Easy ideas to contribute to the environment

The UN General Assembly created World Environmental Day in 1972. Every 5th of June World Environment Day is celebrated around the world. It is a day that focuses on the importance of the environment and sustainable living for individuals, businesses, governments, and more. 

It pushes us, as individuals, to think about how to reduce the impact on the environment on a daily basis. This article is going to show you some ideas on how to minimize Electronic Waste (E-Waste) and some tech tools that can help to fight against CO2. 

What Is E-Waste?

E-waste is Electronic waste that includes devices like PC, smartphones, laptops, tablets, and Macbooks, destined for disposal. In 2016, E-waste accounted for 6.9 million tons in the United States. However, there are solutions to cope with this. Most of these tech gadgets’ “waste” can extend their lifecycle through resale, trade-in, refurbishment, recycling, or to donations.

The 4 R: Resale, Reuse, Refurbish, and Recycling:

Resale Gadgets

Trade in Gadgets is not only a great option to reduce the e-waste on planet earth but for your savings. Instead of getting rid of them, you have the option to offer them and get paid for them. Online, you will find different middleman sites to trade in but we recommend using a legit website that has all the certifications and offers facilities for returns.

You have the option of selling pre-owned laptops, smartphones, and more for cash at Gadget Salvation.  For instance, if you Dell Laptop trade in you can get paid $1185 for Dell XPS 15 7592 Touchscreen Intel Intel Core I9 NVIDIA GTX 1650, in “Flawless” and fully functional conditions at Gadget Salvation.

Refurbish, Reuse, Recycling

Some gadgets can get fixed easily if they don’t have serious technical issues. They can show improvements in their performance (Refurbish). Afterward, the device is re-used by the owner. The last step is recycling, in which the materials are rescued to be used in another device. Check our article Laptop trade in is the only one way to reduce E-waste to deepen into the 4Rs.

How Can I Contribute Digitally?

Get Ebooks instead of printed books

It is estimated that 208 million tons of paper are consumed in a year in the United States. In addition, printed books need a lot of energy, water, and paper caused of pulping many books. Therefore, a great option to help to reduce the cutting of thousands of trees for books you can use Ebooks. One of my favorites is Amazon Kindle E-reader because you can download online books and save them on your storage. By doing this you save CO2 emissions generated to manufacture printed books. A study conducted on the American book industry estimates that publishing consumes 30m trees. Plus, it has a carbon footprint of nearly 12.4m metric tons of carbon dioxide.(The Guardian, 2013). However, this point can be arguable because other studies mention that manufacturing this type of gadget use a vast quantity of energy and chemicals.

Rocketbook Core Notebooks

Continue to avoid the use of paper, here comes the Rocketbook Core notebook. It is a reusable spiral notebook, which has glossy paper, and works with a special erasable gel pen “Pilot Frixion”. When writing with this gel pen you need to wait 10 seconds in order to dry and it won’t smudge. The Rocketbook notebook has an app that allows you to scan and save your writings in PDF format. Furthermore, the content can be erased with a cloth that is included in the package.

Ecosia Search Engine

Here is another idea to help the environment. Ecosia is an ecological search engine that uses the profits from ads from your searchers to plant trees. Last year, when wildfires affected Australian forests, Ecosia was able to plant 26,000 trees in only one day through the search profits. It’s an alternative option for those who want to help to reforest trees from The Amazon or Australia. The Search Engine is available to download as an app for Android and IOS.

Last But Not Least About The World Environment Day:

Due to the health crisis, you can join and celebrate The Environment Day streaming online. For the 2020 year, the theme is Biodiversity and its host is Colombia in partnership with Germany. There are several talks and podcasts about “Sustainable use of Biodiversity, green business, and the covid-19 pandemic for instance. You can access it for free here.

Did you see how with small things, we can make a big difference in the environment? Hope this article has given you some ideas to consider on a daily basis to reduce the impact on our planet.