4 Easy Ways To Help Protect The Environment

This week is World Meat Free Week and you may have noticed that we’re fully embracing this with our content. The world’s population is being urged to swap at least one meal to meat free for the sake of our planet, in a global effort to highlight the crucial need for a more sustainable and better approach to meat consumption.

4 Easy Ways To Help Protect The Environment

Recent research has revealed that meat production alone is the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world – more than all emissions from global transport combined.

world meat free week

With the global population estimated to reach 9.1 billion by 2050, we simply cannot continue to eat meat at our current rate in either a sustainable or ethical way. The whole world needs to come together to make a change. If the entire planet tried just one meat free recipe, we’d save:

*The carbon equivalent of powering 1,301,325 households for a whole year
*The land saving equivalent to 2,512,500 football pitches
*The water saving equivalent to 3,575,790 Olympic swimming pools
*More than 685 billion calories – that’s over 1.2 billion Big Macs!

So with this in mind, we’re popping four easy ways that you can help the environment below, including some inspiration for World Meat Free Week. Let us know if you already do these or if you plan on giving them a go…..

quorn burger

1 – Go Meat Free For At Least One Of Your Weekly Meals

This is so simple to make part of your weekly routine and there are some delicious meat free alternatives out there. We’ve made a super quick and tasty lunch idea in our article here and below you can also find an amazing Quorn burger recipe that we reckon tastes even better than the real thing!

Quorn BBQ Pulled Quorn Fillets Recipe

4 Quorn Fillets, defrosted
100ml BBQ sauce
Coleslaw
75g white cabbage, finely shredded
75g red cabbage, finely shredded
75g carrots, grated
50g red onion, finely chopped
2tbsp mayonnaise, low fat variety or natural yoghurt
½ tsp Dijon mustard (optional)
Seasoning
4 brioche bread buns

Method
Hand shred the Quorn Fillets and mix with the BBQ sauce. Leave to marinate for 30 minutes
Mix together all the coleslaw ingredients and season to taste, chill until required
Tip the shredded Quorn Fillets in the BBQ sauce onto a baking tray and bake in the oven for 15 minutes at 180C/Gas Mark 4 or until core temperature is reached
Divide the coleslaw between the buns and fill with the Pulled Quorn

2 – Cut Your Plastic Waste

With so many of our products being packed in excessive amounts of plastic, it is creating serious issues for our environment. There are so many easy ways that we can all make a difference and ultimately work together to create less waste. Supermarkets now charge a fee for plastic bags, which is great – but there are still so many people who don’t take their own reusable bags when they go shopping. If you are looking for some options of fab tote bags and shopping bags that can be used time and time again, here’s one of my favourites!

veggio bag

Veggio Bags

Single use plastic bags are amongst the biggest contributors to our plastic filled oceans, impacting water and marine life but also the human food chain and our overall health. There isn’t yet a solution to the enormous plastic problem we are facing right now, but here is one smart and simple way of eliminating the need for those small single use plastic bags you bring home every time you buy fruit and vegetables at the supermarket or grocer. Many of us have already adopted the Carrier Bag for Life habit, learnt to bring our own bags and say no to plastic bags offered at the checkout. Carrinet Veggio is a Swedish innovation that in a very simple way has disrupted the way consumers buy and carry home their groceries in Scandinavia. Now launching in the UK, you too can say No! to small, thin plastic bags for your fruit and veg.

Carrinet Veggio is a set of 5 reusable polyester drawstrings net bags in 3 different sizes designed to replace plastic veg bags in supermarkets and grocers. You can make a difference right away by including them in your bags each time go shop. Veggio is food grade, BPA free polyester so it is completely safe for storing produce in pantries or the fridge. You can even rinse your produce straight through them! Helping fresh produce to breath and stay fresher for longer, Carrinet is machine washable, easy to dry, does not attract mould or bacteria.

It is the ability to reuse that is the simple and clever way to reduce plastic waste. No bleach or colour used in production so Carrinet Veggio is fully recyclable. By using Veggio can easily reduce your plastic bag use by more than 250 bags or approx. 225KG per year. Imagine the impact if 1000 or even millions of people in the UK started reusing Veggios!

Veggio is distributed in the UK by www.2tech.co.uk and sold in retailers like Lakeland, Steamer Trading, and Whole Foods Market, and online through Amazon and Ocado, priced £6.99

 

3 – Be More Aware Of  Energy and Water Useage

Let’s face it, we’re all guilty of using far more than we actually need. Whether that’s spending ages in the shower, leaving the tap running or forgetting to switch off our lights. We can all try a little harder to take note of these things. For example, just have a quick scan around the house when you leave in the morning and before you go to bed at night to check that you’ve turned all of your lights and plug sockets off.

water butt

Having a water butt in your garden is a great way of saving money when it comes to gardening and watering your plants and it’s one of the most simple ways to help protect the environment at home, and reduce your water bill. We have one in ours and it’s so handy. It saves having to repeatedly fill up a watering can in the house and carry it backwards and forwards and is tucked away at the side of our house, so we barely even notice it.

4 – Grow Your Own Veg

seedcellThis is not only a great way to grow your own veg, but it’s also a fun way to get kids and teens involved in growing their own food and learning about what they are eating and where it comes from. My daughter and nephew absolutely loved having a few hours in the back garden recently, planting seeds for easy to grow veggies.

We used some fab little products sent out to us by SeedCell. This is not only a great way to sow seeds easily – you just snap off a pod, push into the soil and water – it’s also 100% biodegradeable. Made in the UK from recycled card pulp, SeedCell is available from garden centres, DIY stores and gift shops across the UK, RRP £3.49. Also available in France, Italy and Germany.

How to use and how it works – Soaking a pot of compost or patch of soil in water, the individual cells – once snapped free – can be pushed down into the earth. The curved topside of the seed pod remains above ground allowing rainwater to run off, preventing the seed from getting soggy and also providing a more visible marker for the location of emerging seedlings.

Once planted, the seed pod absorbs and retains the moisture it needs, feeding the water directly to the seeds inside using patented water absorbing technology. The pod protects the seeds as they begin to germinate in a safe microclimate, before breaking down naturally and leaving zero waste.

Get them via Amazon here

I hope that these 5 Easy Ways To Help Protect The Environment have helped you in some small way. Don’t forget to get involved with World Meat Free Week happening now. You can use @Meat_Free_Week and #WorldMeatFreeWeek in your posts on social media to get involved!

Disclaimer: please note that unless otherwise stated some items featured have been provided on a review basis and affiliate links are present. Find out more in our privacy policy. All images taken by us remain copyright LifestyleLinked.com and Rebecca Bowden. Please contact us before using elsewhere.

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