Setting New Goals for the New Year

In 2022, the most popular New Year’s resolution was to live healthier. This is an excellent resolution but it isn’t very specific. Does living healthier mean you start watching what you eat? Does it mean you start growing your own vegetables? Does it mean you begin exercising? There are so many ways to interpret this resolution, that it’s not surprising it would be hard to keep.

For 2023, what if, instead of making a broad resolution, you get more specific? You can still think along the lines of health, but what if you go in the direction of the planet’s health in addition to your own? Living healthier doesn’t just have to be about the food you eat. It can be about the air you breathe and the habits you have.

These specific, easy-to-maintain, resolutions check all the boxes. 

Lower your carbon footprint

One of the easiest ways to make the air cleaner, so you breathe healthier, is to lower your carbon footprint. There are plenty of ways to do this, but one you can directly control is through your car.

Every time your car runs, it releases harmful carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. While you can’t simply just stop driving, making a resolution to cut back your driving time will make an impact. A few ways to do this include:

  • Turning off your car when you’re waiting for curbside pick-up.
  • Turning off your car when you’re waiting in the carpool line or are stuck in a slow-moving drive-thru.
  • Opting to walk into stores rather than driving through when it’s an option.
  • Running errands all at once with an efficient route that doesn’t have you doubling back.

You may think that turning your car on and off is worse for the environment than idling, but after waiting for 30 seconds (which is easy to do) it becomes better to simply shut your car off.

Stop throwing out so much trash

Reducing the waste you produce is about so much more than recycling, although making a resolution to fill that recycle bin each week is a great start. Next, resolve to make sure you know the actual recycling rules in your community. Do you have to rinse containers before they go in the bin? Can you recycle food packages that have food residue? Will your local recycling center take glass?

Tossing in a non-recyclable item can lead to your entire bin getting tossed as trash. Make sure your efforts count.

Additionally, when resolving to reduce the amount of trash you create, consider making 2023 the year you start to compost. Composting will not only reduce the volume of trash you throw out but also creates great material to feed your vegetable garden and keep your own plants growing strong. Check out our guide to at-home composting

Cut back on water and energy waste

This resolution has a double benefit. First, it’s good for the environment to waste less water, electricity, or gas. Second, it’s good for your bank account to have lower monthly utility bills.

You can make a variety of resolutions in this area, or stick to just one area at first to see how easy it is to keep. Either way, some great choices for cutting back on your utilities include:

  • Unplugging electronics when they’re not in use (or switching off power strips.)
  • Turning off lights if you’re leaving the room for more than 15 minutes. 
  • Checking light bulbs to ensure they’re all energy efficient (and replacing the ones that aren’t.) 
  • Cutting down on your shower time.
  • Filling the dishwasher and washing machine up all the way before running them.
  • Using dryers (and even the oven) before 2 p.m. or after 7 p.m. when the temperatures are lower outside.
  • Shifting your thermostat by one degree in each season so it doesn’t have to work so hard.

Starting small and then upping the impact of these types of changes as you get used to them really gives them the potential to make a big impact on the health of our planet.

Shop smarter

This resolution isn’t about what you eat. That’s important, and some of these brands can help you stay healthy, but through a sustainable lens, shopping smarter means supporting brands that are taking action to help the environment. They could use sustainable packaging, offset their carbon footprint, manufacture their items with sustainable energy, and more.

Buying from brands like this supports companies that are already doing good, and whose resolutions align with yours. And, a great place to find these brands is through the partners at IMPACT COLLECTIVE.

IMPACT members are actively working to reduce their carbon, plastic, water and/or energy footprints. They’re connected to the right opportunities and resources to make good on their environmental resolutions, so by buying their products, you’re also maintaining that ‘healthier’ resolution of your own.

Stick to your goals

Creating New Year’s resolutions, and sticking to them, is a challenge many people face. But, when you look outside yourself for ways to make your life, and the planet, better, it can sometimes feel easier to commit. What will you resolve to do this year, and how will it change the world?