Tips and Tricks to Reduce Waste Within Your Home

It’s more important now than ever before to be environmentally savvy and to make sustainable choices that will have a positive impact on the environment. The amount of waste that humans are creating in their homes alone is having an incredibly detrimental impact on the environment and all organisms living within it.

There is a variety of ways to make more environmentally friendly choices in your home; such as the installation of solar panels or smart irrigation systems. In fact, real estate home appraisers in Philadelphia pointed out that in recent years, a home becomes more valuable when it features eco-friendly accessories and systems. However, making your home more eco-friendly can also be achieved by reducing the amount of waste within your home. 

How to Eliminate Waste at Home

Humans often create the most waste in the privacy of their own home without even realizing it. With the hustle and bustle of everyday tasks and responsibilities, it’s easy to overlook the amount of waste that we create on a daily basis.

 In order to begin living a more sustainable lifestyle, it’s best to start at home by eliminating the amount of waste you create. Eliminating waste at home can be easy as long as you know where to start in order to make yourself more aware of the waste that you are creating. Here are some tips and trick to help you eliminate waste within your home:

Implement a Meal Plan

Creating a meal plan is both convenient and will help you cut back on the amount of waste you produce at home. Prior to going to the supermarket, plan the meals and snacks you are going to eat that week and buy only those things. This simple task will prevent you from buying unnecessary items that will just end up getting thrown away because they are left untouched and ultimately end up expiring.

Additionally, creating a meal plan will allow you to prepare your foods for the week, letting you practice a healthier lifestyle and could even save you money by preventing you from spending money on excess food at the store. 

Reduce Coffee Waste

Most people depend on coffee to make it through their day. Though coffee has a copious amount of benefits, the waste to make it isn’t one of them. Paying attention to the waste your coffee creates can significantly lower the all-around amount of waste you create within your home.

If you use plastic coffee cartridges, consider buying your coffee in bulk and buying a single non-disposable cartridge for your coffee machine. Using the same non-disposable cartridge and buying your coffee in bulk cartridge will save the environment and money. 

Or, if you make pots of coffee and use coffee filters regularly, consider looking into purchasing a coffee pot that has a built-in coffee filter; or purchases coffee filters that are made out of recycled materials. 

Make Your Own Beauty and Self-Care Products

Beauty and self-care products are harsh on the environment for two main reasons; they often use detrimental chemicals as ingredients, and they create excess waste. 

For example, many hair products contain a solution called ammonium thioglycolate. Ammonium thioglycolate permanently alters the natural PH balance of hair and weakens each strand while also causing chemical burns and scalp damage. Likewise, these chemicals make their way into the air, polluting the ozone layer and causing irreversible damage. And perhaps most detrimental, these products are sold in plastic containers which create ample amounts of waste in your home. This is only one example of the millions of products that do this to the environment. 

A solution? Make your own beauty products! This eliminates waste significantly because you have the ability to store all of the products in glass containers that can be reused, rather than disposable plastic ones. Beauty and self-care products are a very regular part of everyday life. From products like shampoo to deodorant to body wash, the use of these things are inevitable, but the waste they create can be limited and cut down. Making your own beauty products will also allow you to make your products organic and chemical-free. 

Avoid Buying Packaged and Processed Foods

Like beauty and self-care products, packaged and processed foods use unnecessary amounts of plastic and chemicals in order to preserve the food. Packaged and processed foods are some of the biggest culprits when it comes to creating waste in a home. An easy way to cut down on waste in terms of buying food is to shop at local farmers’ markets and to buy food that comes in recycled containers/containers that can be recycled.

Shopping at local farmers’ markets will help you eliminate waste in your home because all of the products are sold fresh, eliminating the need to preserve them with copious amounts of plastic wrapping. Similarly, purchasing products that are packed in recyclable containers will cut down on the use of plastic packaging in your home. These small life changes will eliminate waste in your home and will also allow you to live a healthier lifestyle by not consuming foods that are filled with chemical preservatives.

Making Your Home and Eco-Friendly Environment

Making your home an environmentally savvy place is easy and can cost little to nothing. Additionally, there are a variety of benefits of making more eco-friendly choices, not only for the environment but also for you all around health and well-being.