Let’s be real, sometimes the idea of going to Stop Adani protests and chaining yourself to trees is enough to make you tired.

But if you’re still keen to do your part for the planet without breaking a sweat (or leaving the couch), here are a few small ways to make a difference.

Use Less Plastics

Making an effort to use less single-use plastic items (such as plastic water bottles, straws and toothbrushes) is the easiest step in living a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle. Cutting down on using plastic items can be as simple as buying an aluminium water bottle, using bamboo toothbrushes, switching from tea bags to loose leaf tea, and giving the flick to plastic shopping bags and drinking straws. Too easy!

Green-ify Your Beauty Routine

Green beauty is more than just using cruelty free products, it’s also about what goes onto your skin and back into the ocean. We hear about the plastic bags and straws killing turtles, but plastic microbeads (commonly found in exfoliating cleansers) are a silent scourge causing a commotion in the ocean.

Switch your microbead scrubs for a natural scrub from LUSH or Frank Body. Even rethinking your sunscreen can help – oxybenzone, a chemical found in certain sunscreens, can be detrimental to coral. Using a zinc oxide based sunscreen is the best for your skin and better for the coral, meaning you can have your melanoma-free cake and eat it too.

Clean up Australia Day, All Day, Every Day

Since 1990, Clean Up Australia Day has encouraged people across Australia to go out into their community and pick up rubbish. But like all good things, why confine this to just one day? Making a conscious effort to always put any rubbish you see in the bin is what all the cool kids are already doing.

Stop Wasting Food (No, Seriously)

You’d be surprised just how much greenhouse gas is produced from the food we eat (production, transport, storage and cooking), let alone from the food that we waste. Australians waste 4.45 million tonnes of food every year, and from this, billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases are released from the waste. To help reduce your methane footprint, consider taking your leftovers for lunch every day and buying only what you really need when you go food shopping.

Get A KeepCup

Any cafe worth their coffee beans will actually offer a discount for patrons who bring in a reusable coffee cup. Disposable coffee cups aren’t actually recyclable, so if you’re keen to reduce the amount of waste you produce (without giving up coffee), investing in a KeepCup is a great option. Grab this super cute BB-8 KeepCup and check out Responsible Cafes to locate your next sustainable coffee fix.

Where’s The Beef?

You don’t have to go vegan or vegetarian, but eating less red meat (especially beef) can be a small change with a big impact. The methane emissions from livestock, the amount of water used to produce one kilogram of beef (100,000 litres per kilo) and the land used to produce and sustain beef (75 per cent of agricultural land in Australia) are all factors that are hella detrimental to the planet. If the idea of reducing your beef intake upsets you, consider ethically sourced alternatives such as chicken, fish and kangaroo.

Rethink Your Periods

Let’s be frank, periods are the worst, but so are the used sanitary items that make their way into landfills and waterways every year. Using products like cloth pads or menstrual cups are a great way to cut down on creating more garbage, and they’re also super economical.

(Lead image: The OC/Warner Bros)