We’re excited for 2020 – fresh year, fresh decade – everything feels fresh and probably the best time to start something new.
Being a company that’s very eco-conscious, we have a few eco-resolutions that we’ve set for this year, and we’d like to share them here to give some ideas to anyone also looking to make some eco-conscious resolutions this year.
Our eco-resolutions are very practical, realistic and very doable. The goal is to make these easy actions become a habit and perhaps next year these’ll just all be a part of our lives and just something that we do.
Eco-Resolution #1 - Bring your own water bottle
Kicking things off with the easiest and most practical resolution - which is to bring your own water bottle. This will not only significantly reduce plastic waste, but will save you money as well. In our country (Philippines), we can't just drink out of the tap, so a lot of people do need to buy water, but buying them in refillable 5 gallon sizes is much much cheaper (35 pesos) vs buying bottled water one at a time (~10 pesos/500ml bottle). This is a no brainer in terms of money saved and it helps our environment at the same time.
Don't be fancy, you dont need a Klean Kanteen or Hydroflask to participate in this eco-resolution. Re-use anything, even the glass packaging of the nata de coco you consume during the holidays will do. We feel like sometimes the optics or the way it looks hinders people from doing this. Being eco-friendly is IG-worthy enough if that's important to you, so the water container you use can be anything and it'll still look great.
If you find that glass water containers are too heavy to carry, you can get the reusable BPA-free plastic ones that you probably already have. This'll make it more transport friendly. The easier it is, the more you'll do it.
Want a container for coffee? any aluminum vacuum flask or even the glass bottle is ok to use. At the end of the day, no one really cares or looks too closely as to what kind of bottle you are using so just use whatever you have at your disposable. The act is the main point, not the accessory.
Nowadays, even in the Philippines you can refill water everywhere... in your house ofcourse, at your office, in airports when travelling, at coffee shops when you dine in, and even some of the food courts inside the malls have filtered water too! So many possibilities.
This is an easy one and all the benefits definitely make this eco-resolution a must do. If you do nothing else from this list, do this one.
Eco-Resolution #2 - Make your own eco-brick
If you're not familiar with an eco-brick, its basically an empty plastic bottle that you fill up with all your clean soft plastic trash to a certain density, and when filled up these bottles are dropped off with organizations who can use them as building materials.
The main objective is to reduce the amount of plastic trash going into the landfill and ocean, and they are instead being collected in a bottle which can be turned into something useful down the line.
There's an argument being made that just because you can make an eco-brick doesn't mean you should continue and increase your consumption of plastic, which is true in some way, but also in our practical day to day life, until the food we consume or the things we buy are packaged with eco-friendly alternatives to plastic, it could be hard to avoid and options are super limited. So our choice becomes to buy or not buy if we strictly adhere to zero-waste philosophies.
That's why we believe that companies should think about switching to eco-friendly alternatives to plastic.
In the Philippines, there's a number of places and organizations that participate in collecting these bricks, some of them even give monetary incentives in exchange for the bricks (check SM and Robinsons malls). Organizations like The Plastic Solutions PH occasionally organizes eco-brick drives to collect your eco-bricks.
You can read more about the proper way to collect trash inside the bottles here - https://www.ecobricks.org/how/
The main struggle we see with this eco-resolution is that this is not something that we're used to doing - cleaning the plastic wrappers or films and collecting them in a bottle - but we're hoping once it develops into a habit, it becomes much easier to do. Also, think of the amount of plastic films and wrappers we encounter on a daily basis, and all of these will be saved from the landfill if we successfully collect them in the bottle!
Eco-Resolution #3 - Bring your own utensils
This one is also pretty east and we've been doing this for a while note. its really not that heavy and they don't need to be a fancy bamboo cutlery set. Just take spare utensils you have in you house and if you must buy (because you don't have any to spare), then you'll really only need to purchase it once and that's it forever (just dont lose it).
Our kit actually includes a teaspoon, 2 sets of metal straws, and a set of chopsticks - all stainless steel. We carry it in a pouch that came with the straws when we got it, super non-fancy set.
Ok so practical use of this: when you're outside and you buy any cold drink - they usually give a plastic straw, so having your own reusable one is handy. Sometimes, even when you dine in and ask for chopsticks, they'll usually give you the disposable wooden ones (why?), and if you had your own chopsticks, then you save that wood chopsticks from going into the landfill. Even if its wood and its biodegradable, not consuming it is better than thinking its ok because its biodegradable.
Remember that usually these utensils are being used once and for less than a few hours max, then its thrown out. Trash is trash so if we can reduce it, that's ultimately the ideal scenario.
By carrying your own utensil, you just don't realize it but the amount of plastic trash you can remove from the landfill is astounding.
Eco-Resolution #4 - Commit to No Meat Mondays
our 4th eco-resolution this year is to (really) commit to a no meat monday. We've actually been doing no meat mondays for a while now, and its not always perfect but even at 95% success rate, we're pretty happy with that
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There's a lot of articles written about how the livestock industry is a big contributor to climate change through deforestation to clear ways for these livestock, and cows produce a lot of methane which is a potent greenhouse gas. You can read more about it to get educated, but whether you agree or not, it doesn't hurt to atleast lessen your beef intake, if for nothing else but the fact that you can save money that way and eating vegetables is good for you.
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Relaxed or cheat days often happen over the weekend, so for us having no meat mondays are a great reset for the week. it feels really good and will make you feel clean and light, and for us we always aim to eat more plant based foods anyway. Great news is these days there's so many options to choose from so it doesn't really feel like such a sacrifice.
Eco-Resolution #5 - Bring your own reusable bags
The last eco-resolution we are implementing this year is to bring your own reusable bags - groundbreaking!
This is so easy you're probably already doing it. You can fold it up and put it in your purse/backpack or leave it in your car or office drawers, or anywhere you can leave stuff, just don't leave it and lose it.
A lot of the grocery stores are no longer using plastic bags, and those paper bags are just not sturdy enough to carry your groceries, and what if you have 3 big bags, how are you going to carry it them all at the same time. Having your own reusable bags when buying groceries are the most convenient thing ever.
Another scenario that reusable bags come in handy is when you go out shopping - instead of taking the store's plastic shopping bag, you can use your tote bags instead. We know that some people really like store's shopping bags, and if you reuse them later they can be ok also, but ultimately if you want to reduce your plastic consumption, this is a good place to do it.
Similar to the water bottle, any reusable bag or tote will do, its doesnt need to be anything fancy. A reusable bag's function is to hold things, even non-branded bags can hold things just as well.
We used to have so much piles of plastic bags in our home, and if you don't know this, cockroaches love hanging out in between those plastic bags. Yikes!
These are the 5 eco-resolutions we are implementing this year. We hope we were able to give you some ideas on what you can apply to your own eco-resolution, and why its advantageous to do these simple actions.
If you have any eco-resolution that you are making this year, please let us know! We’re always looking for new challenges and we can make it a part of our 2021 eco-resolution.