News flash. You produce a lot more trash in a day than you would expect. Over 1.5 to 2 kilograms a day is no joke – that’s about the weight of a full-grown adult human every month. A quick look at the rate at which our landfills are nearing their brims, among other things, will tell you that we have a waste problem, and it needs fixing.

Reducing your waste output and living a green lifestyle sound like daunting tasks, but really are as simple as little changes in your everyday behaviors. Living with zero waste isn’t as drastic like running off into the wild. There are quick, easy, and convenient ways for you to save the planet, and that includes:

1. Going for Reusables

We collectively produce as much as 9 billion kilograms (and rising!) of garbage in a year. When the goal is to reduce that amount as much as you can, the most obvious way to go is to make sure you put out less garbage.

To do this, opt for things that you don’t throw away – reusables.

You’ll find that introducing more and more reusables into your life is as easy to do as it is to say. There are reusable shopping bags available everywhere – a whole myriad of online sellers has begun to offer the product, and even your local grocery may have them ready for sale by the counter. Aluminium (therefore reusable) drinking straws are a growing trend, and come in straight and bent variants.

• Planning your purchases

No one is unfamiliar with impulsive purchases – from the unexpected candy bar to the extra notebook you just “had to” buy. But not only are these purchases unnecessary, they also generate a lot of unnecessary trash in the long run.

To reduce your waste output, it pays to be more mindful and in control of the things you spend your money on. What you take in defines what you’ll end up putting back out into the world, so refrain from the unnecessary and wasteful.

• Go paperless

Every day, over hundreds of acres of trees are chopped down to produce lumber and paper. What’s great about modern technological advances is that your need for paper is now a lot less than ever before.

You can now fit thousands of books in a device smaller than a pocketbook in size. The daily paper and now even your weekly and monthly magazines can be delivered online instead of to your doorstep.

Not only are you saving paper, you’re also cutting down on all the electricity it takes to print at a press and the gasoline guzzled to have hard copies transported around.

• Upgrade your bulbs to LEDs

Your average halogen or fluorescent light bulb is obsolete in so many ways – bulb lifespan, brightness, temperature, and even electric output. It’s about time you go for an upgrade, and switch your regular bulb with an LED. While, yes, these do tend to be more expensive, you wind up saving a lot more than you initially spend. At the end of the day, it’s not just money you’re saving.

• Fix your leaky faucets

A couple of drops every other second doesn’t seem like a threat to the environment, but the truth is that these add up. If a leak fills up, say, a bucket after every 24 hours, that’s a bucket of water you could have used to brush your teeth, or wash your dishes or laundry. And, when the goal is to go for zero waste, every drop counts.

• Grow your food

A lot of oil by-products goes into growing and distributing ordinary food on our tables

• Pesticide goes into growing your fruits and vegetables
• Plastic is used to package them
• Even more gasoline is required to transport food from and  growers, to factories, to warehouses, to supemarkets, and then to your home.

However, as you have seen so far, there is always an eco-friendlier way to go about things. In this case, you can opt to grow your own food.

Seeds and other gardening materials are cheap and fairly accessible. If you don’t have any gardening specialty shops in your area (which is uncommon), many groceries tend to sell seed packs and the tools necessary to get you started.

The benefits of growing your own plants are hardly limited to the culinary. You could grow otherwise useful plants like mint, aloe vera (great for burns and moisturizing), citronella, spider plant, and so on. Additionally, if you’re growing enough to have some to spare, you could always sell or give some away to your neighbors.

• Cook your food at home

Brush up on your cooking skills. It turns out cooking your own food, as opposed to buying them pre-packed, can make a great impact on the environment.

The next time you order take-out or drive-through, get a good look at your order. Think of all the plastic, paper, and cardboard used to package your meal, and how much less you would have wasted if you had just decided to grill your own burger or fry your own chicken.

Think of it this way: not only are you cutting down on your waste output, you’ll also end up a better cook along the way. It’s a win-win.

• Start a compost pile

Growing and cooking your own food doesn’t get you all the way to zero waste. You still have to throw out – and waste – whatever’s left behind. Composting your leftovers bridges that gap between you and zero waste. There are several guides online with tips on how to start your compost pile, what goes in and what doesn’t, where to keep it, and so on.

Old habits die hard, and you can’t expect to make these changes overnight. There’s no trick or cheat here – all you’ll need is the creativity to come up with ways to be eco-friendly in your own ways and the persistence make those little changes leading up to a pivot in your lifestyle.