With New Year's quickly approaching, I thought I'd share some of my habits that I've kept over the years and think you should adapt too! At the end of this blog post, I'll post some of my New Year's goals too. New Year's resolutions are hard to keep, so I suggest sticking to only a few big ones and try calling them goals instead of tagging them with the New Year, that way you are more likely to keep them for longer!
1. Become Vegetarian or Vegan
At this point, most people know that consuming animal products is bad for the environment. There is a long list of reasons why. First, eating meat has a huge carbon and water footprint. A carbon or water footprint is the size of the impact your decisions have on the planet. So for an example, a fossil fuel factory will have a massive carbon footprint while someone who lives “off the grid” will have a small carbon footprint. Meat and dairy uses a ton of resources; by cutting that industry out and only eating animal product free you basically cut your carbon and water footprint in half. This is because you remove an entire step to get your food to the table. Instead of having to grow crops to feed the animals, you just eat the crops. Meat and dairy factory farms also create a massive amount of pollution that seep into our groundwater and pollutes the earth’s water systems.
In addition to the massive carbon and water footprint animal products have, it is also animal cruelty. I always say, you need to know where your food comes from. If you could not kill and process your own animal then you should not be eating meat. Animals, especially on factory farms, are treated inhumanely. They are not given any space to be an animal, their babies are ripped away from them, and they are typically abused by their farmers. I could go on for a lot longer and post videos of the cruelty on factory farms, but I’ll let you go and discover those for yourself if you have not seen them already.
The point is, the animal industry is inhumane and horrible for the environment so make a change in your life and eliminate it from your diet. If you do not think you can survive without it, which is false, you can always reduce your intake to 1-2 times a week or start with a meatless day. There are tons of resources to help you go vegetarian or vegan. Simply searching for vegetarian/vegan recipes on pinterest will give you thousands of results. Here is a link to my personal pinterest board with a lot of cheap and easy vegetarian and vegan recipes, let me do all the searching for you!
2. Use less plastic
In our last blog post we talked about the impacts of plastic that appears in our everyday lives. If you haven’t seen it, go check it out for more information! There are many ways to use less plastic and to waste less. First, I’d start off by recommending that you ditch buying plastic water bottles and coffee cups. Invest in a nice water bottle and carry it everywhere you go! When I don’t have mine by my side, I feel like I am missing something very important. Also, invest in one or two travel coffee mugs. Keep one in your car at all times if you find yourself stopping for coffee on the way to work or during your usual day. Many coffee shops will offer you a discount when you bring in a reusable container. Make it a rule: forgot your coffee mug, no coffee for you today! Soon enough it will be a habit and think of all the plastic you save. They make some ice-coffee and hot coffee versions too!
Once you’ve phased out water bottles and coffee cups, let’s ditch the plastic at grocery stores. Buy yourself a few reusable bags, they have them now at every grocery store at the check out. Or you can repurpose bags you already have or make them yourself! You can also make or purchase reusable produce bags which eliminates those tiny thin plastic bags you are forced to get when buying produce. While browsing, try your best to buy only products that use recycled materials or paper packaging, if you want to go pro, try to stay out of the middle isles all together and ditch the processed snack foods which tend to have a ton of plastic packaging.
3. Go Outside More
How could we not suggest that you make going out into nature a priority in 2019? While we want you to go on some epic hikes and adventures, this resolution can be as simple as walking or biking to work or a store, or going for short walks at home. If the weather is nice, read a book or eat a meal outside. Nature can be so healing, so even if you do not have a ton of time to go on epic hikes you can still make time for tiny bursts of natures daily. When in nature, you have the opportunity to exercise, reduce your stress, take in daily vitamins, and learn. Whatever you choose to do outside, it will be rewarding in some way.
4. Shop ethically
Shopping ethically has already been touched upon in the use less plastic section of this blog post, but there is a lot more to it. You should know exactly where your products come from. Start by using only ethically sourced ingredients. What I do is whenever I buy a processed item, I check the list of ingredients. If the list is more than 10 ingredients, some of which I can not pronounce or do not know how it is derived, I do not buy that item. I try to stick to ingredients that are natural and whole instead of chemically made. While looking at the ingredients, check for palm oil. The palm oil industry is destroying habitats, causing massive deforestation, and in the process killing orangutans and other animals. The catchy part is that it’s in EVERYTHING. You’ll start to learn the tricky names they call it by on ingredient lists but try to start by avoiding palm oil or palm fruit oil.
Another way you can shop ethically is by not shopping fast fashion. Fast fashion is all of those cheap clothing stores that usually do not last more than a year or two. The products they use to make the clothes are usually toxic for the environment, plus the factories produce a ton of waste. Since the clothes do not last long, most of them end up taking up space in landfills. Also, a lot of the companies are using underpaid, sometimes, child workers. Instead, you can buy from thrift or consignment shops which will save you money and save clothes from being tossed in the trash. You can find some amazing articles of clothing at thrift shops for really cheap and it’s also an amazing way to try out new styles without breaking the bank.
If all this kind of scares you, maybe you want to know exactly what is going into your products or you want to save even more money, you can make your own products. I currently make my own toothpaste, lotion, deodorant, and leave in conditioner. My goal for 2019 is to start making my own soaps along with shampoo and conditioners. There are some great blogs that can help you get started with this, I started by finding stuff on pinterest. I will also blog my journey in soap making this year, so you can follow along with me! Stay tuned!
5. Challenge Yourself
Hopefully, all of the above New Year’s goals will be a challenge for you, so this one will be a given. However, I challenge you to challenge yourself more! Maybe learn a new skill, like soap making, or start a new hobby. Whether it’s getting into running, hiking, sewing, knitting, or even reading, if it will be a challenge for you, I want you to try something new and stick to it! At work, I always tell my kids to try something new that scares them. Usually they are scared to go into the woods or try an activity that they’ve never done before. At the end of it, there is always bright smiles on their faces and they are proud of themselves. Try to incorporate this into your 2019 year, and see what you can add to your life.
With these 5 goals, I hope you can make 2019 successful! Let us know which goals you plan on incorporating in your life starting 2019. Here's a list of my goals for 2019:
Make my own vegan and natural soapPost a blog entry once a weekBuild our Wild and Growing ShopCreate and develop new classes to teach at work, and design some printables for Wild and Growing in the processDevelop our youtube channelRun dailyReduce the things that create stress in my lifeAdopt two bunnies!Go on more adventuresWaste less!Happy New Year and keep exploring!
-Hannah
Wild and Growing
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