6 non-fashion related things to do for the environment right now #1
1. Drink a fresh cup of tea
Personally, I am a big tea drinker and perhaps you are too. Tea is great, but tea bags are less amazing. Research shows that most tea bags are only 70/80% biodegradable. Even worse, the rest is made out of polythene terephthalate (PET), aka plastic. Now PET is has a high melting point, however, we might want to consider it's glass transition temperature (Tg), the temperature where molecules in certain materials (such as polymers) begin to break down. The problem is that where the melting point of PET is 482 degrees Fahrenheit, the Tg is about 169 degrees, which is less than the temperature of boiling water (water boils at 212 degrees)... Hence the molecules will already be in the process of breaking down while drinking tea from a PET tea bag. Not the nicest idea, is it?
When you realise that in the UK alone, 156000000 cups of tea are drunk per day (I repeat, per day!). You might realise, that is quite a few teabags. Hence, to protect yourself from consuming plastic particles you might want to replace teabags for fresh tea and use a reusable tea sieve.
2. No vacation from sustainability
Personally, I am a big fan of travelling. As a Dutch exchange student in Singapore, this is my very first time being a tourist in another continent. Before this year, I could count the times I have set food in a plane on one hand and had mostly visited tourist-focussed areas (read: sun, sea, beach). This year I experienced many culture shocks. Many of which, I could place under the umbrella term of sustainability. Now the biggest shock so far has happened to me in Bali, a place I imagined to have the cleanest and beautiful beaches of the world. Beautiful, yes. Clean? Unfortunately, I experienced with my own eyes how tourism is destroying this little piece of heaven on earth. When traveling, a lot of us seem to forget our responsibilities, including our responsibility for the earth. Chief Seattle has a simple advice for all those people: “Take only memories, leave only footprints.”
3. Eco-traveling
Next to not participating in consumerism (even when on holidays) and not to pollute the place, you might want to look in-to eco-traveling. Eco-traveling, according to Ties, is "responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education"
4 . Leave the car
You want to get fit ánd do something good for the environment. Leave the car behind, and take the bike instead. Or if it is a bit further away, what about public transportation? Studies show that the transport sector is responsible for 22% of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. Light-duty vehicles, such as cars, make up 45% of that. To make it even more specific, the average car produces 4.7 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. So ditch the polluting monster, ditch your car!
3. Eco-traveling
Next to not participating in consumerism (even when on holidays) and not to pollute the place, you might want to look in-to eco-traveling. Eco-traveling, according to Ties, is "responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education"
4 . Leave the car
You want to get fit ánd do something good for the environment. Leave the car behind, and take the bike instead. Or if it is a bit further away, what about public transportation? Studies show that the transport sector is responsible for 22% of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. Light-duty vehicles, such as cars, make up 45% of that. To make it even more specific, the average car produces 4.7 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. So ditch the polluting monster, ditch your car!
5. Read, read, read
If you are a book lover like me, you probably read a lot of books. However, buying all these books in paper form is not the most environmentally friendly. Therefore, the library is my best friend. As I wrote in the post on the Fashion Library: "The concept of a library to me is great. I pay a little monthly fee - which is most likely less than I would have paid would I have bought all the books individually. Yet, I get access to a broader range of books than I could probably ever collect myself. I can stroll through the endless rows of books, and take any books with, without having any commitment - if after reading the first few chapters I dislike it, I can just bring it back without any (monetary) consequences. This allows me to pick up books I might have otherwise never picked up and explore genres I otherwise would have never explored. Amazing." And if you do want to own the books, there are still more environmentally friendly options out there. What about secondhand books? Or an E-reader?
6. Buy package free
Sources:
Orci, T. (2013). Are Tea Bags Turning Us Into Plastic? The Atlantic Retrieved from:
6. Buy package free
So many things are packaged these days. I was opening a box of tea bags and found out that within the carton box each individual tea bag was packaged in a layer of plastic. Packaging over packaging is often done, to me and many others, for no clear purpose. This of course is one of the main reasons we create so much trash and is hence a topic that should be addressed. The website Beunpackaged.com already gives good insights on how to live package free and Lauren Singer also did a nice Ted Talk on living a zero waste lifestyle in which she elaborated on how to avoid buying packaged food. Basically buying a lot of things fresh, for instance from local markets, and bringing your own containers to package it, is the best way to start!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sources:
Orci, T. (2013). Are Tea Bags Turning Us Into Plastic? The Atlantic Retrieved from:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/are-tea-bags-turning-us-into-plastic/274482/
Composting teabags. (2010, July). Which? News. Retrieved from: http://www.which.co.uk/news/2010/07/composting-teabags-218651/
IPCC. (1996). ‘Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories’, IPCC. Retrieved from: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml
Ratcliffe, S. (2011). Oxford treasury of sayings and quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
TEDx Talks. (2015, May 25). Why I live a zero waste life | Lauren Singer | TEDxTeen [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF72px2R3Hg
The International Ecotourism Society. (n.d.). Engaging Communities, Empowering People, Inspiring Lasting Change (Research Report). Retrieved from
the Ecotourism website:https://www.ecotourism.org/sites/ecotourism.org/files/document/ties-overview-brochure-lr.pdf
IPCC. (1996). ‘Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories’, IPCC. Retrieved from: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml
Ratcliffe, S. (2011). Oxford treasury of sayings and quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
TEDx Talks. (2015, May 25). Why I live a zero waste life | Lauren Singer | TEDxTeen [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF72px2R3Hg
the Ecotourism website:https://www.ecotourism.org/sites/ecotourism.org/files/document/ties-overview-brochure-lr.pdf
