9 Easy Sustainable Lifestyle Changes You Can Make
More than 7:5 billion people live on our planet! This puts an ever-increasing demand on water, food, fossil fuels, and land worldwide. Each day we all make choices that have some effect on the environment in which we live. By making small changes to our lifestyle, we can help reduce our energy consumption and minimize our carbon footprint.
A sustainable lifestyle can be achieved by reducing the demand on our earth’s natural resources. This is only possible by altering our lifestyle and making slightly different daily decisions.
Simple measures like choosing eco-friendly products, changing our diet, and thinking more about how we travel all help. This can only have a positive effect on our already fragile planet. Here are easy sustainable lifestyle choices to help you reflect on positive changes we can all make to help our planet heal.
Sustainable Lifestyle Changes
Our planet can only produce a finite number of resources. Simplifying our lifestyles and taking personal responsibility help cut out unnecessary waste we produce in our day-to-day lives.
1. Cutting Back on our Carbon Footprint
A car is one of the biggest purchases you can make. Choosing the right car can benefit the environment greatly. Whether you are choosing a hybrid, electric, petrol, or diesel, check out the fuel economy. The engine size and reduced emission options also help reduce greenhouse gases.
Carpooling is another great sustainable lifestyle option. This is becoming more and more popular. If this is not available to you try using public transport to help lower your carbon footprint.
Wherever possible, try to rely less on your car and opt for cycling or walking. This is obviously the greenest sustainable lifestyle option. In time this will make you healthier and lessen the demand for fossil fuels.
Get out into the fresh air and feel more alive!
2. Be Water Wise
Millions of plastic water bottles are discarded each year which end up in landfills or pollute the oceans. Making a small change to drinking from the tap is the easiest sustainable lifestyle option.
There are plenty of cool eco-water bottle designs on the market to choose from. Keep them in your fridge for constant cool water, or take them in the car and to the office. These small changes will lessen our dependence on plastic water bottles and have a positive effect on the environment.
Find your own funky eco bottle and take it everywhere you go! Also, by implementing these easy water-saving tips, you are doubling down on becoming more water-sustainable!
3. Choose Fair Trade Products
While shopping online or on the high street, try to pay attention to labels. More and more companies are now offering a range of fair-trade products.
These include coffee, tea, chocolate, fruit, and clothing brands. Checking the certification will provide you with information on how the product was sourced and manufactured.
Fair trade provides sustainable lifestyle products and use eco-friendly methods of agriculture. They also ensure their workers are not exploited and are provided with a fair wage. Fair-trade products are becoming more popular and you will also be purchasing a good quality product.
Keep an eye out for their logo when you are out shopping next!
4. Avoid Plastic Packaging
Thousands of marine mammals, turtles, seals, and seabirds are sadly killed each year by ingesting or getting caught up in plastic. We can all take small steps to prevent this devastation to our marine wildlife, which is happening on a large scale. Avoiding products with excess packaging means less landfill and less pollution to further contaminate the environment.
Ditch single-use plastics like straws, bottles, and bags and invest in eco alternatives. Reusable fruit and veg bags are now widely available. Also, try to opt for unwrapped supermarket produce wherever possible.
Choosing an eco-friendly coffee machine will also make a huge difference. This will help minimize the plastic coffee pods which are discarded after a single use. Going eco-friendly and living a sustainable lifestyle will have positive long-term health effects on humans as well as our wildlife.
5. Try a Vegetarian or Vegan Diet
The meat industry is the most environmentally destructive industry on the planet. Livestock is also the largest contributor to emissions and wildlife extinction around the world. Sustainable lifestyle food choices can save around 4,200 liters of water a day per person.
Switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet is the single biggest way you could improve your sustainable lifestyle. This also helps reduce your impact on this fragile planet. There is now a multitude of plant-based tasty alternative products out there to choose from.
If you can’t remove meat altogether, try cutting down and switching to a plant-based diet a few days a week. What harm could it do, you may even love your new-found flavors.
6. Invest in Eco-Friendly Beauty Products
Researching eco-friendly daily skin and beauty care products may seem like a daunting task, but Sustainable Sundays are here to help. Try to avoid any body or face scrubs that have micro-beads.
They are extremely hazardous to the water system, damage the environment, and end up in the food chain. There are now numerous bio-body washes and scrubs and natural cotton buds on the market to choose from. They are all environmentally friendly for your new sustainable lifestyle.
Think of period panties and organic pads for your monthly flow and also bamboo fiber and cotton facial cleansing pads are amazing! They are machine washable and compatible with all cleansers and makeup removers. Bamboo toothbrushes and razors are also an eco-friendly option and will break down naturally after use.
These are just a few options to get you started but check out our article on eco-friendly beauty brands to get more ideas for your sustainable beauty lifestyle.
7. Switch to Natural Household Cleaners
Repeated exposure to harmful VOC chemicals within your home can be detrimental to your health and environment. Why not go green and switch to less harmful natural organic products?
A simple switch to vinegar and water will clean most things in your home! There are also many natural products on the market. They will probably cost a little more but the benefits definitely out-way the extra investment.
8. Natural Home Grown Food
If you’ve read our article about apartment gardening, you now know you don’t need a garden to grow your own food. Just a few square feet outside your door would suffice with grow bags or wooden boxes. If you live in an apartment window boxes are a perfect alternative for your herbs, vegetables, or fruit. This will brighten your view and also filter the air coming into your home.
If you are lucky enough to have a garden then dedicating a small corner will provide plenty of space to get you going. Starting with simple herbs, garlic, tomatoes, and strawberries will keep things fun and don’t take long to grow.
You can build things up as your confidence increases. Before too long you can start reaping your rewards with tasty home sustainable lifestyle-cooked food to share with your family and friends.
9. Create a Bee-friendly Garden
One of the easiest ways to save the bees, increase cross-pollination and increase your sustainability footprint is by planting bee-friendly flowers and plants. Or even better, create a full-fledged bee-garden where you’ll plant flowers that bloom steadily through the year to give bees a chance to eat all year.
Another easy solution to help the bee populations flourish is by making a bee hotel with plenty of shade, adding a freshwater source to your bee garden, and by making sure to not use any pesticides (DUH) in your garden. Sounds overwhelming? Find our step-by-step guide on how to create a bee garden here.
Bee gardens are one of the perfect ways to create a more sustainable planet with proper ecosystems that help support the wild insect populations in your area. Providing a safe oasis of food and shelter for the flora and fauna in your habitat will make wildlife, insects, the bees, our planet, and ultimately you happier and healthier.
Converting to a Sustainable Lifestyle is Easy
Choosing to live a sustainable lifestyle can only have positive long-term effects on your health and the planet. Sustainable development will improve the quality of our environment and provide our world with cleaner air.
Only taking what we truly need from the earth’s natural resources ensures we will be providing a non-toxic environment for future generations and wildlife to enjoy. With just a few changes to our lifestyle, we can all live together in harmony with mother nature.
One person can truly make a difference!
