Start with a habit. 9 Simple Steps to Conscious Consumption

1. Buy a thermo mug and water bottle

Conscious consumption denies disposables. Every glass, bag or bottle thrown away joins millionsOcean. The Truth Behind Trash / Environmental Investigation Agency UK tons of plastic that will decompose and poison the Earth for hundreds of years. The concept of "zero waste" for many remains a utopia: every day we have to buy products packed by the manufacturer, use medical and hygienic consumables, equip housing, adjusted for the budget, and not for environmental friendliness of materials, and furniture.

But a small contribution to the formation of conscious habits can be made. For example, you like to drop by a nearby coffee shop in the morning and don't want to break this pleasant ritual. Buy the product, not the packaging. A self-respecting institution will certainly pour a fragrant drink with itself into your personal thermo mug. A glass bottle for water, a stylish shopper, a reusable mask, a menstrual cup - if you gradually introduce these items into use, over time the hand itself will stop reaching for a disposable one.

2. Install an expense counter

Impulse buying is the worst enemy of conscious consumption. It can be incredibly difficult to ignore the catchy tricks of marketers. Something clicks in your head, and now you are already the happy owner of a thing that you absolutely do not need. The joy of the purchase passes, and the item smoothly moves to the shelf in the closet or directly into the trash can.

If this happens to you with enviable regularity, try to approach the issue through money. Mobile expense counters such as CoinKeeper, Monefy, You Need a Budget sync with bank accounts and track transactions. You can analyze the statistics and understand when it is time to spend less. This will help you develop the habit of controlling your finances, and the desire to buy something unnecessary will be less frequent.

3. Make friends with lists

Another way to deal with bouts of uncontrollable shopping addiction is to make lists. You can start planning your upcoming purchases with your home inventory. Going for clothes? Look in the closet, perhaps you already have the item you want to buy. Looking for products? Check the refrigerator and especially the buffet - there may be ready-made packs of cereals and pasta waiting in the wings.

Before going to the store, throw in a list of the goods you need and try not to deviate from it in any position. This practice helps to transform shopping habits and carefully consider every purchase of a home, where there are no annoying factors: enticing shop windows, advertisements and red price tags.

4. Understand the badges on the labels

By making a conscious choice, you are unlikely to buy cosmetics that are tested on animals, or items that are 100% polyester. The label can tell a lot about your future purchase: where and how it was produced, what is in the composition, how ethical the brand is, and whether the packaging can be recycled.

Explore what icons are used to mark ecological and organic products in different countries, because not all Eco, Bio and Organic products are such. For example, in Russia, certified manufacturers are collected in state register, and their product packaging is marked with a green rectangle with a white sheet.

5. Start cooking with what is

Caring for food is one of the pillars of conscious consumption. Planned home cooking disciplines your eating habits. How many times have you forgotten a piece of cheese on the top shelf of the refrigerator and remembered it when it was overgrown with by no means noble mold? Or did you throw out a package of sour milk that you opened last month? But a lot of resources are spent on their production. Only in Russia is it thrown away annually 17 million tons of food waste.

So that food from your kitchen never ends up in the trash, start cooking rationally. Plan your menu for the week based on the food in the house. Don't stock up on a few packs of a discounted product, especially if the product is perishable. Check expiration dates at least once a week. By the way, it is easy to turn yesterday's dinner into today's dinner. For example, pizza, casseroles, soups, pastas, and salads can be made with leftover food. And one more simple tip: eat before you go to the supermarket. A well-fed person will buy exactly as much food as he needs.

6. Create an account at the online flea market

Any thing can get a second life at a flea market. Not throwing away, but selling and giving is one of the fundamental principles of conscious consumption. If you are used to getting rid of accumulated items and are not yet ready to spend time looking for sharing initiatives, create an account on the marketplace where they sell used items. Try to place a few ads after the next cleaning and sell unnecessary ones. Perhaps your old skates or steamer will find a second life in the hands of new owners.

7. Replace bulbs

Many modern power plants consume non-renewable resources of the planet: oil, gas, coal. Therefore, conscious consumption teaches you to save energy: turn off the light, remove the plugs from electrical outlets, use economical household appliances. Buy energy saving or LED light bulbs. They will last 7-8 times longer than incandescent bulbs.

8. Remove random subscriptions

Bloggers and influencers also live off advertising. And advertising in 99% of cases calls for a purchase. Any product that got into the reviews or "accidentally" flashed into the story becomes literally a personal recommendation from the person whose life you closely follow. How not to buy here. To stimulate sales on social networks, hidden Internet marketing techniques are often used, which create excitement around the advertised product. To avoid the appearance of another unnecessary thing in the house, it is worth periodically cleaning your subscriptions and, in general, thoughtfully consuming any digital content.