How To Live A More Sustainable Life
To live a more sustainable life, you can’t just change everything all at once. Instead, you have to change your whole way of life but do it slowly. Being more sustainable isn’t a simple goal you can check off and move on to the next thing on your list. Instead, it’s a journey you take for the rest of your life, learning, experimenting, failing, starting over, and telling others about your journey. Here are a few ways to begin.
Reduce Your Consumption
This is a very important long-term goal. We are all consumers, but our constant excessive consumption of everything is destroying our only home. It’s not all our fault because we’ve been told that this is what makes for a happy, successful life, but more and more of us are realizing that this isn’t true.
The world is full of the things we buy, from diapers to plastic straws, and if you want to be more environmentally friendly, you should think of everything you buy as an eco-friendly choice.
Support Local Businesses
This is a big step toward living in a more sustainable way, but it’s often missed. Being more environmentally friendly doesn’t mean you can never buy anything again. Smaller, independent, and local businesses are often more environmentally friendly than large corporations, so giving your money to them is a great way to be greener.
Check out the brands you often buy from. Do they work with a group that helps people in need? Do they make up for their pollution? Are they a business that helps people? Do they help the environment in any way? What about if they use a managed IT provider – are they doing what they can too? All of these are easy things you can do to make sure your money is helping the environment.
When you buy from a local business, your money stays in your community, and you know you’re helping real people who are often very passionate about their work, skill, or product.
Make And Mend
If you want to live in a more sustainable way, you need to keep your things, clothes, and other belongings in circulation for longer and value them more.
Although, of course, recycling is a positive thing, it can also be useful to think of it as a last resort. Most of what we think we recycle doesn’t get recycled, and it only makes up a small part of everything we throw away. By fixing broken things and using them for longer, we’re actually living much more sustainably, only recycling when we really have to, and ideally not sending anything to landfills if possible.
Travel Carefully
We’re all rethinking how we travel right now, so it’s time to think about how your new, more sustainable lifestyle fits into travel. Going on vacation in a more eco-friendly way can mean different things.
Don’t fly, which is one of the worst things you can do for the environment. Carbon emissions from a round-trip flight to New York are more than what some people in developing countries use up in a whole year. Slow travel is great. Whether you take the train or a bike, enjoy not being in a hurry and seeing the scenery from a different angle. Travel less but travel better. Slow down and enjoy the ride. This will make your trip more meaningful and give you deeper, more life-changing experiences.
