Phantom’s eco tip: Make your home ‘tree-free’

Eco tip 7 - Tree-free house

Endeavouring to quit our addiction to paper is something we should all be striving towards. We live in an age where just about everything can be accessed and stored online, so the need for “hard copies” is fast becoming a thing of the past.

This week’s eco-tip is courtesy of Global Stewards. Created in 1998, their main aim is to provide environmental tips for sustainable living and share information about exciting solutions that are speeding the shift toward a sustainable way of life.

“I view a “global steward” as being someone who, in recognizing their kinship with all living beings, chooses a lifestyle that is sustainable for all life, including future generations. This is a form of conscious stewardship over our own lives vs. stewardship over nature.” – Lea Dutton

Here are a bunch of easy to implement tips, which, if we all committed to doing, would save at least a couple of forests. Maybe more!

1) Replace paper napkins with cloth napkins

2) Replace paper towels with a special set of cloth towels/napkins (old t-shirts are great for this). Store them in a small container in your kitchen and just wash and reuse as necessary.

3) Purchase bleach-free toilet paper. The higher the post-consumer waste content you can find the better (we’re aiming for 80% minimum). Locally you can order from Green Home.

4) If you absolutely have to print documents, then use once-used and/or bleach-free, recycled paper. As far as possible, such as when printing for proofing purposes, try to print on both sides of the paper.

5) Switch to a digital organizer for tracking your to-do and grocery lists. Some free alternatives include: Wunderlist, Remember the Milk, GroceryIQ.

6) Reuse envelopes, wrapping paper, the front of gift cards (as postcards) and other paper materials you receive wherever possible. There is a “war baby” stigma attached to doing this, but if you’re creative about it you can easily transform “reused” into retro chic.

7) Instead of buying books, magazines, and newspapers, read them at your local library or online. Better yet, invest in a Kindle!

8 ) If you’d don’t feel like printing on both sides of the paper (some people find figuring out which way to re-feed the paper a mission), you can always cut the paper up and make note pads instead.

9) Leave messages for family members or roommates on a reusable message board instead of writing them down on paper.

Let us know if you have any “tree-free” tips to add to our list!

The Phantom Forest Team

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