Sustainable living sounds quite dreamy doesn’t it? A zero-emissions life is as easy as living like a caveman- oh wait, it is exactly that (without the fire though). Yet it is much harder to adopt a similar lifestyle in the civilised world, however tempting it may be with the current state of the world.
In the following article I will explain a few key strategies for sustainable living. The article will help a newly interested person just as much as an ardent follower of nature, so stick around.
- Transportation: There are many ways of reducing your carbon footprint in transportation as this industry is one of the world’s most polluting ones.
- For beginners, avoid driving your own car or using a taxi for short distances (Up to 2 miles). Planning has helped my punctuality while on foot. There are no traffic blocks while walking and you may adjust your speed depending on how early or late you want to reach somewhere! The health benefits are the hidden gems you find while walking outdoors, both physical and mental. Did I mention you also save money walking?
- For intermediates like me, I would suggest planning our foreign trips financially and offset the carbon emissions that occur from our flights. This is especially important when it costs more to offset when you see flight tickets from Ryan air. But often, it only costs 2-3 quids to offset the carbon emissions from your flight. I hope that the flight companies themselves offset these emissions in the future.
- For the pros, congratulations! You are ahead of me already. My humble suggestion for you would be keep what you’ve been doing and switch over to electric modes of transport such as trains and EVs for holiday trips. Avoid flying out in summer when Britain is warm enough (Thanks to Global warming!) and use an app to monitor your carbon footprint. If you cant find a good one, wait until I publish an app my friends and I are working on!
- Food: The cattle farms around the world producing a whopping big share of carbon emissions and it is time to work on our dietary habits to help support the environment.
- For beginners, I would recommend replacing your fast food cravings with healthier substitutes including home-based cooking. There are far too many hidden costs in junk food chains such as McD’s, KFC, DD and Subways. These include health costs, carbon emissions, animal cruelty, etc. Also try to avoid packaged food as they come with their own baggage including marine plastic wastes, toxic “recycling” dumps in developiong countries, etc.
- For intermediates like me, brind down your fish/ meat consumption to about once in a week. This should help you get over your cravings while keeping nutrition and health in check. Trust me, this saves you a lot of money as well. Having a relatively lacklustre social life now, I resort to eating chicken/meat when I go out for dinner with friends. Fight to reduce the unnecessary plastic usage in groceries. We are humans and we are capable of picking potatoes by hand you know!
- For the pro’s out there, I would recommend letting go of frozen food as well as turn off your freezer as it consumes far more energy as compared to the regular refrigerator. Try to grow your own vegetables and fruits in the garden (Shout out to my mom!). You have no idea how cool gardening/ farming is until you have tried it! Most of the universities/ local societies have sustainable gardening sessions. I am planning to go for the classes myself. You can also check out online apps to help you with gardening.
- Energy consumption: Household carbon emissions are on the rise with people investing more in comfort as the climate change has made the winters and summers far more unbearable. This is the start of an endless spiral to a disastrous ending. The developing countries bear the brunt of these disasters and here is how we can begin our fight for the environment.
- For beginners, do the simple stuff. Always double check lights and heating before you leave a room. If you have leaks or faults, fix them before they cost you and the environment. Leave the common room heat at low as we dont spend a lot of time in these areas anyway. You shouldn’t take more than a week to get used to this and move on towards the intermediate level.
- To my fellow intermediates, we can begin by reducing the heating by moving into places with double-glazed windows, more efficient radiators and good insulation overall. Look out for the city council’s efficiency grade for the house. Move into a C or above. If you are paying the bills, switch over to a 100% green supplier. This will push the big 6 utility companies to respond to the increasing shift towards sustainable energy.
- For the pros, I am sure you have already been using a non-intrusive energy monitoring/ management app. If not, go get one for yourself. Coincidentally, I am working on a similar hardware for the industries. Also, invest in your own renewable energy solutions including energy storage so that you can support the grid when the renewable solutions dont perform well. There are a couple other schemes including V2G for EV owners. You may do more reasearch on these aspects as well.
In the future, I shall post about innovative products in sustainability and how we can use them or similar ones and combat climate change with our bare hands! So keep a lookout. I will also start sending subscription emails when I start posting them. See you soon, Ciao!