landfill and your overall environmental impact. Just think of it like tackling a big assignment – baby steps! Try these 5 easy ways to get you started to reduce your impact!

1. Get Yourself Some Reusable Straws

We all love drinking from straws – sometimes they’re necessary (with aforementioned Boost Juices)! But the single use straws used in most cafes, restaurants, and most likely your favourite Boba Tea store (yep, ChaTime), have very bad impacts on our environment and the beautiful creatures we share it with! Not only do they never biodegrade – they contain BPA, so they can’t be recycled. And, our sea turtle friends in the ocean often mistake them for food – which can harm and kill them.

So, the easiest way to reduce the number of straws ending up in the ocean is to use reusable straws. So you can still drink your favourite drinks, or coffee without staining your teeth – without the environmental damage! Check out our article showing the Top 5 Australian Reusable Straws for where to find some. Or, head down to your local ‘The Source: Bulk Foods’ and pick some up! They even have different sizes – so you can still drink smoothies and other thicker drinks ethically! For now, find some Australian stainless steel straws here, and don’t forget your straw cleaner

2. Leave Reusable Bags in Your Car

This one is a no-brainer! Really! Any bag works! Leave one or as many as possible in your car, or you can buy $1 Woolies bags that fold up into almost nothing and chuck them in your everyday bag. Ready for anytime you’re in Coles/Woolies/Any shop in the mall! Easy as.

3. Chuck a Reusable Drink Bottle in Your Bag

Stop buying single use water bottles! Please! We’ve all got a spare reusable bottle lying around the house, or they’re really not expensive – unless you want to invest in a pretty one (we totally would). Same with your bags, leave one in your bag or car so you’re not caught off guard and forced to buy a single use plastic water bottle. They contain the BPA mentioned before, they release harmful chemicals and toxins into the environment and into your water, and less than 1% of all plastic bottles are actually recycled.

And, as Ocean Crusaders stated in this post, “To create the bottles, transport them, refrigerate the water and recycle the bottle is believed to produce in excess of 60,000 tonnes of greenhouse gasses.  This is the equivalent of 13,000 cars on the road for a year.” They also cost a LOT of money, with Sydney Morning Herald stating that “Shoppers are forking out $3 a litre for Mount Franklin and $8 a litre for Voss, while milk and petrol sit below $1.50 a litre.” here.

Check out this collection of non-toxic, BPA/PVC free bottles!

4. Invest in Some Reusable Face Wipes (yes, they are a thing)

Whether you wear makeup or not, you’ve seen cotton pads/balls and q-tips around your house or other’s houses at some point. They seem to have made their way into many people’s everyday lives – taking off your makeup with micellar water after a long day, cleaning out your ears, removing nail polish – they do have many uses.

But, have you ever thought about their environmental impact? They’re really not good for the environment – in fact, according to the Organic Trade Association, “Cotton is considered the world’s ‘dirtiest’ crop due to its heavy use of insecticides, the most hazardous pesticide to human and animal health. Cotton covers 2.5% of the world’s cultivated land yet uses 16% of the world’s insecticides, more than any other single major crop”. The solution? It’s simpler than you think. You can make your own reusable cotton rounds – here’s a tutorial, or if you’re more into videos, here’s one. Or, you can invest in some ENJO cleaning rounds – check out the range here. I personally own these and they take off any type of makeup with just water – and they can replace your exfoliator too.

5. Take a Mug/Reusable Coffee Cup to Your Everyday Coffee Stop

Coffee is great – while I’m not a coffee drinker, I know a lot of people who LOVE it. However, this lovely beverage comes in disposable cups if you’re taking away. Sustainability Victoria stated, “Australians consume more than 50,000 cups of coffee every half hour, and an estimated 1 billion takeaway hot drink cups every year”. So I guess that shows how much we love hot drinks.

However, these cups cannot be recycled, due to the way they are made. Recycle Coach explains that here. While the majority of these cups come from coffee, coffee drinkers aren’t the only culprits. Any drink that comes in a disposable ‘coffee cup’ is contributing. Simply by dining in or bringing your own reusable cup or mug can help reduce your environmental impact. See KeepCup’s range here.

This list is just the start; we could go on and on. And that’s exciting. There are so many ways we can all start to stop, think and make changes that will reduce our mark on the World.

YOMM wants to know!

Share your inspo. Tell us what doing right now that is reducing the mark you’re leaving on the World?