If you’re a college student like me, you may find it difficult to balance all of your daily responsibilities. Work, school, sleep: you name it. There are a million things that you have to do from day to day. It can be hard to imagine finding ways to be more environmentally friendly in college when you have everything else going on in life. I’m here to tell you about the ways that you can be more environmentally friendly with your habits without breaking the bank and without taking any time out of your already hectic day.
- Limit FOod Waste
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Don’t get me wrong, dining hall food is not always the most appetizing. However, it’s important to be mindful of what you put on your plate in the dining hall. Before you start piling up your plate with food, just think about whether or not you will actually eat the food in front of you. It’s better to get less food at the beginning and grab seconds than to plate more food in the beginning and throw half of it in the trash can.
Limiting food waste in dining halls can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions greatly. More importantly, if you start by reducing your food waste in the dining hall, you can even carry this practice home with you on breaks.
The United Kingdom produced 9.5 million tons of food waste in 2018, the equivalent of 25 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Most of these emissions come from increased production and transportation of this food. This study also found that 70% of that food waste came from household waste.
- Buy Second-Hand Clothing
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It can be easy to fall victim to the plethora of accessible and cute clothes available on fast fashion websites like Shein. As college students, we all want to keep up with the newest trendiest clothing without breaking the bank. However, as consumers, it is important to understand the external costs of our purchases because the more we buy from these companies, the more they will produce products and continue to exploit the environment.
For example, according to an investigation by Rest of World, Shein added anywhere between 2,000 and 10,000 individual styles to its app each day between July and December of 2021. This constant push for curating trendy clothes has an immense impact on the environment.
Shein’s use of virgin polyester and large consumption of oil emit the same amount of CO2 as approximately 180 coal-fired power plants. And Shein is not the only company that is part of this epidemic. The fashion industry as a whole is responsible for releasing more than 10 percent of carbon emissions globally.
Although this may sound scary, there is an easy way to continue having cute clothes for cheap without the extra environmental costs. By buying second-hand clothing, you can help reduce clothing waste and reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions emitted by companies like Shein.
If there are no thrift stores near you, there are companies online that can ship second-hand clothes right to you! Some popular examples include ThredUp, Poshmark, Depop, and Mercari.
- Reduce Water Usage
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When you live in a dorm and have access to all the hot water you may ever need, it can be easy to use more water than you actually need. College students take longer showers and run the water when they are brushing their teeth. When you don’t have to worry about increasing your parents’ water bill when you’re in the dorm, why would you have to worry about how much water you’re using?
The truth is, by monitoring how much water you use, it diverts less water from our rivers, bays, and estuaries, which helps keep the environment healthy. It can also reduce water treatment costs and the amount of energy used to treat, pump, and heat water. This lowers energy demand, which helps prevent air pollution.
Although your parents have probably told you this time and time again, they really do know best.
- Turn off your lights
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In a similar vein, most college students don’t worry about how much electricity they are using on a daily basis because they don’t have to worry about the electric bill. It can be easy to fall into a habit of leaving your lights on in your dorm when you leave. This habit can be hard to break but it is important to break this habit so you can save the future environment and your future wallet.
The United States still relies heavily on fossil fuels, despite the push for renewable energy. Therefore, it’s important to reduce your energy consumption wherever possible, even if you don’t have to pay the electric bill.
Even for fluorescent light bulbs, which use the most energy to turn on, it’s more energy efficient to turn the lights off when not needed for at least 23 seconds. Therefore, if you are leaving your room for more than 30 seconds, you should turn off your lights to help reduce energy consumption and the emission of greenhouse gas emissions.
Again this is probably something that your parents drilled into you as a kid. But, it is important to reduce your energy use even when you’re not living in your parent’s house.
- Change your laundry habits
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We all know doing your laundry in college can be a pain. However, there is a way that you can make your laundry better for you and better for the environment.
Machine washing and drying clothes can often be a major source of pollution and emissions.
According to a Washington Post article, a standard washing machine uses around 20 gallons of water for each load, and electric dryers, on average, can use anywhere from 1.8 to 5 kilowatt hours of electricity per cycle.
This article states that your clothes probably don’t need to be washed as often as you think you do. Therefore, if you cut down on how often you wash your clothes you could reduce your energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This means that you won’t have to spend any more time in the outdated, small laundry room in your college dorm building than you need to!
Additionally, another way to reduce your energy consumption during your laundry routine is to wash your clothes in cold water. By washing four out of five loads of laundry in cold water, you could cut 864 pounds of CO2 emissions in a year, an amount equivalent to planting 0.37 acres of U.S. forest.
Finally, if you have room in your dorm, invest in a clothes hanger to air dry your clothes! Not only does this reduce your energy consumption but it is also better for your clothes. If you love wearing those thrifted grandpa sweaters like I do, then you know you don’t want to risk shrinking them in the dryer.
Environmentalism is for everyone, even busy college students like us! It starts with the small actions everyday because these are what will turn into big things in the end. We are the future so it is up to us to set the groundwork for future generations by showing them that being environmentally conscious doesn’t mean you have to change your whole life around.