New Year, New You - Easy Ways to Live Sustainably
May this Year of the Metal Ox brings good luck, health, prosperity, and wealth to you and your loved ones.
Easy Ways to Lead a Sustainable Life
In 2020, a study of 27,000 people shows that while health remains a priority, the environment is also an important issue. As much as 61% of the participants want to lead a more sustainable and healthier lifestyle to reduce their impact on the environment, but only 31% have actually done so.
What can we do to start this sustainable lifestyle, especially during a pandemic? Here are a few easy and affordable ways :
Grow Your Own Garden
Living in the middle of a pandemic can be very stressful, so finding ways to relieve that stress is important. Why not take up gardening? Research shows that being in the garden helps your mental health and emotional well-being, while gardening reduces depression and anxiety as well as increasing life satisfaction and quality of life.
It doesn’t matter if you have a small outdoor space, you can utilize potted plants or indoor plants to practice your gardening skills. Not only will it help you reduce stress, but it will also reduce toxins and dust from the air thus making your home a healthier place.
Reduce Food Waste
Because of lockdown, you may not be able to shop for groceries as frequently or as easily as before the pandemic began, so it’s understandable that you want to stock up more food when shopping. Be careful though; buying more food than what you and your family need may run the risk of increasing food waste. According to FAO, wasting food means the effort and resources that go into producing, transporting, and processing food are also wasted. Not only that, food waste that ends up in landfills produces methane, a greenhouse gas emission that contributes to climate change.
Here are some ways we can reduce food waste :
- Build a meal plan for the week, so you know exactly what and how much to shop and cook. Do try out Paprika, where you can easily make meal plans and organize recipes. It even automatically creates your grocery list!
- Keep your leftovers to eat later or reuse in another meal
- Instead of throwing out your food waste, turn it into compost that will provide nutrients to grow your plants.
With closures of physical stores and people spending more time at home, online shopping is increasingly becoming a necessity. Various e-commerce sites reported an increase in shopping sales during the pandemic, and more and more people are turning to shop online. While it is convenient and seen as a safer alternative in a socially-distanced world we live in, it also creates harmful environmental impact; for example from plastic and cardboard packaging that became pollution.
As a sustainable shopper, we must always be aware of the impact our online purchases create. Here are a few things you can do to lessen the impact :
- Buy local, so your packages leave less carbon footprint on their way to you
- Support vendors that sell eco-friendly and ethically-sourced products
- Find shops that use environmentally friendly and recyclable packaging to avoid creating more waste.
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At Purnama, we strive to reduce our eco-footprint by choosing an eco-friendly alternative to fast fashion. As a slow fashion social enterprise, we are committed to using upcycled and recycled materials to ensure near-zero waste post-production.
Are you looking to build a sustainable future and social impact for your organization?
Find out more here.
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Find us at Expat Living Singapore January 2021 edition!
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Fall Internship was limited yet fulfilling with AIESEC Majulah Singapore Program.
Purnama works alongside student volunteers and interns. With the pandemic shutting down the international student volunteer internship program for our long-time student-run partner, the Majulah Program was a successful pivot to local volunteers. Pairing interns in teams really added a deeper teamwork dimension to the educational & work experience for the students.
Education is and always has been our overriding purpose and theme; and we extend that from our core outreach programs to our community work with educational institutions & individual students.
