A few weeks ago, Lil Dicky came out with a music video all about the earth, which ended with a large donation to The Leonardo DiCaprio’s Foundation. In the music video, Lil Dicky talked about climate change, and how real of a problem it is for our generation. Climate change, though, is not new news; this is a predicament we have been talking about and facing for a while now.

    The UN announced a few months ago that we (as humans all over the world) only have 12 years to cut back on fossil fuels before we reach the point of no return.

    Why should you cut back on waste? How will that help the fossil fuel problem?

Simple. Landfills are the third largest contributor to methane in the United States of America.  The more trash that ends up in landfills, the more methane created by landfills.

    Instead of condoning the use of energy on unnecessary consumables that hurt the environment, we can use the energy on other needed items that can be biodegradable.

While it may seem impossible, there are many easy day-to-day changes that can be made to cut back on waste and energy. And in the long run, what is a few little changes compared to the confirmed damaging lifestyle that is destroying our planet?

-Plastic bags. Get reusable bags for grocery shopping. If you are buying one or two things, don’t get a bag at all. Plastic bags take so much energy to produce and can only be used once or twice before they are thrown away.

-Plastic water bottles. These suck. Everyone knows that by now. Get reusable water bottles. Seriously…

-Plastic Straws. Among other terrible things, they kill sea turtles. Who really needs them, anyways? Buy metal straws. Buy reusable to-go straws. Glass straws. Paper straws. No straws. Anything but plastic straws. These can be found on Amazon for less than

$10.00.

-Don’t pay for packaging. Why buy apples in a plastic bag when you can buy them separately? Purchase things with as little packaging as possible. This creates less trash and forces companies to use less packaging.

-Make Ecosia your new search engine. Ecosia is just like Google. Everytime you look something up using this browser, you earn a point. Every 45 points plants one tree. Trees take in the carbon that is ruining our atmosphere.

-Start a compost. This will cut the amount of trash you produce in half, which is great, because landfills are terrible. A compost pile is easy to start, and is great for gardeners. All you need is a backyard or a storage bin. You can use your new web browser to look at all the amazing things you can put in your compost bin and instructions for how to start one.

-Buy a wooden or bamboo toothbrush. It takes 1,000 years for a regular, plastic toothbrush to decompose. Wooden toothbrushes and bamboo toothbrushes are affordable, and way better for the Earth. You can find these in the beauty section at TJ Maxx, and on Amazon for $6.00.