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Tips & Tricks for a More Sustainable Household this Earth Month & Beyond!

  1. Start a Compost Bin: Try your hand at composting by adding your food scraps, leaves, yard trimmings, and other organic materials to a compost bin! Farmer Pirates Compost offers options for residential pickup and drop-off community composting services. Composting allows the nutrients from natural materials to be reused in our gardens and helps reduce methane emissions in landfills.
  2. Donate Spare Fabric: The textile industry is the second-highest contributor of carbon emissions and water waste, with an average of 92 million tonnes of finished garments going to landfills each year. Do you quilt, sew, or repair your own clothing? Double your sustainable impact by donating extra fabric to Stitch Buffalo! 
  3. Swap Incandescent for LED: Let there be light! Switching your household incandescent and halogen lights to LEDs is a simple way to reduce energy usage by upwards of 90%. Save on your electricity bill while using less power! Bonus points for using natural light during the day and unplugging electronics and lights when not in use to reduce phantom energy costs. 
  4. Donate Unused Ingredients: Reduce food waste by donating non-expired, unopened ingredients to the Buffalo Community Fridge! Prepared meals can also be donated with labeled ingredients and properly closed containers. 
  5. Install a Bidet: This one might be a bit less obvious, but consider the installation of a bidet! Not only are there hygiene benefits, but using a bidet cuts down substantially on waste produced by toilet paper. On average, it takes around six gallons of water to make one roll of toilet paper, and a bidet only uses approximately 1/6th of that water!
  6. Weatherize Your Home: Weatherizing your home means that you can use less energy to retain heat or keep your living spaces cool! This can be as simple as getting thick curtains to trap heat inside in the winter and reflect heat in the summer, to moderately complex projects like replacing weatherstripping on doors, and all the way up to working with insulation companies to have your walls professionally spray foamed. 
  7. Swap Disposable for Reusable: Many items commonly used in the household and sold in disposable forms have reusable equivalents that you can easily swap to reduce your weekly waste. Some examples include swapping paper towels with reusable cloth towels, using cotton balls in your dryer instead of dryer sheets, or even trying your hand at using a dryer rack, using reusable bags when shopping (like the one available at our shop) instead of disposable bags, sipping from reusable water bottles, and opting for stainless steel straws instead of plastic. 
  8. Secondhand Shopping = Savings x2: With brick-and-mortar thrift stores, online secondhand markets like Poshmark or eBay, and clothing swaps becoming more commonplace, an easy entry into a more sustainable household while saving money is to buy clothing, shoes, and other wearable items secondhand OR donate your old clothing to give it a second life. Dodge the landfill and help to lessen the millions of tons of textile waste that get added every year! 
  9. Share Don’t Shop: Maintain your membership to The Tool Library and get access to over 4,800 tools, shared among the community instead of purchased by individuals.