Stop Buying Items You Don’t Use Regularly

One of the biggest problems people have, seemingly, is impulse control. We’re going to be honest in this part of the green hacks list to tell you, quite simply, to stop buying crap you do not need. We know, it looks cool or could be useful. However, unless you plan to use this item a lot, do you really need to buy it? We bring this up because so many people buy things they don’t use much, only to throw them out and further pollute the environment.

It makes sense to some, at the time, to buy something they want. We get it, and we’re all guilty of this fact clearly. In fact, this writer as well as everyone on staff here is guilty of buying things they wanted at the time, only to throw them out soon after the buy. That said, try to always think about the “purpose of the purchase.” Does this item offer something useful long-term? Is it something you “could” use again and again? If not, perhaps you shouldn’t be buying it.

Buy Local Products

While we referenced you should try to grow your own food at home, if possible, we know this is not always possible. That said, if you’re going to buy something like fruits and vegetables, always buy them from someone local. This goes for any food product, as there are plenty of local farms that sell eggs and even entire chickens to stores to sell to you. Yet you can go directly to the local places too, or go to the sellers that you know utilize local produce and meat.

You can also buy other items locally too, but we know this is not always possible to do for things like clothing. You might also not be a fan of buying stuff from places like Etsy. However, the more localized something is, the better. This means it took fewer emissions to get that product to the stores, therefore to you. The more local a product is, the better in this case.

Rather Than Buying New Eco-Products, Use What You Have Until You Cannot

An interesting issue has come to pass in this area. People want to use eco-friendly products, which is awesome. Take something like a nice electric car, for example. It is good that a person would want to use this over a gas-powered car. However, it takes a lot of power and energy to make it. This power was provided by things like coal through the local power company. This is okay if you’re buying to go from gas to electric, but not when you’re going from electric to electric.

Buying a new electric car when your current electric car is fine is dumb because it uses extra emissions to do so. It is best to wait until the current electric car is no longer useful to you or isn’t working as it should. The same you’d do when switching from a gas-powered car to another gas-powered car. The same goes for lawn equipment and everything else. Never buy new eco-friendly products when there isn’t a true need to do so. This is one of the most important green hacks we have.

Where do We Find this Stuff? Here are Our Sources:

Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

United States Department of Agriculture

United States Environmental Protection Agency

Stanford University

University of Montana

Habitat For Humanity

North American Association for Environmental Protection