April is an important month for the environment. While you may know that it’s is when we celebrate Earth Day, did you know that April is Keep America Beautiful Month? Or that the last full week is known as Sky Awareness Week?
We encourage you to spend this month advancing your knowledge and beginning to do your part to help the environment. If you’re wondering how you can live greener, here a few easy ways to get started:
- Make Recycling a Habit
How often do you recycle? If you haven’t found a way to make it a regular habit, you’re not alone – 46% of Americans don’t recycle on a daily basis. But why not?
While you likely learned about the 3 R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle) when you were young, you may need a refresher. In fact, one of the top reasons people don’t recycle is because they don’t know what can be recycled. It can be a bit confusing, especially as different areas have different guidelines.
Yet, it’s worth taking the time to learn. Although the effects of choosing not to recycle don’t affect your home directly, recycling has several significant benefits. Recycling benefits the environment by conserving natural resources, preventing pollution and reducing greenhouse gases. It also creates jobs, saves energy, and more.
- Only Use Green Cleaning Services or Green Cleaning Products
Whether you recycle or not isn’t the only decision you make in your home that affects outside your household. How do you make decisions about the cleaning products you use? You may make decisions based on price or brand recognition, for example.
However, there are many possible risks to using traditional cleaning products.One risk is that store-bought air fresheners as well as other cleaning products may release VOCs (volatile organic compounds). In your home, VOCs can negatively affect the air quality in your home by contributing to indoor air pollution. Outside your home, VOCs in traditional cleaning products contribute to smog.
Yet, humans are not the only ones that can be negatively affected by cleaning product ingredients. If waters are receiving inadequately treated wastes, the ingredients in cleaning products can be toxic for the water’s aquatic species. Another issue that threatens aquatic life is how the surfactants in traditional cleaning products break down. Whether they break down slowly or into more toxic chemicals, they are a threat to acquatic life.
Luckily, there are easy, more eco-friendly ways to clean your home. You can make natural cleaning solutions for cleaning the oven, sink, carpets throughout your home, and more – or hire a professional green cleaning service.
- Plant Trees
How many trees are in your neighborhood or nearby parks? Aside from that they provide oxygen, shade and something for children to climb, there are many other ways that trees serve us!
Trees help the environment in several ways – they capture rainwater, prevent water pollution and soil erosion, clean the air, and much more. Trees are so important that The National Forest Foundation and 50 Million For Our Forests campaign planted 8,061,125 of them last year!
How can you make a difference? If adding a tree to your yard seems like a possibility, you can learn what that might entail. It is also crucial that we work to develop a stronger interest in campaigns so their impact continues to grow.
During the month of April, we make it easy to increase the impact you can have on the environment. When you choose to use our green cleaning services or purchase a gift certificate, we will plant a tree in your name. Get started making a difference by requesting a free cleaning quote or purchasing a certificate today.