Seven easy ways to make your life greener, buy better quality products, and spend less money on them.
Do you want to live a greener lifestyle, but don't know how to navigate the sheer number of recommendations? In this article, you'll find simple tips to help you buy healthier foods, be less damaging to the environment, and even influence manufacturers.
1. Be smarter than a marketer
The most efficient and easiest way is to write a shopping list. But, let's be honest, there is often no time for this, we visit the store spontaneously, and if we go there as planned, then this is a global trip to a large hypermarket, from where it is problematic to leave without unnecessary purchases.
The solution may be to take notes in special applications for the phone. The paper ran out - they wrote it down, the shampoo ended - they wrote it down, I wanted a chocolate cake - they wrote it down. Even an incomplete list reduces the likelihood of buying too much. But it does not disappear completely, because marketers day and night came up with ideal ways to make people buy what is unnecessary:
- expensive goods are always put at eye level, removing cheap ones below;
- promotions, where when buying a product - a trinket as a gift;
- location of the most popular goods (milk, bread) in the very depths of the store.
What does this have to do with ecology? The most direct. After all, the main expenses fall on what? Lighters, sweets, portioned juice in a bag, pretty pens and other unnecessary trifles. A candy wrapper eaten at the exit from the store flies past the trash can. The lighter breaks down and is thrown away with household waste, causing damage to the environment.
2. Biodegradation of plastic is a myth
Do you also have a bag of bags at home? It's time to use it! What question do customers meet at the checkout? "Hello, do you need a package?" Carry one of them in your backpack or pocket, or buy a special fabric bag with a nice design or lettering like "Cat Dinner Booty".
To cite some numbers, a plastic bag takes 450 years to decompose and another 50 to 80 years to decompose completely. That is, the packet thrown out by the neighbors, which has now flown outside the window, will fly for another half a millennium. A couple of years ago, an unscrupulous organization was selling bio-garbage bags with might and main, claiming that they decompose in natural conditions within three years. But the court and the Society for the Protection of Consumer Rights denied this. It turned out to be a special polymer, a product of plastic processing. In 1-2 years, it will crumble into small crumbs, acquiring an increased ability to migrate - the slightest wind will blow it tens and thousands of kilometers from the landfill. These micropolymers do much more harm than a bag lying peacefully under a mountain of similar bags.
You can fight this. For example, choose milk in a paper bag or glass container and ignore the multicolored rows of plastic bottles. One involuntarily recalls the times when milk was sold immediately from a milk tanker, pouring it into iron and aluminum cans. That's for sure - an environmentally friendly, reusable container. And to the delight of nostalgia, now more and more often you can find shops selling fresh draft milk.
If, after all, the choice is between plastic and glass, give preference to glass. Of all possible, its production is the most environmentally friendly. In addition, glass containers from purchased products will later be useful in everyday life - they can be used to store soups and compotes in the refrigerator without using short-lived plastic containers.
3. Locking
No, this is not a terrible designation of any rituals and traditions, but just a term denoting the use of products grown in their region, a conscious restriction of the consumption of imports. It is not necessary to give up foreign products at all, but it is highly recommended to reduce their consumption.
Products that are brought from other countries are neither fresh nor healthy. Special preservatives and additives are used to cope with temperature changes, questionable storage conditions and delivery times. Not to mention the harm caused to nature by heavy-duty trucks that still run on diesel fuel. Now, to the delight of locavors, farmers' markets and small “eco” shops can be found more and more often, where both the shelf life and the cooking conditions will satisfy the most demanding taste.
- Meat, minced meat, poultry - up to 24 hours. After 12 hours, it is advisable to put them in the freezer or cook. If the meat lies longer than 48 hours, it should not be eaten, pathogenic bacteria are already in full swing there. And here we are not talking about simple nausea, but about the deadly salmonellosis and botulism.
- Fresh or chilled fish - 10-12 hours, seafood - 8 hours. You must be extremely careful with this product, poisoning leads to the already mentioned botulism, as well as cholera-like poisoning and paralysis.
- Milk - from 12 hours to 3 days. Pasteurized can be stored for up to 2 weeks. Cottage cheese is not stored for more than three days, it is undesirable to freeze it.
4. Canned, canned, but not frozen
During factory conservation, most of the nutrients are destroyed. If the choice fell on conservation, then there are several aspects that should be considered:
- GOST marking on the label;
- vacuum packaging (for corn and peas);
- shelf life is less than a year - it means that there was no heat treatment and some useful substances remained;
- in the production of pickled cucumbers in the Russian Federation and the CIS countries, fresh fruits from 7 cm are used, if the cucumbers are smaller, these are imports and, in addition to spices, there are also chemicals to revive the "crunch".
If you are the lucky owner of a refrigerator with a voluminous freezer, feel free to buy vegetables and legumes in the summer, when they are much cheaper, and freeze some for the winter. “Grandma's” traditions of making preparations for the winter have not only an economical, but also an environmentally friendly approach. Ideally, it is better to give up purchased preservation altogether, choosing freezing and homemade canned food.
- potatoes, carrots;
- pepper;
- cauliflower, white cabbage is frozen only in the form of cabbage rolls;
- peas, corn, green beans;
- dill and parsley;
- homemade vegetable mixes.
5. You can't forbid being beautiful, but it should be
The bright, overly appetizing appearance of some fruits looks more like a toy than real food. Various bright watermelons, half-meter cucumbers, pomegranate-sized tomatoes or too beautiful and large apples. Your body will not thank you for such food. Try to choose vegetables and fruits grown in their natural ripening season.
For example, watermelons can be safely bought and consumed without looking back from the first days of September to mid-October - this is their natural ripening period, some sources indicate August, but in this case there is a 50/50 chance of getting a good product. Another time of sale speaks of their "chemical" maturation and the fact that they are being sold already in July is a reason to be on your guard and bypass such a tray. The citrus season - from December to February, allows you to calmly gobble up tangerines at the New Year's table, and the potato season - from July to August, which means that potatoes baked in a fire will not only be incredibly tasty, but also healthy.
6. Production marking
In addition to the GOST marking, which was mentioned above, there are also OST and TU. Pay attention to them and take only with GOST, in rare cases OST, no matter how attractive the packaging and advertising of the TU marking may be.
Technical Conditions (TU) is a document that is drawn up by the manufacturer and no one monitors or checks it, the manufacturer can add any substitute for an ingredient to the product without marking it in the composition.
The state standard is another matter. If the composition of the butter says "cream of such and such a fat content" and nothing else, it means that there is nothing else but cream. GOST is checked more strictly, it is the same for everyone and serious consequences follow for its violation - a fine of up to 1 million rubles, a freezing of an enterprise for three months or imprisonment for up to 10 years, it all depends on the severity of the consequences.
An industry standard (OST) is a standard in a specific industry for which GOST has not yet been created. Compliance with OST is as strict as GOST, because they must fully comply with GOST.
7. You are not what you eat, but what you have not read
Pay attention to the amount of ingredients listed, as well as their order. The main ingredient should come first in the list, and the rest in decreasing volume. If the first paragraph of the juice says “water”, then “sugar” and only then “concentrated apple juice” - you are not drinking juice. And the shorter the list, the higher the quality of the product.
The off-edge E supplements are actually not all harmful. This is just a short code, like a medical disease code. Around some, there is a false scandal due to isolated cases of individual skin allergies, and many are terrifying to those who did not study chemistry in school. But, again, if you follow the above points, goods with harmful "E-shkami" in the composition will fall into your hands much less often.
A small list of harmless E additives:
- E-100 - dye based on turmeric extract;
- E-101 - vitamin B2;
- E-140 - chlorophyll derivative;
- E-160a - dye based on carrot juice;
- E-160s - paprika extract;
- E-260 - acetic acid;
- E-234 - natural antibiotic based on lactic acids;
- E-290 - carbon dioxide;
- E-300, 301, 302 - varieties of vitamin C;
- E-306 - vitamin E;
- E-406 - agar-agar, the "parent" of gelatin;
- E-412 - guar gum (used as a thickener).
Let's summarize:
- No marketing gimmicks - we take packages, look at the lower and upper shelves, make an approximate list;
- Imports are bad, the market around the corner is good;
- We know how to choose canned food, and give a chance to some "E-shkam";
- Delicious "yes" to frozen vegetables, categorical refusal to "toy";
- We take GOST and OST, we treat TU with prejudice.
These seven simple tricks can significantly improve your life, affect the environment and the producers. Your health is in your hands. If the buyer becomes more selective, then unscrupulous manufacturers will either leave the market or will be forced to follow safe standards.
