I was brushing my teeth last night before bed and I randomly started reminiscing of the last time I went to India, which was in 2004, shame on me for leaving such a long gap since I’ve been back to the motherland. Anyways, I remember brushing my teeth one morning blissfully unaware that I had the tap of water open at full blast and it never occurred to me that I was wasting all that water until my uncle told me off (the sink was in the living room for some weird reason so everyone could watch you brush your teeth – maybe that’s why I never went back lol) and that telling off has stuck with me ever since I was 24.
That thought got me thinking about how unaware we are of the daily waste we create without even realising it and some of the tasks we can do to be less wasteful and more mindful of our actions. The first place we can do this is at home and here are some of my tips…
1) the first one is obviously going to be to turn the tap off while brushing your teeth and you can extend that action to when your washing dishes.
2) turn lights off whenever you leave a room – this one sounds like such an obvious task to do but it’s amazing how you can forget to switch lights off upstairs while you pop downstairs to get a drink thinking you’re only going to be quick and before you know it you’ve been distracted for the the last two hours by a movie that was on the telly, which means the upstairs light was left on for that long!
3) that takes me nicely onto number three, switch off things like the TV and radio if you’re not using them.
4) don’t waste food, especially fresh food like fruit and veg. Make yourself a soup, smoothie or juice to finish off all those ingredients.
Just performing little tasks like these can firstly save you money on your bills, secondly it’s good for the environment and thirdly you can feel good knowing you’re doing all you can to be mindful of your actions.
I can’t find many pictures of my trip but here are a few and yes that is cow dung in the middle of the alley way…enjoy!
