Live Sustainably This Summer

By Erin Peters

“We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.” -Anne Marie Bonneau, Zero Waste Chef

Sustainability means sufficiently meeting your own needs while not taking away the ability for future generations to meet their needs. Making small adjustments to your lifestyle in order to cut back on pollution, waste, and unsustainable practices can really help you and future generations live cleanly.

How can you take what you already use and turn it into a more sustainable item?

Say Goodbye to Single Use

Single use items, including straws, paper towels, cotton swabs, and wrapping paper, are creating more and more pollution every year. Even items like plastic toothbrushes, vacuum cleaner bags, and garbage bags are only used minimally before getting thrown out, and will end up in landfills. Landfills release methane gas, which is the most potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. Landfills also produce carbon dioxide, water vapor, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and non-methane organic compounds. There are over 3,000 landfills in the United States, averaging about 600 acres each. Therefore, over 1,800,000 acres of habitats have been lost due to landfills. Landfills are surrounded by plastic or clay liners, but they tend to have leaks. This can result in leachate, which is a liquid produced at landfills that contaminates water sources nearby. It is in our best interest, and future generation’s best interest, to contribute to landfills as little as possible.

Single-use and plastic-free options can be great alternatives and will help our environment. Herbal Revival Apothecary downtown in The Dalles has the items you’ll need to live sustainably! Here you will find things like bamboo toothbrushes, non-plastic razors, reusable face cloths, and sustainable packaging. If you are looking to make some adjustments in your life and cut back on plastic to help out future generations, look no further. 

Be a Conscious Consumer

During the pandemic you may have gotten into an online shopping cycle. Not being able to go out to all of our favorite shops left people cooped up with their devices and not a lot else to do. Now is a great time to reevaluate your spending and figure out how to be a conscious consumer. Amazon made a net profit of 21.33 billion dollars in 2020 which was a huge increase from the previous years. They’re doing just fine. Meanwhile, small businesses have struggled to stay open, or have even had to close down.

Making purchases online means excessive amounts of packaging. Packaging that can often times not be recycled. A study by Oceana found that Amazon generated 465 million pounds of plastic waste in 2019. They also estimated that about 22.44 million pounds of this plastic ended up in freshwater and marine ecosystems. Shopping locally cuts this out completely. The Workshop in The Dalles next to Last Stop Saloon makes their wood products in-house! Talk about getting things straight from the source and not having to worry about plastic packaging.

Not only is packaging the issue, but often times we get caught up in our daily lives and neglect to (or cannot) return things. Then items are simply thrown out. These items end up in landfills, and contribute to pollution. With businesses reopening, practice going into local stores in person. A perfect example is Klindt’s Bookstore in on second street in The Dalles. They will order a book for you at the same price as you would find it in store. Check it out rather than contributing to big corporations and their pollution.  

Kaitlyn Cook exploring the Alvord Desert on her road bike rather than in her car

Walk or Ride

Living in a small town like The Dalles or Hood River gives you an awesome opportunity to choose to walk or ride a bike to your destination, rather than driving. With some exceptions, most places are easily accessible from neighborhoods in town. In these hot months, a car with air conditioning sounds much more appealing than a walk to town in the heat. But just think about how much it will help the environment to give up those 5 minutes it takes to cool your car down before driving your car 5 more minutes to get to the grocery store! 

Choosing to walk or ride your bicycle rather than driving cuts back on air pollution. The smog, carbon dioxide, and other toxins that vehicles emit pollute the air we breathe and can directly affect our health. Production of cars alone produce greenhouse gas emissions that get trapped in our atmosphere and contribute to global warming. 

Cutting back on driving also cuts back on noise pollution. With less cars, trucks, and motorcycles on the road, wildlife can thrive. Wildlife often hides, and seeks places to live away from noise. If we don’t drive as much and we don’t have the need to build more roads, animals will be more successful.

Make plans to be sustainable in little ways this summer so future generations can enjoy this beautiful place in which we live!