5 Ways To Save The Planet From Your Sofa

Trying to incorporate more eco-friendly habits into your life can be a hard slog, hence why a lot of people simply choose to live in blissful ignorance. I can see why. You put in a lot of time and effort to making changes yet feel like the difference you're making is the smallest drop in the ocean. However, that small drop adds up and you'd actually be surprised at how much of a difference you can make on your own.

So, to make being eco-friendly seem a little less of a hard slog I've put together a post of things you can do to help save the planet all while you're sitting on your sofa, minimum effort required! So if you don't fancy putting in the hours to go all plastic warrior the following will all take a lot less commitment:

Change your energy supplier // There are a lot of renewable energy suppliers around these days and it's super easy and quick to switch so there's really no excuse not to - switching ours even saved us money. Where you choose to spend your money can have a huge impact and with the five minutes (if that) of your time it'll take you to switch you're showing big energy companies that they need to change and become more sustainable. Our supplier is Octopus, but there are plenty of others on the market to choose from too. 

Order yourself some eco-friendly cleaning products // Again, there are a fair few of these around, but I recently started using Smol, who seem to be one of the best. The way it works is you buy your plastic bottles from them, which are reusable and they send you small tablets that you pop in the bottles to dissolve and make your cleaners (you get one multi-purpose, one bathroom cleaner and one glass cleaner). You then just re-order the tablets as and when you need them or get them on subscription. Not only does this massively reduce plastic waste, it reduces unnecessary emissions from shipping huge quantities of water that are usually in cleaning products because you're adding that yourself. They also do dishwasher and washing tablets.  

Search online with Ecosia // Don't 'google' something, 'ecosia' it instead. It may not have the same ring to it, but Ecosia is a search engine (it's my default on both my phone and my laptop) powered by renewable energy that puts all of its ad revenue towards planting trees. You can even track how many trees you've helped plant! So you can even make scrolling on your phone more eco-friendly.

Switch your bank // Similar to switching your energy provider, changing banks is a lot easier than you'd think. I only switched mine recently because I actually had no idea that most of the main high street banks make some pretty non-ethical investments with your money; pretty much all of them invest in fossil fuels, oil and gas exploration and nuclear weapons. I switched to Nationwide (who as a building society don't invest the same way banks do) because it was a name I knew and they rate in the top 5 most ethical banks. It only takes five minutes as the banks do all the work for you; switching direct debits, payments into your account like wages and transferring your money over.

Sign a petition or write to your MP // I've never considered myself much of an activist; I'm more the type of person to quietly get on and make my own changes without making much of a fuss so things like petitions had never crossed my mind. While I don't actively go in search of them (although I definitely should) I have now signed a few that have been brought to my attention. I've not written to my MP yet, but it's on my save the planet to-do list because I see so many people say how important it is for as many people as possible to make it known to their MP how important the environment is to them. We want systematic change from the top, but we won't get that if the people speaking for us don't know about it! 

So there you go, a few things that can be completed while the ads are on during your favourite programme. 

Have you done any of the above?

Amy x