Good eco-friendly resolutions for the new year

Every new year brings with it projects and ideas, the desire to change our lives or alter our relationships with others, but good intentions do not always come to fruition. And, in a time when attention to the environment is increasingly important, it becomes essential to focus our goals on pursuing a different kind of sustainability, one that makes the impact of our lives on the environment around us ever smaller.

If you are looking for daily actions to make your life more eco-friendly, you are in the right place. Follow our sustainable tips and create your very own list of eco-friendly resolutions for the new year.

1. It all starts at the table
2. Travel and getting around
3. Our relationship with energy
4. Eco-friendly gardening
5. The golden rule: set realistic goals

It all starts at the table

Food is not only a source of sustenance, but also pleasure, memories, emotions, and conviviality. The table always plays an important role in everyone's life, yet it is also the place where we most easily perform actions that have environmentally damaging consequences.

First of all, it is the place where the most waste occurs. We buy more than we can eat, we do not always have time to cook everything, and sometimes we overindulge in purchases when faced with so many tempting offers. The result? In Italy, every year one kilogram of food is thrown away per person, meaning sixty million kilograms of wasted food (according to the Waste Watcher survey), the production of which required energy, land, and resources. How can we remedy this situation? By planning our shopping intelligently.

Often, the shopping list is drawn up based on what has run out or is about to run out in the pantry: we tend to want to have everything on hand without realizing that we do not always need it all. It is fine to keep a supply of long-life food, but it works differently for fresh products. To be sure of buying only what is needed, it is a good idea to create a weekly meal plan. This way, you will not buy excess fresh products, and you will only buy what you have time to prepare and the opportunity to consume. Furthermore, if your meal planning attempts to reduce the presence of products of animal origin as much as possible, it does a great favor to the environment, which sees most of the pollution and resource waste in intensive farming.

Travel and getting around

Getting around is one of the main causes of pollution and also one of the actions that have a direct impact on our carbon footprint. An increasingly globalized world and technological advances have greatly shortened distances, making travel normal and commonplace. Long-distance travel certainly plays its part, as the choice of means of transport allows us to pollute much more or much less: air and car travel are the most polluting, while choosing the train is the most sustainable option. For this reason, whenever possible, choosing destinations reachable by train is always preferable.

Occasional travel, however, although it bears a large part of the blame, is precisely that—occasional. For this reason, it is much more important to try to make a difference in everyday life. For example, choose to get to work by public transport or by bicycle, giving up the car. Clearly, these are choices that not everyone can make, especially when the distance from home does not allow it. A good idea, then, can be to set periodic goals for yourself. For example, if the distance between home and work is too great to consider commuting by public transport every day, it could be a good idea to promise to take the car only four days out of five: such a change may seem too small to make a difference, but over the course of the entire year? the pollution saved will be no small amount. The same applies to those who have the opportunity to get to work by bicycle: perhaps you cannot always do it, but making an effort to do so when the weather allows, for example, can contribute enormously to the sustainability of your choices.

Our relationship with energy

The origin of the energy we use daily can be very polluting: for this reason, changing your approach and choosing suppliers that use green energy can make a difference. But even this choice, on its own, is not enough. Thanks to the ease with which we access energy, we often do not realize that many of our actions involve often unnecessary waste: trying to limit waste, therefore, is the most important action to plan in your eco-friendly resolutions.

Reducing waste means turning off all devices when we are not using them, it means unplugging appliances instead of always leaving them on standby, but not only that. There are also many small actions that do not affect daily life, but represent a small consideration toward the environment. For example: 

• choosing low-temperature washes and avoiding the use of the dryer when possible;
• using only rechargeable batteries and avoiding disposable ones;
• replacing all the light bulbs in your home with energy-saving ones.

Eco-friendly gardening

If you have a garden, saving water and energy for maintenance are essential actions to have a smaller environmental impact. And converting your garden into a dry lawn is the most sustainable choice possible. A low-water-use lawn requires very few irrigations a year and allows for a saving of about 80% in maintenance and water resources.

If you do not have the opportunity to create a new lawn from scratch, you can consider converting your garden from a traditional to a dry lawn. Choosing the type of plants based on the needs of the area and the climate and the right irrigation system are the first steps toward a low-water-use garden. If you intend to take this step and revolutionize your garden, read our guide and, if you want a hand designing your new eco-friendly green space, you can contact us and schedule a consultation.

The golden rule: set realistic goals

The fact that good intentions for the new year are often not kept is not just a cliché, but has an explanation: very often, carried away by the enthusiasm to change everything and improve as much as possible, we end up setting unrealistic goals, promises to ourselves that are too difficult to keep. Choosing sustainable resolutions, instead, even for our lifestyle, is much more functional: some small gestures done daily can do much more than big changes made only for a few months. Only in this way, by gradually changing our daily lives, can we make our lives more eco-friendly and healthy, for ourselves and for the planet.