The New Year is the perfect time for taking stock and reflecting on your habits. If adopting a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle is one of your News Years Resolutions, we’ve rounded up seven easy ways to make your year the greenest one yet.  

Many household cleaning products contain ingredients that are bad for both you and the environment. In addition to causing skin and eye irritations among consumers, some ingredients negatively impact aquatic life. Volatile organic compounds, commonly referred to as VOC, are another common cleaning ingredient known for negatively affecting indoor air quality and smog. An easy way to navigate this is to look for products marked with the EPA’s Safer Choice label.

Making simple changes to your habits like shopping on a full stomach and meal planning will do the trick. Before heading to the grocery store, determine what you’d like to eat in a given week, and make a list of all the required ingredients for those meals. Do you find yourself throwing out more produce than you’d like to admit? If so, here are 10 tips to give your produce a longer shelf life. Shopping with my plan will save you time, money, and significantly reduce your checkout lane impulse buys (we’ve all been there). 

Believe it or not, personal care products like deodorant, lotion, and makeup undergo the least amount of testing of any consumer products. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) also reports that American women encounter 168 different chemicals daily just from their everyday routines. If you’re as alarmed by these findings as we were, check out the EWG’s program Skin Deep. Skin Deep evaluates products and gives those that meet their criteria an EWG Verified Mark. If you’re looking to see how your products compare, use EWG’s directory of approved products here and double-check your ingredients list to see if they contain the “Dirty Dozen.”

You may be wondering how you can swap out staple products like toilet paper. At No.2, we’ve created an eco-friendly toilet paper option that will help you ease into your New Year's Resolutions. Our bamboo toilet paper is sustainably sourced, and FSC certified, making it the go-to product for your bathroom. By switching to Number Two, you’ll save up to 384 trees throughout your lifetime! 

When you shop locally, you’re not only supporting your community but also reducing your environmental impact. Buying produce and goods from local farmers’ markets, grocers, and artisans mean your products are transported across a shorter distance. One study found that shopping locally reduced the number of miles a product had to travel by 26%. Farmer’s markets and artisan fairs also centralize shopping, which lessens the amount of congestion and pollution in your community. 

Saving energy isn’t just good for your wallet. Besides saving you money on your utility bills, changing your thermostat by only two degrees can decrease your carbon emissions by 2,000 pounds per year. Another option is to seasonally set your thermostat to a higher or lower temperature while you’re away. By slightly changing your home’s temperature, you can save energy and reduce your carbon footprint in the process! 

Another easy change you can make this year is to replace burnt-out lightbulbs with eco-friendly ones. Energy-efficient lightbulbs use up to 80% less energy than traditional lightbulbs and last significantly longer, too. On top of improving your home’s environmental impact, energy-efficient lightbulbs can also save you up to $100 on your yearly electric bills. 

Whatever your goals are, a more environmentally-friendly year is easier than ever. These seven changes will help you create a more eco-friendly world from home.