Sustainable living is becoming a popular concept among those who feel that not enough is being done to preserve our environment.

Despite the fact that the idea of ecology has entered the mainstream, we still aren’t reaching any meaningful goals thanks to sloppy legislation and a general lack of will in the corporate world. Sustainable living gives you a chance to make a difference on your own. Here’s how you can get started.

The Idea of Sustainable Living

Implementing sustainable living into your life isn’t as hard as you might think. You don’t have to remove yourself from society and collect rainwater to water your garden. Sustainable living is a spectrum of activities. You can start small and work your way up.

Reduce Your Energy Needs

The easiest way of reducing your carbon footprint is simply consuming less energy. There are several ways you can do this. For one, drop your energy needs to a minimum. Turn off any devices or appliances you aren’t using, turn off lights when you leave a room.

Speaking of lights, switching over to energy-efficient LED bulbs is a great way to cut down on your power consumption. Modern LED bulbs use a fraction of the power that regular bulbs do, plus they last a lot longer.

Limit your Waste

We live in a consumer society that produces large quantities of waste. Among things that we simply throw away the most is food. Buy only as much food as you plan on eating. That being said, sustainability experts from https://wholepeople.com/ argue that you don’t need to limit yourself in terms of long term meal planning. In fact, doing bi-monthly food runs is a great way of dropping your carbon footprint.

Limiting waste comes down to actually consuming what you purchase and not letting the food go to waste.

Use Alternative Means of Transportation

Driving is a necessity for some, but a privilege for most. While it’s true that owning and using a car gives you a certain type of freedom, it’s also true that cars are one of the main contributors to global warming.

Parking your car and using alternative means of transportation is one of the key principles of sustainable living. If you can walk, cycle or use public transportation to get somewhere, you should leave your car at home. Naturally, this gets increasingly more difficult once you step out of the cities, but there are always ways to reduce your carbon footprint.

Repair, Don’t Replace

Planned obsolescence is a very real thing. Devices and appliances tend to break after a few years of use at most. Once that happens, you have a choice — you can either throw the device away or you can get it fixed. 

Granted, repairing a broken device is sometimes much more expensive, but it’s the right thing to do from an environmental standpoint. By fixing whatever is broken, you’re reducing the amount of junk we’re accumulating as a society.

Dump Straws

Plastic straws are arguably one of the more sinister items widely in use today. There are billions of them, and they mostly end up in our oceans. While straws make some drinks much more enjoyable, they cause more harm than good. Ditching straws and drinking straight from the cup is a small price to pay considering the impact you’re making.

On the other hand, if you’re too attached to straws in general, you can always get a multi-use metal one. In fact, straws can be used as an analogy for sustainable living. No matter what you’re fond of, there is always a more sustainable, less damaging version of it available.

Grow Your Own Food

Growing your own food is a privilege that isn’t feasible for everyone. That being said, running a small garden is a great way of being self-sufficient and growing enough food for your family. There are so many benefits to doing this that go beyond sustainable living.

For one, you’ll be learning a critical skill that not many people know. More importantly, you’ll know what you’re eating at any time. You’re in control of what goes on with your food. That’s a pretty big deal in today’s society.

The best thing about sustainable living is that anyone can do it. There are no right or wrong ways to get into sustainable living. All you really need to do is figure out how to incorporate it within your lifestyle and start evolving your effort from there. It doesn’t take much at all.

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