climate hack

A cup of tea can be so relaxing. But you might be surprised to hear the tiny tea bag you use to make that cup of tea has a huge impact on our planet. Those tea bags are made of not only paper but plastic, which means trees are getting chopped down and tiny pieces of microplastics are getting into...

Plastic water bottles are super convenient when you’re at the gym or out and about running errands. Here’s the problem. A study found that around the world, 1 million plastic bottles are purchased each minute. And in the United States, only 30% of plastic bottles that are sold get recycled. So let’s switch to something more planet friendly, that can...

You’ve probably never thought about it. But those sponges we use to wash the dishes are dirtying our planet. We go through an average of two a month. And when we throw out old sponges, it takes them hundreds of years to break down. But there’s something you can use instead that will have you throwing out half as many...

Many of us toss them in the dryer with our clothes and don’t think twice about it. But what if we did stop to think about dryer sheets – and what they’re doing to our clothes, skin and the environment? Wool dryer balls are a great alternative. Using dryer balls can cut energy use by 25%. That can cut...

500 million. That’s how many single-use plastic straws Americans use every day – enough to fill 127 school buses. But they’re recyclable right? Wrong. Plastic straws are something we can easily do without. Switching to a more Earth-friendly alternative doesn’t require us to make a big change in our lifestyle and will have a huge, positive impact on the planet...

Most of us have used them before and some of us might even have a jar on the bathroom counter. We’re talking about cotton rounds. But they don’t break down easily and we’re creating lots of waste every time we use them. If you make the switch to reusable rounds, you’d help keep at least 730 cotton rounds out of...

Did you know there’s a better, more eco-friendly way to purchase and use your shampoo? Rather than buying a shampoo in a plastic bottle, you can go to certain shops to refill a reusable container.

More than 20,000 pounds of elastic end up in landfills each day and it takes years to break down. A lot of that comes from those elastic hair ties. But there’s something you can use instead that’s sturdier in your hair and better for the environment. 

Single-use coffee pods are great when you want to brew just one cup of joe. But they’re not so planet friendly. Worldwide, more than 120,000 are made every minute. Each of those pods takes 500+ years to break down. Switching to refillable coffee pods can help keep more than 56 billion single-use pods out of the landfill each year.

Sometimes, life gets messy. And when we go to clean things up most of us grab the roll of paper towels. But when we do that, we’re killing thousands of trees. There’s a simple swap you can make the next time you go to clean up a mess that will help save those trees!

When we go to do the dishes, most of us reach for dish soap in those plastic bottles. And when the bottles are empty, pieces of them end up in the ocean instead of getting recycled. Switching to bars of dish soap can help eliminate plastic waste, keeping our oceans a bit cleaner.

Between the water bills, light bills and all the junk mail – we throw away a lot of paper. The average American tosses 13,000 pounds of paper a year, most of which is junk mail. But there’s something you can do to help cut down on the amount of paper being printed in the first place.

We use plastic trash bags to collect garbage and make sure it doesn’t end up in the streets. But those bags are actually hurting our wildlife. There’s a change we can all make that will help. We’ll explain the benefits of switching to compostable trash bags.

Sixteen billion disposable coffee cups are used each year. Most of them can’t even be recycled. There’s a change you can make when you pour a cup of joe that won’t cost you anything and will help reduce our carbon footprint.

Laundry detergent bottles are floating around in the ocean and filling up landfills. But there’s something you can do to help make sure fewer bottles end up in the wrong place – buy one bottle that you refill. If everyone living in San Jose made the switch to reusable laundry bottles, we’d save 12 million plastic bottles in just a…

Plastic toothbrushes help keep our teeth clean, but they’re cluttering up the ocean. What if you switch to using an electric toothbrush? Or even one made out of bamboo? We’ll break down how many plastic toothbrushes you could keep out of the environment in your lifetime.