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Four Ways to Be a More Sustainable Consumer in 2021
This article is about:
Ways you can be more sustainable at home
A New Year's resolution to be more sustainable
Actions Dominion Energy has taken towards greater sustainability
If you haven’t decided what your New Year’s resolution will be this year, consider taking steps to becoming a more sustainable consumer. From reducing your food waste to making your home more energy efficient, you can make choices to help reduce your impact on the environment.
And we’ll be right there with you. In addition to our Net Zero commitment, we’re always pushing to make our company more sustainable.
Together, we can work toward building a cleaner future for the next generation.
Globally, nearly half of the solid waste produced is organic or biodegradable, but much of it ends up in landfills. When this waste is sent to landfills it decomposes without oxygen and produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Luckily, composting is one of the ways we can easily reduce the amount of food waste we generate. The process of composting also coverts organic material into stable carbon soil, which retains water and the nutrients of the foods you put into it, making it great for gardening.
With many of our employees working from home during the pandemic, our team of Workplace Sustainability Advocates started a new program, Scraps from Home, to give employees a convenient way to turn their food scraps generated at home into compost.
Since the program’s launch in September 2020, employees have diverted 800-1000 pounds of food waste each month from landfills through composting.
The nutrient rich compost is then donated to:
Starting your own compost bin doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are a few tips:
Many household items can be diverted from landfills and given a second life. Gently used furniture, out of date electronics and clothing items you and your family have outgrown, may be able to be used by someone else.
If Marie Kondo-ing* your home is on your to do list, you can still purge your home of things that no longer bring you joy, while also making decisions that are more environmentally-friendly than just putting those old items in the trash.
*Marie Kondo is an organizing consultant.
As a company, we’ve been able to donate gently used office furniture to nonprofits in our communities. This second life for these items means that we aren’t sending furniture to landfills.
Leading up to the implosion of One James River Plaza, we were able to donate thousands of pieces of office supplies and many pieces of furniture to more than 30 local organizations.
Everything we buy has its own lifecycle. Some products may last for many years, while others are used in a few minutes or hours. Thinking about the products we use from this lens can help you make more sustainable choices.
Take your morning cup of coffee – do you use coffee grounds from a bag or single use, single serving pods? The single use, single serving pods are filled with coffee grounds and packaged in small pods – after one use and producing just one cup of coffee, those pods are typically thrown away. The bag of coffee grounds, however, makes many cups of coffee before reaching the end of its product life. Making simple swaps in our everyday life give us the opportunity to smarter choices for the environment.
We recognize the value of enhancing environmental and social sustainability in procurement. Even with the large amount of purchasing our organization does, each year we work to improve our impact across our footprint.
Here are a few examples of how we reuse and recycle as much as possible to limit waste in the procurement process:
Making simple and easy swaps at home can help you and your family reduce the amount of waste you're sending to landfills.
These small changes can make a big impact over time.
Making your home more energy efficient can reduce your energy usage and help you save money on your bill. According to the Department of Energy, heating your home typically makes up about 42% of your utility bill.
For example, you can save by setting your thermostat to 68 degrees Fahrenheit when you’re awake and lowering it a few degrees when you’re asleep or away from home.
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