A 2018 survival guide to a more sustainable lifestyle
The planet that we live on is changing rapidly, and honestly, it doesn’t give a shit about us. Our pale blue dot will be just as happy after it’s boiled us all to death.
For a moment, I urge you to take a step out of the little bubble that is your life. Some may find this more difficult than others, but for the next few minutes, please give it a go.
It is really easy to live happily in your bubble, minding your own business and being ignorant of the issues that surround it. For the most part, your only interactions outside of the bubble are the inputs and outputs that help you to live your life.
An input might be your weekly food shop. You buy these items and they temporarily become part of your life; a part of your little universe.
An output on the other hand would be the plastic, glass and other waste that comes from that weekly shop. Until now, you may have just thrown it in the general waste, and once the bin men remove it from your bubble, you don’t care anymore — not your problem!
Around 16 million plastic bottles are not recycled every day, these enter landfill sites, and eventually the oceans.
It turns out… in order for your bubble to exist, there is a bigger bubble outside that’s keeping yours inflated, and that big bubble may just be approaching its tipping point.
Everyone has busy lives with their own issues to face, but without a healthy planet to live on, all of the issues we face will literally fall off the face of the earth. Global warming is a very real threat, and we owe it to ourselves, humankind, to pull together and save the one thing we all have in common: our home.
Tackling the root
The root of the issue is us. Our mentality is one of a throwaway culture. Governments and organisations must be pressed to do more, but new policies, procedures and facilities will mean nothing if we don’t change our own attitudes towards the environmental crisis.
There are small changes you can make in your everyday life, that will make a massive impact on your bubble outputs:
- Plastic Straws
Say no to a plastic straw before ordering a drink at the bar. In the US alone, 500 million plastic straws are used EVERY day. These ultimately end up in landfill and it takes 500 years for each one to biodegrade. There is currently a kickstarter running that aims to bring to market a biodegradable straw that is also edible! - Light Bulbs
Replace your traditional and energy saving bulbs at home with LED bulbs. LED bulbs use 85% less energy, and last a lot longer. They are also brighter and will bring your household bills down too! Despite the savings, don’t use that as an excuse to leave lights on, however. - Contact Lenses
Recycle your contacts containers! Daily users throw away around 60 containers a month, and there are estimated to be 2.1 million daily contact users in the UK alone (and rising). Put a small box / tub in your bathroom to collect them all up and then put them into your normal mixed recycling bins. - Recycle
It’s insane to still have this point in a list like this as we enter 2018. But there are still a lot of people who have a throwaway mentality, or simply get their recycling wrong. Read on more to find out what you can and cannot recycle, and where we are going wrong (spoiler: coffee cups are NOT recyclable). - Carbon offsetting
This is one of my favorite initiatives. For the carbon we do unavoidably produce in our day to day lives, we can offset by donating to projects such as Stand for Trees. Your donation will go towards planting new trees, and in turn, offset your carbon emissions. - Meat
The meat industry is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases. (livestock farming contributes between 20%-50% of the overall man made greenhouse gas emissions). Many readers are not going to give up their Saturday morning bacon sandwich lightly… but small changes like having a couple of days a week on a vegan diet, or reducing your lamb and beef consumption in favor of chicken and pork can have a massive impact. - Fast fashion
Each of us now buy 60% more clothes and throw them away in half the amount of time we did 15 years ago. Switch to more expensive brands (it will pay off in the longer term), cherish your clothes more. They will last longer and look better for longer and you will be reducing your output in the process. - Rechargeable batteries
This is a no brainier. Batteries are expensive, and very harmful to the environment when disposed of incorrectly. Rechargeable's have 28% less impact on global warming and 30 times less impact on air pollution. Get yourself a Duracell re-charger and some rechargeable batteries. I also find mine to last a lot longer than disposable batteries! - Cutting down on ironing / drying
By letting your washing air dry (even hanging up your t-shirts so that the creases naturally drop out instead of ironing), you can save up to a third your clothing’s carbon footprint. No one likes ironing anyway… so now you have a valid reason to do it less! - Donate to green charities / vote for green politicians
Donate to charities such as Greenpeace, WWF or Plastic Oceans, and support politicians that include comprehensive environmental policies within their manifestos.
It takes around 2,700 liters of water to produce the cotton for one t-shirt and 1,800 gallons of water to make one pair of regular blue jeans!
Recycling Recommendations
Ensure that your recycling does not get rejected, and also that you are recycling everything you possibly can.
- Coffee Cups are not recyclable.
- Take-away pizza boxes are cardboard, but when soaked with grease from the pizza, they will get rejected. Do not Recycle.
- Crisp packets cannot be recycled.
- It is best to rinse your packaging before recycling, to avoid rejection or contamination of other recycling.
- You do not need to remove the labels from bottles or tin cans before recycling.
- Bleach bottles, shower gel / shampoo and hand wash bottles are recyclable. Remove the hand pump from your hand wash, though.
- Don’t throw batteries in your general waste, if you don’t use rechargeable batteries, collect all your old batteries up and take them to your nearest recycling point (supermarkets normally have these facilities).
- It is true that recycling facilities struggle to sort black ‘ready-meal’ plastics, however this does not mean you shouldn’t place them into your recycling.
- Aerosols, such as air freshers and deodorants ARE recyclable.
- Jiffy Bags are not recyclable.
- With Christmas coming up, make sure your recycle your wrapping paper! All wrapping paper other than the shiny / metallic or glitter wrapping paper can be recycled. If in doubt, there is apparently a ‘scrunch test’ you can do. If you scrunch the paper into a ball, and it stays a ball then it can be recycled. Make sure you recycle your Christmas cards too!
- Until we get a common approach of recycling across the UK, you can check what your local recycling accepts here.
Hitting the reset button
We are unfortunately at a point where moving to another planet to avoid the devastating effects of climate change is no longer limited to sci-fi movies. It is reality, and there are even companies working on Mars missions for this exact reason — a ‘plan B’.
It is thought that we are already past the point of repair, the effects of climate change are already being seen and we are now only able to slow its progress, rather than revert the existing damage.
Whether it is too late or not, we need to be doing more and more to reduce our output, and try to salvage whatever we can before the effects get too catastrophic.
— DC
