Quick eco wins to reduce your impact on the environment

Quite often I hear from browsers in my little sustainable living shop that they are unsure where to begin when it comes to reducing their carbon footprint. There’s so much information out there and a lot of false information from climate change deniers that really doesn’t make it easy for anyone to figure out, so then it just turns to overload.

And to be fair the switch to a more plastic-free life is overwhelming because of how pervasive plastic is in our lives and homes.

But we can all do something, whether it is one swap, or slowly going room-by-room and making your home green over the course of a year. A brilliant quote I heard recently applies nicely:

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little”

- Edmund Burke

 

Reuse and refill as much as you can.

If you can use a plastic bottle over and over again it stops being single-use and is useful instead. We can’t undo what has already been bought, but we can make the most of it! Refill shops like mine absolutely love helping you to refill food, toiletries and other household essentials.

Whether it’s a top-up of hand wash to a few tupperware tubs filled with pantry cupboard staples, the less new packaging we buy the better. Refilling isn’t a beauty contest either, you can reuse and refill practically anything. Your containers don’t need to be aesthetic, they don’t need to be a specific brand or material… all they need to do is hold what you want.

 

Where you can’t do that, switch away from plastic packaging.

If you love a fizzy drink choose recyclable cans rather than plastic bottles. If you love ketchup on your chips they still do condiments in glass bottles. Things like menstural products are unavoidable for many, so why not look for a plastic-free option, the savings would be staggering over the course of a lifetime.

Shampoo bars, kitchen sponges, and toothbrushes are all items that can be found in cardboard packaging inside my little eco shop rather than wrapped in plastic in the supermarket. There are so many examples of this where a plastic-free alternative is available and is a really straightforward swap albeit one that comes with a little extra work needed by adding a detour to a refill shop to your weekly errands.

 

Leave your car on the drive for one journey a week.

Pop to the shops on foot, bike to school, have your weekly shop delivered to your door instead of driving to the supermarket. It really can be liberating to have a car-free day! Towns and cities for decades have been designed around the car. Individual travel was prioritised over mass transit and sadly we’ve got to the point here in the UK where our public transport is privatised, run for corporate profit, and honestly just not up to modern standards.

The tide is slowly starting to change though. The concept of 15 minute cities is revitalising neighbourhoods, technology such as e-bikes and scooters are making it much easier to cover longer distances in relative ease and many urban areas are heavily investing in bicycle infrastructure, taking lanes away from motorists and encouraging more bikes on to the streets.

 

When something runs or wears out, switch to a plastic-free version.

This way you’re not wasting what you already have and it gives you time to look into what to replace it with. Like with anything in life, try to make a huge change, or too many smaller ones all at once you’ll be setting yourself up for a tough challenge. We only have to think of broken new year’s resolutions to understand this.

However, if you make incremental progress, steady changes that become routines and habits then they’re bound to stick more and become part of a snowball effect of lasting change. It also means that it’s a lot easier on the bank account!

 

Making small steps on your eco journey is vital. Not only does it mean you’re not completely overwhelmed and likely to revert to old ways and habits, it has the same way of building momentum like an avalanche, and is much kinder on the pocket.

Why not see if you can make just one change this week? Maybe your old toothbrush is on its last legs, or you’re about to run out of washing up liquid and are going to refill rather than buy a new bottle.

Please feel free to pop into the My Carbon Coach shop in the Independent Quarter any time for a chat, advice and a large range of sustainable living items. You can shop online here and select the free click+collect option if you like, although I haven’t yet figured out a way to add items from the refillery to the online offering!