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environment

Switch to a reusable water bottle

Get excited about hydration - get yourself a reusable bottle and commit to ditching the single use plastic ones. A one time investment to avoiding buying plastic bottles in the future! If you don’t have the money to spend on an investment bottle then remember that any plastic bottle becomes more sustainable as soon as it’s reused. Refilling an existing plastic bottle is much better than using a new one - and make sure it goes in the recycling bin when you’re done. To help make filling up easier, download an app like Refill that provides a map of refill taps and stations (in the UK).

Clean up

Either organise an event or just head out yourself and pick up litter! The Great Global Cleanup is a great place to start - you can register your cleanup event with them to help connect with other volunteers.

collect your Food waste

So - I didn’t realise for the longest time why composting your food waste is important. We all know creating lots of rubbish is bad, and throwing away food is wasteful, but if you throw away your vegetable scraps then they’re biodegradable anyway, so what’s the big deal right? Turns out it’s not actually a case of them decomposing in a compost heap vs. landfill. When it’s thrown away, even biodegradable waste that’s sat in landfill under layers of other rubbish isn’t usually in the right conditions (oxygen, temperature, microorganisms) to break down, so it’ll just sit there! Collecting your food waste, either in your own compost heap or through a local collection scheme, means that less material is going to sit in landfill sites and the waste can also be made useful as compost and fertiliser, giving nutrients back to the earth.

FYI - the same also goes for biodegradable plastic, so while it’s better than non-degradable stuff, don’t think of ‘biodegradable’ as a licence to use and throw away as much as we like. ‘Home compostable’ plastic can go in with your food waste collection though!

Switch to green energy

We all know to keep our energy consumption down where we can, for example by turning off unnecessary lights and appliances, but we also have more freedom than ever in choosing where our energy comes from. In a lot of places it’s now pretty easy to switch to a green energy supplier - in my house we use Bulb who provide 100% renewable electricity and 100% carbon neutral gas, too. It’s something that requires no ongoing effort, once it’s done you won’t notice any difference, but can save on average 3.5 tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere each year. That's like planting 1,770 trees. Per year. And, in my experience, it hasn’t cost any more. Bulb isn’t the only supplier offering renewable energy (and is a UK company) so get googling and shop around for your local suppliers.

save the bees!

Okay not singlehandedly. But there are things you can do. Some steps you can take at home: plant native, bee-friendly flowers, provide a water dish with some kind of twig or stone island for a bee to land on, provide a home for them. Bee accommodation can be found to buy easily (just search ‘bee hotel’ or similar online) or you can make your own. You can also get Bee Bricks now, which I think are really cool - you can use them on their own as well, but if you happen to be doing some kind of construction (it’s possible, people build things) then think about adding a brick into your wall! Wider ways to help include not using pesticides in your own garden as well as buying organic fruit and vegetables where you can (I find this quite hard) and, if you eat honey, then buying it from local farmers.

EAT LESS MEAT

This is one of the biggest things you can do to reduce your environmental impact. As one example, by switching just one beef burger for a veggie burger you save enough water for your next two and half week’s worth of showers! If you’re not quite ready to go vegetarian or vegan then you can still reduce your intake or challenge yourself to follow a target like Meatless Mondays. For more information about the positive impacts skipping meat can have, visit the Meat Free Mondays site.

Submitted by Andrea

ONLINE

use your voice

Collective voices can create change! If there’s an issue you want to shout about, use a petitioning platform like Change to collect signatures - or go and add your voice to the existing petitions that need your help. There are loads of examples of how petitions have made change, with over 35,000 victories in 196 countries - Change say that a victory happens almost every hour. So petitioning works. Spend some time signing to support people who are working hard to impact causes you care about. If you want to see political action then you could specifically petition your government. Depending on where you live - and as much as I despair at my own leaders sometimes I know I am very fortunate to live under a democratic government - there may be a structured way for you to engage in this way with your politicians. For example, in the UK you can create or sign petitions and if you get 10,000 signatures then the government will respond, or for 100,000+ signatures the issue will be considered for debate in parliament. I know in the US there is a similar system whereby if you get 100,000 signatures in thirty days you will get it in front of policy experts and be issued a response. Know your rights and use them!

SEARCH WITH ECOSIA

Your online searches could be planting trees! Ecosia is a non-profit search engine which uses its advertising revenue to plant trees around the world. At the time I’m writing this they’ve invested close to €13 million into tree planting schemes globally - all from people making their usual searches. Need to convert cups to an understandable measurement? Trees. Looking up lyrics for the song you can’t get out of your head? Trees. Can’t figure out what time it is in Belize? Trees! Roughly 45 searches equal one tree planted, which I could personally rack up in just a couple of days - and if you install the plugin for your browser it includes a nice little counter that shows you how many trees YOUR searches have supported. They also have apps on the App Store and Google Play for your phone, so get at it. (Wow it’s hard not to describe “searching” as “Google-ing”.)

Submitted by Hannah

Educate Yourself

Dedicate some time to learning about world issues and the experiences of others around the world. That could mean reading the news, or you could spend some time taking in content on social media accounts that exist to present big topics in a manageable way. Find the sources that are engaging for you! That could be @earthrise.studio for environmental information, @soyouwanttotalkabout for social issues or individual activists like @ginamartin, who shares current events and actions we can take to get involved.

Submitted by Britt

In Person

Make your steps count

Imagine that your usual daily walks, running, cycling or general steps could all earn money for charity. Imagine no longer! The Charity Miles app enables you to do just this - download the app and connect it to your phone’s internal pedometer (or any other tracking device that you’ve connected to your phone) and earn charity donations for each mile you cover. There are around 40 major charities you can choose to support including Girl Up, the World Food Programme, WWF and The National Park Foundation, as well as many individual disease charities. Most of the money comes from corporate sponsorship, for either the app itself or the individual charities, but you can also share information so friends and family can sponsor you too, which might be particularly good if you’re working up to a sports or running event. Available for iPhone and Android.

Submitted by Rosie

money

Make donations

The whole point of making this list was to try and collect up ways to do good things without requiring a load of cash - but it’s always worth remembering that every little helps. I feel like this almost goes without saying, but one of the main ways you can help good causes is to donate money to a charity or project who needs resources! Maybe you buy a coffee every day? If you committed to skipping it just on a Wednesday, you could add up how much that would have cost per month and make it a regular donation. You already know this, I know it - a reminder just in case you needed one.

offer a loan

Use a regulated micro finance platform like Kiva to offer a loan to someone in need around the world. Kiva is a non profit that helps to give loans to various causes and you can become a lender from $25. Borrowers ask for funding for a variety of reasons, such as refugees starting businesses, rural farmers who need supplies and families who want to ensure they can pay their children’s school fees. The platform is unable to absolutely guarantee you your money back so don’t give money you can’t afford… but an average 97% of loans are repaid, so the odds are very good - and then you could lend your investment to someone else! If you speak multiple languages, you could also volunteer to help out the Kiva platform by offering translation services for their listings, so more lenders have the opportunity to engage with borrowers of different languages.

Register with amazon smile

We all love a good Amazon find - but your suddenly essential kitchen gadget, vitamin subscription or cult oven cleaner (anything from a Buzzfeed listicle, really) could also be raising money for good causes. By making your purchases through AmazonSmile, 0.5% of the price of eligible items is donated to good causes - you can even select the charity of your choice. Remember, you have to start your shopping at smile.amazon.com (or your country equivalent e.g. .co.uk for me!) for the donation to be registered. They don’t make it as easy as they could do, because you have to remember to start at that link and it doesn’t work through the app - but add a bookmark to your computer and try to make a habit of shopping that way. Even if it’s not the simplest, the program raised over $100million in 2018!

CROWDFUND FOR A HOMELESS PERSON

Check out Beam, the first crowd-funding platform to help unhoused people access training, jobs and stable homes. Your money goes 100% towards funding for the beneficiaries, and not to pay staff salaries or overhead costs — and if you want to help more people you can set up a regular donation, or give a general donation and have it split between all he people who are currently raising money.

Medical

This can have it’s own section as it turns out there are a whole bunch of bits and pieces of yourself you could possibly give to someone else.

Join a bone marrow registry

Register with an organisation that keeps a registry of possible bone marrow donors. I registered with DKMS by entering my details online - they then send out a sample collection kit that you do at home, swabbing a sample of cells from the inside of your cheek to post back so they can determine your tissue type and add you to the national register. Registration requirements vary by organisation but are generally age sixteen upwards. You can check if there is a registry in your country on the World Marrow Donor Association website. In reality, the chances you’ll ever be a match for somebody aren’t overly likely - but this is why they need as many people as possible on the list… and how incredible if it happens. If you do happen to be called upon then you can save someone’s life. If you’re already on a register somewhere then make sure you keep your contact details updated in case a match is ever found.

Give blood

If you follow me on Instagram then you’ve probably already heard me talking about giving blood with NHS Blood and Transplant at one time or another - sometimes trying and failing but that’s another story. Giving blood is an excellent, excellent thing to do if you can. It doesn’t take a lot of time and could potentially help three people each time you donate! Look up ‘donate blood *your country*’ to find your national or local blood bank service. There are requirements for donation including minimums for your age, as well as a height/weight ratio - you have to be a large enough human that you have enough blood in you to donate safely, basically. Lots of people are unable to give blood for medical reasons so if you are able it really is a wonderful thing to do. Needles can be scary I know, I was terrified at first, but overcoming that for the sake of other people feels GREAT.