4 Steps Towards Sustainability
- Vittoria
- Aug 26, 2017
- 5 min read
Today people are getting more involved and more aware about environmental issues than ever, because we all want to do our part in aiding the planet. However it can be overwhelming to know where to begin when we realise how complex the problem is. I wish I could tell you there is one simple thing you can do and all the damage we have done to our planet in the last 200 years would be erased. Well, it might not be 1 thing, but there are 4 practical methods you can introduce to your everyday life to minimise your footprint and become part of the solution.
1. Diet
I know what you are thinking: "Here we go!"; but hear me out because it is important.
Every living being has to eat 2-3 times a day, but contrary to the animal kingdom, humans have the ability to choose what they want to eat. Having the power of choice means having responsibilities. There are countless studies and researches that demonstrate that even though we might have evolved eating animal products, nowadays we don't need them to be healthy. Actually the opposite has been proven: to obtain optimal health we require a plant-based diet. Human beings strive on a vegan diet.
Animal products are the main issues when it comes to our biggest health problems, such as cardiac diseases, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cancer and obesity. If you have any of the above, the first thing a doctor would recommend is to cut the intake of meat, dairy and eggs, he would never prescribe to stop eating all that fruit and vegetables!
Besides, animal farming is the number one cause of global warming, waste of water and grain, deforestation of the Amazon forest, the increasing number in endangered species due to the loss of their habitat and ocean pollution. That is because it takes 22'000 litres of water to produce 1 kg of meat, 4'300 litres for 1 kg of eggs, 8'200 litres for 1 kg of cheese, and only 200 for 1 kg of grain.
You could be helping the planet immensely by eating plant-based 1 day a week, you would save:
4'200 litres of water
10kg of CO2 emissions
30 sq meters of Amazon forest
20kg of grain
and the life of 1 innocent animal!
Every time we eat we are voting with our money, we are funding a product and therefore we are responsible for whatever that money buys! We should all make an effort to buy local produce, from family businesses, organic, and especially seasonal vegetables and fruit.This way we would be reducing our footprint while doing a great service to the economy, nature, and our body!
2. Zero Waste
The average person produces 1kg of waste a day, this adds up to 2.3 trillion tons globally, a year!
Zero Waste is a lifestyle that promotes garbage reduction and avoids waste at all costs. The vast majority of people do not think about what happens to the trash in your bins, and many believe that once you are done with a plastic bottle or plastic cutlery, the object in question is transported to a recycling facility and transformed in another thing. This is unfortunately untrue: in the UK only 43% of all trash is recycled, the remaining 57% goes in a land-field, underground, or in the oceans.
Every year we throw 8 million tons of plastic in the oceans, and if these numbers don't change by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish. If this hasn't horrified you enough, every single piece of plastic ever produced, still exists!
So what can you do to help? You can follow the 5 principles of Zero Waste:
1. Refuse: NO to plastic of any kind, to one-use products, samples, freebies, paper waste, junk mail
2. Reduce: cut down your expenses, if you need something, borrow, buy second hand, or of great quality
3. Re-use: use materials that last, such as steel, wood, glass, tin, or natural fibres like cotton and linen
4. Recover: don't throw away your scraps, but turn it into broths, compotes, chutneys, soups, and recover energy through composting
If after the first 4 steps you still have trash to throw away, then and only then you can recycle:
5. Recycle: use recycled materials as much as possible, and separate your garbage in different bags
I will soon share a guide of how to transform your life and your house (room by room)
using the Zero Waste principles, giving you great tips and ideas.
3. Minimalism
Contrary to common belief, minimalism is not the art of owning nothing, nor living in a sterile space, and it has nothing to do with owing a certain number of objects. This lifestyle is inspired by the Japanese Zen philosophy and it is more about your mindset than your physical reality. In fact, minimalism is about having only what is necessary, and doing only what serves purpose in our life, so it's centred around what is essential for you.
Marketing and advertising make us believe that we are incomplete, and that the answer to our in-satisfaction is whatever product they are trying to sell us. This feeds our subconscious and chains us to a consumerist lifestyle that will never make us happy. Through minimalism we can get rid of all the excess in our life, removing everything that doesn't serve a purpose. We tend to surround ourselves with object to fill a void, and end up carrying around confusion, chaos, untidiness; our primary needs end up buried under a mountain of useless junk.
Where should you start? From a physical or emotional part of your life that is not making you happy, so maybe start from a corner and move your way across. The purging phase is the most liberating and the hardest part is to begin the process, then you will get so much satisfaction seeing your space getting clearer.
I will share more practical tips in my post:
And stay tuned if you want to see before and after pictures of my flat
and exactly what I have been doing to downsize my possessions. Coming soon!
4. Transport
The world is connected by an infrastructure net that makes us all part of a global web. We can reach every corner of Earth in under 24 hours, we can cross a whole city in 30 min, but this comes with an enormous price for our planet.
The car is the most used vehicle for short to medium journeys, and it produces between 160 to 210 kg of CO2 every 1000 km or 600 miles - just from Plymouth to Aberdeen. The same journey by train produces only 40 kg of CO2.
But one of the biggest evils is definitely the plane, the most used mean of transportation for short to long distances. A study has quantified that an average airport produces toxic gasses and fumes equivalent to 350'000 cars a day. This adds up to 600 million tons of CO2 yearly which constitutes 10% on the total cause of the global warming.
You can decide to travel more consciously and sustainably by walking or cycling as often as possible, using public transports, sharing a car when necessary, and limiting the trips by plane.
If you want to know exactly how much your trips impact the planet you can use this calculator and then choose the best solution. We will also share all the tips and tricks about sustainable travelling in the upcoming posts.
Do you want to know how big is your environmental footprint?
Take the WWF test and share the result below!
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