Your Daily Routine is Harming the Planet
Hello all, SignTech paperless solutions here. I think I have touched on every subject imaginable in relations to sustainability and the planet. But what about you? Yes. It’s easy to say, “I’m just one person, how can my beauty/skincare regimen or my cleaning habits be harming the planet? Really.”
The answers to these questions are so unbelievable simple that when we’re done you’ll see how almost EVERYTHING you do has a negative effect on the planet and you’ll see the importance of going paperless. We’ll take a walk through your typical day, whether you are a student, a worker, or a house-husband/wife. Luckily this is something that the deep delve isn’t really needed. We only need to scratch the surface to get the point across.
When you wake up usually your morning activities depending on how you plan on going for the rest of the day includes the brewing of your morning coffee, shower, your daily skincare routine, creams, makeup, shaving cream. Statistics show that on average women use at least 12 personal care products per day and men use six.
The coffee: Is the coffee made properly? Is it organic? Shade-grown? Bird-friendly? Fair trade? Unfortunately today most of our coffee comes as a result of the exploitation of local farmers in many countries where the cocoa bean is grown indigenously. Choosing fair-trade products shouldn’t even be an option for anyone as this affects the lives and wellbeing of the people that help us to produce this coffee. Secondly is your coffee eco-friendly? Yes, there is such a thing as eco-friendly coffee. One of my favourites is the Rainforest Alliance certification. If your brand of coffee has this stamp of approval it means that the coffee farms ensure a habitat for birds while protecting the livelihood of farmers. Right now over 2 million farm workers AND their families benefit directly from the Rainforest Alliance certification. Other labels like Fair Trade USA and Bird-Friendly and USDA Certified Organic (this means that your product is made of at least 95% organic ingredients).
Your shower: Do you leave the tap running? Are you one of the people that wait to fill the entire room with steam before stepping into the shower? Many of our great lakes have been depleted some by more than 70% both fresh water and saltwater, there are some parts of the sea in countries where its nothing but a bed of hard rocky salt that tourists can now walk upon, due to evaporation. Are you adding to this problem by wasting water?
Your personal care routine: This is something that everyone does in the morning, getting ready for school, work, or just to stay at home. You cream yourself, put on a light dusting of makeup, you shave, and shower with different soaps, gels. Style your hair or just pack it in a rubber band. Now just a few questions. Your personal care products; are they all non-toxic? If your answer is no, imagine you washing all the toxins off your body into the water supply and eventually into the soil, our food grows in the soil, and some of that water is treated and brought back to our taps.
This is your typical morning tackled and already we’ve touched issues of deforestation, preservation of wildlife and habitats, water conservation, water pollution, and fair labour.
Your means of Transportation: do you drive a car? Take pubic transport? Walk or cycle? Driving is a major source of pollution right now in urban areas; the cars produce carbon emissions that destroy the ozone layer, which protects us from harmful rays from the sun. Public transportation doesn’t completely eliminate the pollution but it reduces it by a massive degree. By putting more than one person in a vehicle at once it is basically a huge carpool.
When you go shopping for everyday household items: how many things do you buy on daily basis that are thrown away eventually. Do you know where most of your trash ends up? In a landfill. The landfills are filling up rapidly and this is caused mainly by our waste products. Non-toxic and biodegradable products are what you should keep an eye out for, as this cause the least harm to the environment. Plastic products especially are one of the worst, plastic cups, plates, and more. It takes plastic an estimated 500 years to biodegrade. That’s 500 years of pollution. Do you have 500 years to wait?
Not Caring Enough to do anything: I’ve seen this happen before. I speak on the planet, going paperless and the eco-system and you end up feeling bad, feeling sorry and you promise yourself that you will try your best to help the planet. Then you forget to recycle and conserve and all of a sudden we’re back to square one. Listen carefully, feeling bad that the planet is degrading fast is all well and good but feeling bad isn’t enough. You can’t feel your way to a better planet without action, you can’t feel the ozone layer back to a restored state or feel your way to the restoration of water in the dried up lakes and seas. You can’t feel away air pollution, deforestation, and extinction of habitats. You take steps so that you can prevent the issues on the earth. Recycling is one of the ways, going paperless in work and at home is a great way to fix some problems.
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