Valentine’s Day is celebrated as the day of love. Flowers, chocolates, soft toys, greeting cards and so many more articles are exchanged between people to express their love for one another. Valentine’s Day business is to work more than 20 billion dollars each year across the world.
The price of the day is often paid by the environment, with the amount of waste it generates and the carbon emissions it releases. We have all learned about the effect of not treating the environment well, especially with the rising instances of Zoonoses such as COVID-19. On this valentine’s day, let us all avoid using these items and express our love towards the environment.
Five Ways of Showing Love to Environment this Valentine’s Day
1. Embrace Minimalism
Do not purchase things that are not useful. Try to rid the things that are lying around in your house but are not useful, and donate it to someone who might be able to make use out of it. Do not associate memories or emotions with things, instead associate them with people, experiences and perhaps pictures that you can store on cloud and not generate waste.
2. Conserve Energy
Simple gestures can go a long way. Turning off switches every time you leave the room or replacing normal lights with LED lights can not only reduce the electric bill, but also help in conserving the energy which in turn reduces the carbon emissions. Some of the ways to do that is: to lock the phone when not using to save battery and thus not charging frequently, turn off the devices when not using instead of putting them on standby, opening windows instead of using extractor fan while cooking, drying the clothes out in the sun instead of using a dryer, etc. In addition to this, you can install solar panels on the roof to generate electricity and use it, to reduce the consumption of electricity generated from thermal power station which emits a lot of carbon dioxide while producing electricity.
3. Eat seasonal and local produce
Eating seasonal and local produce is very beneficial to one’s health. A person should always prefer to eat food that is grown in the climate that he himself lives in and in the water that he himself consumes. Intake of such food is always better for digestion and overall health. In addition to this, it reduces the need for transportation of food from faraway places that causes a lot of carbon emissions.
4. Go paperless as much as possible
Now as we all move to the digital age, it is time to reduce the paper usage to save the environment. While we may have to use paper whenever we need it. But we can make a few small changes which can go a long way. To contribute to saving paper, we can cancel paper bank statements and opt for e-statements, pay bills online and ask for an online receipt rather than demanding a hard copy of it, read epapers instead of physical copies of newspapers, etc.
5. Help in the Conservation of Wildlife
The COVID-19 lockdowns have affected tourism severely across the world. This has led to a sharp decline in the income of tourism-based sector, and thus, caused a deficiency in resources for the caretaking of wildlife. This valentines day, express your love to the environment by adopting an animal in a zoo or national parks by contributing to their upkeeping.
