How To Adopt A Plastic-Free Lifestyle While Working From Home

Nowadays, there’s a lot of buzz about green living, sustainability, and living a plastic-free lifestyle. Although when you think about it, you should be able to realize that this is more than just a trend or fad. Many workplaces and households have embraced this kind of lifestyle as it’s difficult to turn back to a previously wasteful and non-environment-friendly way of life.

Another change most workforce has to embrace today is the move towards working from home. Thus, this creates a dilemma on how you can practice recycling while adopting a sustainable and plastic-free way of living even when you’re working from home. Hence, read more for some strategies you can use to adopt a plastic-free lifestyle while working from home.

 

Use Less Paper Documents

Adopting a plastic-free lifestyle can otherwise be likened to sustainability or an eco-friendly way of life. So, a discussion on a plastic-free life can’t be complete without one of the highest contributors to unnecessary waste which is paper.

Unlike plastic, paper is biodegradable but this doesn’t mean you should use it excessively. While it may decompose, the process of turning trees into paper is also water-intensive and time-consuming. The higher the demand for paper, the more trees will have to be cut just to be able to meet the needed supply.

When you’re working from home, it’s easy to lose track of the volume of paper you’re using. This number may even escalate if you’re homeschooling children. There’ll be one document over another to print out. Therefore, a good practice is to minimize printing hard copies, whenever it’s not needed. Instead, you could invest in a good document scanner in your home office. This allows you to use digital files more and perform online functions like how you can send fax online. Hence, your use and dependence on paper could be significantly reduced.

 

Avoid Disposable Or Plastic Utensils

One of the challenges with working from home may perhaps be the struggle to keep up with all the chores and cooking that has to be done. This is very prevalent in households of today where kids are also being educated at home. There’s just a lot more clutter and work to be done at home than when kids spend a few hours away and when parents were also in the office.

With that situation, it can be tempting to use plastic utensils during working days to skip the dishes. While the urge to do so may be strong, you must avoid it. If you should use disposable utensils, then at least go for those made of paper, starch, or other biodegradable materials.

Don’t let your household contribute to the never-ending pile of trash on the landfill. It’s best to find other non-plastic solutions to some common household products you may be dependent on using.

 

Use Tap Water

If you’ve been used to buying bottled water in the physical office setting, it’s time to change that habit this time you’re working from home. Even when you’re in the office, you should’ve already started bringing your water bottle. Now you’re at home, you can have water directly from your filtered tap or your water dispenser. Hence, it’s also a good practice to skip buying water bottles on your grocery list.

 

Get Rid Of Your Small Waste Bin

If you have a small waste bin or a desk wastebasket in your home office, you might consider getting rid of it. It might cause a slight discomfort at first, but eventually, you’ll get used to not having a waste bin anymore. This strategy is a sneaky way to reduce plastic, trash, and paper use through the following ways:

• With one less waste bin or wastebasket, this also means one less waste liner to use every time it gets full.
• When you don’t have a trash bin near you, you have to make an effort to stand up and go to your kitchen, or wherever the bin may be. This may unknowingly make you reduce your trash disposal, simply because you don’t want to keep standing up just to dispose of it.

 

Conclusion

One of the most pressing environmental issues the world has ever faced is the never-ending plastic pollution.  If you break down your use of plastic every day, that’s when you may even be able to see the reality of how you could be dependent on plastic. This type of pollution comes from the irresponsible use of businesses, households, and individuals with plastic.  Hence, you could use the methods mentioned above to contribute to a better plastic-free lifestyle.