Every day, the planet hands us clean air, fresh water and the rich soil that grows our food, and it's easy to take all of that for granted. On the first Earth Day, in 1970, an estimated 20 million Americans turned out for rallies, marches and teach-ins to say so.
Half a century later, what you've been left with is a reusable bag and a slight feeling of guilt in the shower.
So let's check the list. Below are the seven simple habits that every green article recommends, tested on two questions. Does it help the planet by more than a rounding error? And does it do anything for you? Some of them pass both, and those are the ones worth your time. A couple of them turn out to be a lot of effort for very little, and one is awkward for a site that puts meat first, so I'll deal with it honestly.
Who handed you the broom
Start with who told you this was your job.
Keep America Beautiful, the group behind decades of anti-litter campaigns, was founded in December 1953 by the American Can Company and the Owens-Illinois Glass Company. A company that makes cans has a certain interest in where you think the problem with cans begins.
The "carbon footprint" has a similar history. Wikipedia records that BP, the oil company, ran a large advertising campaign for the personal carbon footprint in the mid-2000s, hiring the agency Ogilvy to help make the idea popular. Few companies have taken such an interest in your shower.
None of this means your habits don't count. It means you should ask who chose the habits you've been handed.
The decade after that first Earth Day brought the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, along with the US Environmental Protection Agency and the end of lead in petrol. None of that came from a tote bag.
The ranking
In 2017, two researchers took 148 scenarios from 39 sources and worked out what personal choices save the most greenhouse gas in rich countries. Four came out on top. Having one fewer child saved 58.6 tonnes a year, by the way they counted it. I'll leave that one with you. Living without a car saved 2.4 tonnes a year, and avoiding one transatlantic round trip by air saved 1.6. A plant-based diet saved 0.8.
Further down, recycling thoroughly did four times less than the plant-based diet, and changing your light bulbs eight times less. Ten Canadian school science textbooks they looked at barely mentioned the big four. Their advice went on the small stuff.
Keep those numbers in mind as we go through the seven.
1. Food
This article used to recommend lentils. Here is the honest position, and then what I'd do instead.
Plant foods have the lower carbon footprint. It isn't close. Producing 100 grams of protein from peas emits about 0.4 kilograms of CO2 equivalent, and the same protein from beef averages about 35, nearly 90 times as much. Even the lowest-footprint beef, at 9 kilograms, is well above peas.
I still won't tell you to go plant-based, because a planet is not the only thing you have to look after. Why Eating Well Isn't Enough Anymore has the 141 papers on what plant eaters run short of, and why that diet ends in pills. If you eat meat, as I do, there are still real choices to make, because animal foods differ by up to 100 times among themselves.
Waste less of it. This one needs no argument. Food loss and waste is linked to 8 to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and about 60% of the food wasted at the shop, restaurant and home end of the chain is wasted in homes. Every pound you throw away carried its whole footprint with it, and you paid for it. How to Eat Healthy Without Breaking the Bank has the figures on what goes in the bin and how to stop it. Clear jars help, because you eat what you can see, and will do. Whatever you won't eat within three or four days goes in the freezer on the day you cook it, while it's still food and not a decision.
Eat small fish and mussels. A review of 148 assessments found the lowest impact of any animal food in small wild fish, such as sardines, and in farmed shellfish like mussels. That's also about the best nutrition you can buy in a tin, and are an easy one to keep in.
Choose the lighter meats some of the time. Chicken, eggs and pork nearly always have a lower footprint than beef, and a breakfast of eggs is an easy place to use that.
Know where the beef comes from. About 44% of the world's beef comes from dairy herds, and it has about 60% lower emissions than beef from herds raised only for meat, because the cow's footprint is shared with the milk.
And the grazing argument? It has something to it, and it's unsettled. On one Michigan farm, moving cattle around pasture put so much carbon into the soil that the finishing stage went from 9.62 kilograms of emissions per kilogram of carcass to below zero, at −6.65, while a feedlot stayed at about 6. That farm needed twice the land, and its soil gains were unusually high. A separate model found American pasture could support only 27% of today's beef supply. So well-grazed beef may be good for the land, but it won't feed today's appetite.
And eat the whole animal. Liver, bones and the cheaper cuts are the parts that get wasted. Ask the butcher for the cheaper cuts and the bones, which are often almost given away, and make broth. It's Time to Stop Poisoning Our Food, linked below, has why buying closer to the source is worth doing anyway.
2. Reduce, reuse, recycle
Reduce comes first in that phrase for a reason, and recycling comes last.
Consider the bag. A Danish government study in 2018 compared carrier bags across 15 environmental measures, and it concluded that an organic cotton bag needs to be used about 20,000 times to match a thin plastic bag that gets reused once as a bin liner. For ordinary cotton, it was about 7,100. That doesn't mean plastic is innocent. Those studies are criticised for leaving out what plastic does once it's loose in the world, since it can take a very long time to break down, and it's never going to become soil. But if you own eleven tote bags, the planet isn't grateful.
Of all the plastic waste made by 2015, about 9% had been recycled. Another 12% was burned, and the other 79% was sitting in landfills or loose in the environment.
Clothes are the easy win. Keeping them in use for nine more months is estimated to cut their carbon, water and waste footprints by about a fifth, according to the British waste charity WRAP. Sew the button back on and fix the seam. A shirt from a charity shop has already paid its footprint, too.
So use what you already have until it falls apart, and stop collecting more. Buying less is the only part of this slogan that also saves you money. Keep the water bottle, too, and make it a steel one, such as this . What to Drink Instead of Plain Water has what warmth does to the plastic kind. One 2024 count put it at about 240,000 plastic particles per litre of bottled water. Tap water has its own question if your pipes are old, and Hidden Toxins in Your Diet: What's Really in Your Healthy Food has what to check.
3. Water and heat
Turn the tap off while you brush your teeth, by all means. It costs nothing and it's the right thing to do where water is short. Household leaks waste nearly a trillion gallons a year across the United States, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, so fixing the drip is worth doing, and it lowers your bill.
Water also takes energy to pump, treat and heat, so the shower you shorten saves on both.
The same goes for the heating. Why You Haven't Slept Your Best Night Yet has why turning it down in the bedroom is the cheapest sleep aid you own. You sleep better and burn less.
4. Green products
Here is the awkward finding. In one set of experiments, people who were simply shown green products went on to behave more generously. People who bought them behaved less generously, and they were more likely to cheat and steal in the tests that followed. Keep an eye on anyone with a bamboo toothbrush. The authors tie it to moral regulation: a good deed can feel like a deposit, and then you spend it.
It's one set of lab tests, so don't throw out your soap. But it does explain the feeling. Watch for the moment you think you've done your bit.
The label helps you less than you'd hope, too. "Natural", "eco" and "green" can each mean very little. How to Make Your Home Smell Fresh Without Air Fresheners, linked below, has the plainer route for the house: open a window and find the source of the smell. Buying fewer products is the safer bet, and it's kinder to what you breathe.
5. Getting around
This is where the two questions finally agree.
Living without a car was the second-biggest item on that list. A short trip on foot or by bicycle is the piece of it you can start this week. And your body keeps the receipts: 10 Practical Strategies to Overcome Barriers to a Healthy Lifestyle has the 263,450 British adults followed for about five years, and the cyclists among them had a 41% lower risk of death over that time than the drivers and public transport users. The bicycle never once mentioned the planet. That's a link, not a trial, but it's a big one.
Flying is the other half. One transatlantic round trip cancels out a lot of recycling. The next time you're deciding, you know the size of it. Only about 11% of the world's population flew at all in 2018, and at most 1% likely account for more than half of the emissions from passenger flights. If you fly often, this is your biggest single line. If you don't, stop feeling guilty about the bag.
6. A garden
Here the two questions part company, and it's worth knowing.
The usual claim is that growing your own cuts your footprint. When researchers measured 73 urban growing sites in Europe and the United States, food from them had six times the carbon footprint of food from conventional farms, which is the opposite of what the idea promises. It isn't hopeless. Tomatoes did better than the farm kind, and so did about a quarter of individually run gardens, and the authors say that keeping a site going for years and growing what would otherwise be air-freighted or under glass helps close the gap. The third thing they suggest is using waste as an input, which in plain terms means your kitchen scraps and a compost heap.
Now the other question. Stress Management 101: Simple Techniques Anyone Can Master in Minutes has the 30 allotment gardeners put through a stressful task. After half an hour on their plots, gardening beat reading for both cortisol and mood.
So garden, and do it for yourself. Start with a few herbs on the windowsill or a tomato plant in a pot. You may even be helping the planet if the pot lasts.
7. Telling others
The old article told you to educate your friends. I wouldn't start there.
The Art of Influencing Others: The Power of Effective Communication has the hotel test: a card saying that most guests reused their towels got more reuse than a card about protecting the environment, though it failed to repeat in two German hotels. So what others are seen doing may carry further than what they are told to do.
Skip the lecture at dinner. Walk to the shop, and let them notice.
The list that's left
Add up the seven and you're left with a shorter list than the one you started with.
Waste less food, which also saves you money. Walk or cycle the short trips, which goes with a longer life. Keep the garden, for your own sake.
Drink from the tap. Fix the drip. Fly less if you can. Eat the small fish and the whole animal. Buy less of everything else.
Small changes do add up, but only if you pick the ones that are big enough to count.
Tonight, look in your fridge, and plan tomorrow's dinner around whatever goes off first.
Wondering what's really on the plate? It's Time to Stop Poisoning Our Food — the 200-year fight over what goes into food, why the rules arrive late, and five steps of your own.
Would rather not spray the house? How to Make Your Home Smell Fresh Without Air Fresheners — what's in the can, why a window comes first, how to find the source, and gentle scents from the kitchen and garden.
Know someone with eleven tote bags? Send them this, gently, in a twelfth.
Disclaimer: This article is general information. For advice about your own health, talk to a qualified health professional.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, All For Life earns from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. We only link to products we would recommend without the commission.
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