365 Sustainable Decisions Challenge

When wrapping the present yesterday (#72), I also had a present that didn’t fit in this paper wrapping. I had a look in my paper bin in found an old magazine with nice pictures in it. I decided to use two of he pages to wrap the next present. It doesn’t look so well as yesterday, but the principle works. So I’ll keep an eye open for more beautiful pages for future presents.

For my birthday, I got a book that was wrapped in a nice, colorful piece of paper. I decided to keep it to be able to make someone happy with it later. As you can see here, I had a present with the right size and I think it looks great.

For one of my crafting projects, I needed a piece of wood. Although I had to go to the other side of town to do the shopping, I cycled over instead of driving by car. As it wasn’t heavy and not a lot, it worked out well.

Today I walked past a tree on which someone put a piece of paper, saying that it is allowed to eat its fruits. I really appreciate this as it is is much better to eat it than to let it rot on the ground. And it tasted good, because the fruits are much fresher than when transported across the globe.

Close to my house is a bookshelf. It is standing outside, so that people can put in or take books for free. So whenever I have a book that I have finished reading or don’t want to read anymore, I put it in there instead of throwing it away. I then hope someone who wants to read it finds it, so that he/she doesn’t have to buy a new one.

Whenever I have a trip within Germany, I prefer to travel by train. Apart from the environmental advantages, I feel that flying is admittedly quicker for long distance, but I can use my time on the train a lot better. Here I can work; when flying I am busy with moving to another chair, queuing and check-in.

When I drink tea during the day, I reuse my cup several times. And the good thing is that this saves a lot of washing-up, which then causes me to have the dishwasher run less often. This in turn saves water and energy.

As mentioned in #17, I use cutlery that can be washed and reused as often as possible. Therefore, in this restaurant, I chose to use the spoon instead of the one way chopsticks. This saves waste.

In restaurants and bars, I sometimes get a drink with a drinking straw. If so, I forgot to tell them that I don’t need one. Drinking from the glass works very well for me and I don’t like the idea that this straw is thrown away after having used it – or in my case not even having used it!

In this hotel, refraining from having your room cleaned allows you to get a drink in the bar or give €5 euros to a nature and environmental protection association. I don’t want my room cleaned every day, so I chose the second option. And this is – including other environmental friendly decisions they make – for me a good reason to go to this hotel again.

I got this fabric bag a long time ago during a flight. I kept it and now use it the bring my lunch. It can be washed and therefore saves me a plastic bag (and of course waste in general).

In the winter, I use a hairdryer to dry my hair before I go to sleep. Otherwise I get really cold. But now it is warm enough to let my hair dry naturally. It of course saves time and another good reason is that it saves energy.

I am sometimes asked whether I want to have my hotel bill in an envelope. Sometimes, I am not even asked. As I don’t need this envelope and would throw it away, I these days refuse the envelope or give it back.

These small containers with hand soap are often provided in hotels (see also #58). In the past, I used some in the hotel and took others with me to use at home. I now decide to leave them as for only a little bit of soap, I have to throw away a lot of plastic.

Hotel rooms and offices often have more than one bin. In this case, both bins had a plastic bag in it. I would much prefer a bin without a plastic bag in it. So the best I could do here was to only use one bin. I hope that saves a plastic bag.

In the hotel I went to, I found two containers with soap. I decided to use the soap in the larger container, in this case a dispenser. It looks like this dispenser can be refilled. And even if it can’t, it produces less plastic waste as soon as the bottle is empty. I can of course also do this at home.

I am getting more and more used to switching off the light when leaving a room. Even when using LED-lights, it saves energy. And as the switches are often at places that I pass anyway, I only need to swing my arm and the light is off. That doesn’t even take time.

Whilst traveling by subway, I got to an escalator that wasn’t moving. I guess it was waiting for someone to step on it, to decide whether to go up or down. To save energy, I decided to take the stairs and let it rest for a little while longer.

Yesterday, I took part in a local cleanup event. The idea was to pick up as much as possible waste, but especially cigarette stumps. Apparently, each cigarette stump poisons 40 liters of drinking water and takes 12 years to be complete gone. Enough reasons to throw them in the bin. I was shocked how easy it was to find 4000 - 5000 stumps with around 50 people in less than 2 hours.

I recently found this small plastic bottle in my cupboard. I had saved it for recycling but I had a much better idea: I painted it and now it is a small vase. Instead of having to put a lot of flowers in, I only need one or two to cheer up the room.

I recently had a barbecue. During preparation, the meat was taken out of the fridge by the host. I immediately noticed that some of the meat was in plastic bags, whereas other meat was still in the original wrapping. Well, even though both is plastic, but using the original wrapping at least saves another bag.

I am switching off my Bluetooth and WiFi off as much as possible. When having them on, these services try to connect to other devices which of course uses energy. So by switching it off, I have to recharge less often and therefore save energy.

When starting a short car trip, the car was hot from the sun during the day. The first thing I wanted to do was turn on the air conditioning. But that wouldn’t have made sense, because there was enough fresh air outside that would flow in through an open window. It worked very well and it made me realize how beautiful that place is.

I have a very cozy and warm pullover. When it gets cold, I wear it all the time. And as it is a bit too big, I can wear it over another pullover. It works really well to keep the heating down.

Without thinking, I sometimes pull 3 or more paper towels from the dispenser after having washed my hands. Now I became conscious of this habit of using 2 or more towels, I tried with only one. It worked well, so from now on, I will now only use one.

I am using a manual lawnmower to mow the grass. I have to admit that grass area in my garden is not extremely large, but still. And the good thing too is that I don’t risk mowing the electric cable.

When finishing my toothpaste, I always make an effort to squeeze as much out of it as possible. But I used to throw the tube away when nothing comes out anymore. This time, I cut off part of the tube and see here, there is some toothpaste left! (This also works for tubes with paint.)

In the past, I usually bought grated cheese. I used to have a very blunt rasp, so it was a pain to rasp cheese. These days, I have a very good one, so rasping it is very easy. As a block of cheese comes in a lot less plastic, or none at all, this saves quite some waste.

Someone who visited me used a tea bag to brew one cup of tea. This made me notice that one thing I’ve been doing for a long time is brewing a whole pot with one bag instead of only one cup. This save many bags and saves energy because the kettle only needs to heat up once.

Someone who visited me used a tea bag to brew one cup of tea. This made me notice that one thing I’ve been doing for a long time is brewing a whole pot with one bag instead of only one cup. This save many bags and saves energy because the kettle only needs to heat up once.

During a walk through the fields, I saw some waste lying around. As I didn’t have a bag with me to gather litter, I only took a few things that were easy to carry. It feels good to know that this rubbish is now not flying around for ages. Next time, I’ll be prepared.