I don't buy palm oil products or other products hurt the rainforest.
Oh, ok. So none of those veggies require land. The chocolate you buy has a 'fair trade' sticker on it, so it's fine. Just like stuff labelled 'humane meat'. I mean nothing that you buy comes at any environmental cost, right? You only buy what you need, right?
I don't own a smartphone.
But you're clearly on a laptop or PC. Whoops. Or are you using a tablet?
What are you doing to make the world better?
For starters, none of my water to my house comes from main pipelines, it's all well water. Pumped to a tank, then to me. The pumps are solar powered. The radio tower uses a small wind turbine to charge the batteries we use to keep it running since we live in the middle of nowhere and need reliable communication for when the power goes out this month (if not week) and the phones don't work. It's one of the reason we have a generator.
The last new shirt I bought was purchased 2 months ago. Before that, 6 months. Our car is a used rental car. Our work truck is 15 years old.
Because we have a rabbit problem, I hunt rabbits so I save on dog food. In turn, we need to buy less canned food. Meaning less garbage.
The house we live in is in need of repair. So we're doing that ourselves. Replacing the floor with plywood, the windows with plexiglass. Our couches were hand-me-downs that were bought second hand by person we got them from. We just got new couches as a gift so we donated the old ones instead of selling them.
To save on groceries we have beets, corn, squash, zucchini, onion, asparagus, watermelon and chives growing in our garden. We also have peach trees and hazelnut trees.
The computer I'm using is half a decade old, my PS Vita was bought second hand by my sister and gifted to me.. Books are purchased used from amazon, Netflix is our main source of entertainment, we only go a new laptop when the screen fell off our old one. We needed something with a webcam so I could call people from home since I'm an immigrant and miss my friends and family. Our bookshelves are second hand.
What we can't get used, we get new.
We need a tornado shelter so we're looking at buying a freight container to modify.
All the meat in our freezer we raised and killed ourselves. One cow every 6-8 months. The eggs come from our chickens. I'm in the progress on growing a miniature banana tree. Lavender to keep moths away.
This is off the top of my head. Not bad considering we receive no govt. assistance and make enough money to be living on the poverty line.
Now, here's the kicker:
Am I better than you? Fuck no. I just can't stand working retail. I don't fit in there and I'm happier on my own left to my own devices. I prefer to work because I can't stand jobs.
Are many of these options feasible to you? Fuck no. But some are. Arbor Day foundation? Gurney's? A few fruit trees? Even potted? Suddenly you require less groceries.
Am I doing as much as I possibly could? Doubtful. But I'm not acting like only eating one cow every half a year is doing enough. As it stands I treat myself to chocolate once a month. Maybe even soda. Because I'm on a diet? No. Because it's 3 hours to the shops and I can make peanut butter fudge with the stuff I have here.
So I laid out the parts of my life that I can think of. Care to do the same?