You might've noticed that there has been many discussions around the impact of plastics on our planet in recent months. But what about the invisible waste? This includes overuse of technology, the choice between driving and public transport, what meat you’re buying and how they can be just as environmentally damaging as physical waste.

There are many environmental recognition events coming up in March, so we've combined a list of simple changes you can incorporate into your daily life to reduce your carbon footprint.

Water Waste

You may be wondering – water never disappears from our planet, so how can we be wasting it? Humans can only drink from the planet’s freshwater sources, which only make up about 1% of total water available. Once it is used and flushed down the drain, it goes back into water treatment plants to be put back into our waterways. The more freshwater used, the more processing needed, which wastes energy. If freshwater is less available in certain areas, this processing can be even more taxing on the environment. Read more about this here. 

Earth Hour

Earth Hour is an annual event where hundreds of millions of people switch off their lights for an hour. Even though this is once a year – take note of how easy it is to switch off your lights when they’re not in use. Here’s a simple tip: if you’re not in the room, turn it off! Sustainable habits are easy to start and make a bigger impact than you think. Here are a few more practices to consider taking up:

• Eat less meat – greenhouse gasses from agriculture are an ever bigger problem than fossil fuels and meat (especially red) consumption only makes this issue worse. In fact, animal agriculture is the number one consumer of freshwater in the world
• Drive Less – a 40 minute drive into work replaced with a train ride in Victoria was shown to save an average of 4.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per person per year.
• Line-Dry Your Washing – making the switch from dryer to clothes line can save 1/3 of your laundry’s carbon footprint.

Calculate your carbon footprint here and set a goal to reduce it throughout 2019!