Greener habits do not just save our planet from the pollution that we made, but they also drastically improve our health! One of the perfect examples is old-fashioned walking. Did you know that fifteen minutes of walking to the market instead of using a car can drastically improve your health? It can reduce stress, improve your sleep, positively affect cardiovascular health and much more!
Already start to like these greener habits? Great! But save your breath, ‘cause there’s more of it!
Let’s dive into five greener habits that can improve your life, make you happier and positively affect our planet!
Ride a bike
As we mentioned above, walking is great, but we don’t always have time to walk to certain places. Plus, too much walking can negatively affect our health and harm our body. Remember, balance is essential in life. However, this is not a reason to jump straight into your car and drive yourself wherever you need to go. Instead of that, you can use a bike.
Compared to cars, a bike is a much more affordable solution that doesn’t cost you tons of money. Depending on your needs, you can buy a bike for just $200. It’s important to have two wheels that work properly and to have a bag where you can put the products you purchase from the market. Does it have one? Perfect, that means you are ready for bicycling!
Riding a bike saves you money as you don’t need oil to turn it on and ride it, plus when you can’t walk because of the time or distance, you can ride! Your body moves much more as you need to move your legs and hands much more than inside a car to control the vehicle. You are in the fresh air and feeling the wind, which will also improve your mood every time you ride.
Use public transport
When the distance is, however, a bit longer so you can’t use a bike or simply the weather conditions aren’t good for riding without a roof above your head, then you can use public transport.
Public transportation will save you money as you don’t need to maintain the bus by yourself, plus you don’t need to register it every year. A driver’s license is good to have, but it’s not essential to travel with public transport. You will only need a ticket, which is, besides your time, the biggest expense.
Buses on average can carry about fifty people, which means that the average street can ride with one vehicle. This means much less emission of carbon dioxide than if all of those people drove their own vehicles. Plus, if public transportation rides on electricity, that means even less emission of carbon dioxide. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you don’t need a car. But, you can use it just on long-distance traveling when it’s much more comfortable and convenient to go with your personal vehicle. But, for local destinations such as work, visiting a friend from the other part of the city, a bus or train will fit you perfectly.
Even if you don’t like to be surrounded by many people, especially during the summer when the temperatures are high and it’s hard to breathe inside closed spaces, you can use transport-on-demand where there is less concentration of people. It will probably be a little more expensive than standard public transport, but still cheaper than riding your car every day!
Plant trees
The measures like planting a tree inside or outside your house if you have a yard will affect your monthly budget and your health score! If the trees reflect a shadow through your window or you keep plants on the windows inside your home, it will reduce your heating bill. That’s because during the summer trees will block sunlight, which means your air conditioning will have less work that will as a result affect your monthly expenses.
Also, having flowers or trees inside your home or yard means much healthier air, better connection with nature and the perfect location for the dog-house! Your kids will enjoy playing with pets and enjoy the smell of the trees!
The tree is the perfect place where you can put a table for family gatherings and enjoy the natural shadow that plants provide. Not a bad way to spend the summer nights, right?
Ohh, did I say that planting a tree doesn’t affect your wallet? Well, I supposed I was wrong as having a few trees or flowers in or out of the house gives additional value to your property if the moment you wanna sell it! Did you ever consider making the living fence around your home? It looks nice and makes a perfect composition of the natural environment.
The greener life starts to sound even better, right?
Use greener technology
The fully independent energy system like solar panels is quite a big bite if you do not plan this transformation for a while. Luckily, you don’t have to do everything at once. Start little by little. That’s actually a proven way to do the things that we want, as waiting for the right moment usually ends with that moment never coming, at least from my experience.
So, what can you do?
Start to charge devices like laptops, PC computers, game consoles and phones through mini solar panels that can cost you just $50. You can also buy an AC power bank that has installed or can be charged with solar panels on itself so it uses green technology for recharging.
In this way, home devices like computers, televisions and even the fridge and freezer with some much powerful AC banks can be connected to renewable green technology.
The installation of technologies like this is a long-term investment also. If you decide to sell your home, the solar panels will be added to the value. If not, fully equipped solar panels will save you tons of money for decades to come!
Environment-impact conclusion
Little steps like this will make your life full of greener habits, which will affect everything: your health, your family and your environment, which lead us to the title of this blog. Greener habits, greener planet and greener wallet is our society’s ultimate goal for a better future!
Good luck, my greener friends!