Voting with your dollar is the best way for you to advocate for our environment. Here is an easy list of tips and tricks to be a an environmentally conscious consumer:
- Make sure you’re not making more waste with what you’re buying. This means avoiding unnecessary packaging like plastic wraps and instead going for zero packaging like when you buy produce. Another trick is to buy items than come in compostable packaging making your entire purchase ecofriendly.
- Do you know what went into what you are buying? We often forget to ask ourselves this and unknowingly support unethical sourcing. The latest and most infamous example of this is palm oil which destroys delicate and irreplaceable ecosystems. Try and buy from brands that openly share where they source their inputs like LUSH, a popular company which prides itself in ethical sourcing.
- Try and buy local as often as possible. One environmentally detrimental thing we don’t see or think about is the expense of transporting the products we often order online. Doing so has a big carbon footprint and could simply be avoiding by going to local stores and as a result also supporting local businesses.
Written by Anamaria Flores, Class of 2021