Four Simple Ways that YOU can Save the World!

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A. Guo

Carley Barello of the Environmental Club helps clean up.

If you’ve recently seen the news, whether on big media publications like The New York Times or on our very own Gator’s Eye here at Green Level, you have probably seen the growing number of stories on the climate crisis. Whether it be the dying koalas or sinking cities, these heart-wrenching stories have brought up the question: how do we stop the climate crisis?

There are countless ways to adopt a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, but the one of the best ways to start is, “to start small, making minute changes, to start a new path to enforcing cleaner, sustainable practices into your daily life,” according to Carly Barello, Environmental Club Secretary.

So here are a few of those small ways to practice sustainability:

Reduce your Waste

“To prevent climate change we can reduce the amount of plastic we use and not waste food,” Aditi Nayak, the vice president of Environmental club, says. But it is not limited to just plastic and food, every item you own can make its way to a landfill and pollute our oceans

Specifically, “this could include avoiding single-use plastics in your lunch (plastic sandwich bags, plastic utensils), and switching to reusable containers, starting a compost pile, or even learning how to properly recycle,” Barello says. So before you buy a new article of clothing or grab a plastic straw, ask yourself if you really need it.

Furthermore, if you have already bought these unnecessary items and they no longer hold any use for you, then recycle, upcycle, resell, donate, or compost them!

 

Reduce your Energy Use

You may not have choice over choosing the most energy-efficient refrigerator or lamp, there are still plenty of ways to make less of an impact.

One of the simplest ways is to turn off your lights when you leave a room. If you are leaving your room to go eat dinner downstairs or waking up to leave for school, make sure you turn off your lights when you no longer need them. 

Similarly, you can apply the same turn of the lights mindset to air conditioning. If you are leaving your home for school, remind your parents to lower the A.C. usage as you won’t be needing it.

Another way is to lessen your vampire power, the energy lost when electronics are turned off but plugged in. We are often guilty of this whether it is our phone, laptop, or TV we constantly keep plugged in. According to the New York Times vampire electricity actually ends up turning into 44 million tons of carbon dioxide, or 4.6% of our country’s total residential electricity generation. So we need to make sure we are unplugging our devices once they have reached at most 100%.

 

Avoid Vehicles

It’s probably impossible to entirely avoid vehicles in our day and age, but it is not too difficult to find ways to make your carbon footprint smaller. 

Instead of using one car for yourself, find alternatives! You can walk, bike, carpool, and take public transit. This can mean taking the school bus in the morning and afternoon, or carpooling with a friend to sports practice.

 

Educate Yourself!

There are many more ways you can find ways to create a more eco-friendly lifestyles and help save those dying koalas and drowning cities, and the best way to find these practices is to educate yourself–just use Google!

Barello explains, “With a little research, watching youtube videos (many helpful channels on how to start being more eco-friendly) or reading articles, it’s easy to begin your part in improving our climate crisis.”