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If you feel you’re not doing enough for the environment by replacing your incandescent light bulbs with LED lights and composting your kitchen scraps, maybe you’re ready to make a deeper commitment to environmental stewardship.

Some of these strategies may seem a little radical, but they are among the most valuable actions you can take to protect and preserve Earth’s environment.

Have Fewer Children—Or None

Overpopulation is arguably the world’s most serious environmental problem because it exacerbates all of the others. The global population grew from around 3 billion in 1959 to 6 billion in 1999, an increase of 100 percent in just 40 years.1 According to UN projections, the world population will expand to 9.7 billion by 2050.2 This represents a slower growth rate than that of the last half of the 20th century, but it will nevertheless leave us with many more people to accommodate.

Planet Earth is a closed system with limited resources—only so much fresh water and clean air and only so many acres of land for growing food. As the world population grows, our finite resources must stretch to serve more and more people. At some point, that might no longer be possible, especially if we don't make drastic changes to the way we use resources

Use Less Water—And Keep It Clean

Fresh, clean water is essential to life—no one can live long without it—yet it is one of the scarcest and most endangered resources in our increasingly fragile biosphere.4 Water covers more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, but most of that is salt water.5 Freshwater supplies are much more limited and today a third of the world’s people lack access to clean drinking water.6

According to the UN World Water Development Report, 2017: Wastewater: The Untapped Resource, over 80 percent of wastewater worldwide is released to the environment without adequate treatment.7 Not surprisingly, diarrhea caused by unsanitary water kills about 829,000 every year. 8

Especially if you live in a dry climate, you should use only as much water as you need, avoid wasting the water used, and strive to protect water supplies.

Eat Responsibly

Eating locally grown food supports local farmers and merchants in your own community as well as reducing the amount of fuel, air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions required to move the food you eat from the farm to your table. Eating organic meat and produce keeps pesticides and chemical fertilizers off your plate and out of rivers and streams.

Eating responsibly also means eating less meat and fewer animal products such as eggs and dairy products, or perhaps none at all. Eating less meat is a matter of good stewardship of our finite resources. Farm animals emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, and raising animals for food requires many times more land and water than growing food crops.9

If you stopped eating meat and animal products, you could save a lot of water. Livestock graze on about a quarter of ice-free land on Earth. Additionally, approximately a third of arable land is reserved for livestock feed production.10 The process of nurturing animals and crops for livestock requires a lot of water. According to some estimates, it's likely you'll save about 1300 gallons of water each time you sit down to a plant-based meal instead of an animal-based one

The 3 Most Important Things You Can Do for the Environment

Have Fewer Children—Or None

Use Less Water—And Keep It Clean

Eat Responsibly