A complete guide to help you leave your environment-unfriendly habits in 2019
By: Renata Félix
Tags: Sdgs, Habit Building, Self Improvement

Photo by Stock Photography on Unsplash

According to Charles Duhigg in his book ‘’The power of habit: why we do what we do in life and business’’, the reason why we create and stick to a habit is that our brain is constantly looking for a way to save time and energy.

In other orders: our brain is lazy so it turns our routines into habits so we don’t have to spend time and effort looking for other ways of doing things that we already do in our day-to-day life.

Now you are thinking: “well great, if it is our brain that is lazy then I have no responsibility or power over my habits.” or even “If this habit thing is controlled by our brains, then we can’t possibly ever end a habit’’.

There’s some truth in the idea that we can’t end a habit because we actually can’t. What we can do is turn a bad habit into a good one.

I know we are always looking for an extra excuse to justify our more questionable actions and routines. But you should also know that I always have a solution to all your excuses.

Duhigg says that to break a habit we have to understand the 3 step-loop that leads to said habit. Basically, first there has to be a cue to tell our brain to go in autopilot. Then comes the routine. Lastly, and because we love to be spoiled, comes the reward.

It’s the reward that we get from doing something that tells our brain if a habit is worth keeping or not. If this is not clear enough, I’m going to give you an example:

Let’s say I have the habit of showering before going to bed because that allows me to sleep more in the morning. Here, the cue is the need to shower and clean my body, the routine is always showering before going to sleep and the reward is, being able to sleep some extra minutes in the morning. I don’t know about you, but my brain loves its extra sleeping time.

Once we figure this loop out, all we have to do to change a bad habit is to change the while still keeping its cue and reward.

I know people, I can hear you from my computer saying “That’s great information but I’m too busy to think this process through and change these environmentally-unfriendly habits that I piled up over the years’’

Because I know you lazy people would think this, I decided to do the thinking process for you, so that all you have to do is start to apply this into your daily life. Like we say in Portugal, I prepared the full meal, all you have to do is eat it.

1. Garbage disposal

Photo by Jilbert Ebrahimi on Unsplash

Honestly, this is one of the biggest bad habits we have — yes I said we, I’m also working on this myself. If you are like me, you probably grew up with parents that really didn’t care much about recycling. Not because they thought it wasn’t important, but because they didn’t see the perks of recycling in the short term period.

Because of this, we are used to just put everything in one big bag and throw it out into a common trash can.

Since the way we dispose of our garbage is really affecting our planet, let’s break this down into our loop. Here our cue is disposing our trash and our reward is getting a cleaner house/not hoarding. What about our routine? Well, what do we constantly do that is simple and effortless? Finding a plastic bag that can take up all the trash we make in a day and putting it all in there.

How can you change this routine? You can start by getting a different bin to dispose of your trash that allows you to separate your trash, and you can also start to separate your trash before you bin it.

By adding space you’re adding a new step to the routine and you are changing it. The moment you change something, even if it is as small as changing the way you place your trash in your bin, you are already walking one step closer to mastering this new habit you want to have.

2. Single-use plastic bags

Photo by Evie Calder on Unsplash

Why do we keep going back to plastic bags? Well, because they are so common and so practical that we can’t even see how harmful they are. Even when we have been warned about them so many times.

Why do we use plastic bags? For many things really, but today I am going to be focusing on grocery shopping.

Every time we go to grocery shops there’s always the temptation to buy a plastic bag — yes, we pay for them in Portugal — when I forget my reusable one at home. Because I don’t want you to fall in temptation, here is this habit loop and a way to break it.

The cue is, in this case, grocery shopping, and the reward is carrying your groceries more easily. What’s the routine? Buying/getting a plastic bag when the cashier asks us if we want a bag to carry our purchases.

How can you break it? Easy. First, look in your house for reusable bags that are big and strong enough to hold your groceries. Then, put one in your car and one in your backpack. Now, every time you go grocery shopping you will be ready and, if the reusable bag is cute, you will get the extra reward of looking extra good while helping our planet.

3. Leaving your chargers plugged in.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

This is a classic 21st-century person habit. We all do it. We have our phones and laptops and tablets to charge, and we hate the idea of it not being as reachable as blindly finding the aux cord of the charger hanging somewhere in your bed.

Unfortunately, this is very unfriendly to our planet because of the amount of energy that needs to be produced so our chargers can be ready at all times.

If you are a millennial, a Gen Z, or just any person — like all the listed before — then you probably have already figured out the cue, the routine and the reward that leads to this habit, but I’m going to give it a try anyway.

The cue is the need to charge our phones, the routine is leaving them always plugged in and, of course, the reward is, not having to plug our chargers or even find a plug to charge our phone when we need it.

Honestly, the routine that you have to change here is pretty obvious. Just unplug your charger after you are done charging your device. It’s as simple as that.

In the end, breaking a habit is only possible if you truly believe that you can do it and you have to accept the fact that, once or twice, in the very beginning, you will fail at changing your routine. And that’s OK.

Failing once is OK, as long as you keep on trying. And I know you will keep on trying.

If you liked these cool tips on how to break your habits you can check the Young People’s Guide for more cool tips and information on the SDGs, and who knows, maybe you will make achieving the SDGs your new habit.