Last week, we caught up with Georgina Wilson-Powell, author of Is It Really Green? Everyday Eco Dilemmas Answered and the founder of sustainable living magazine, pebble, on Instagram Live. We talked about sustainable living and the launch of her new book.
She told us, "Sustainability is a state of mind, it's something we need to adapt our lifestyles around, rather than it being a solid thing we can just tick off and move on."
She gave us 6 tips for adapting our lives to be more sustainable:
1) Reuse, reuse, reuse. Whatever you have now - that’s the most sustainable thing you can have. Try to throw less away, whether it’s food, plastic, old clothes - what can you do with it instead?
2) Move to a single use plastic free bathroom. Swap cotton balls for reusable organic cotton rounds, plastic sponges for loofahs, shampoo bottles for refillable options or hard bars and liquid soap for solid - all easy wins.
3) Meal plan the heck out of your week. Work out your dinners, work in leftovers for lunch and a spot of batch cooking at the weekend and you’ll be amazed at how much food waste you can cut down AND save money on your food shopping. New app Kitche can help you come up with store cupboard recipes.
4) Consider how many times you’ll use or wear something before you buy it. Clothing starts to cancel out its manufacturing emissions after 30 wears - so is that spontaneous shop from the sofa worth it?
5) Try not to buy and return online shopping. The huge volume of returns is pushing up carbon emissions from more trucks on the road, more journeys and more packaging and often returned clothes are burnt rather than resold.
6) Swap, barter or gift things around your local community, friends and family to reduce our overall consumption. From bartering plants for cakes to swapping clothes with friends, let’s keep the stuff we have in circulation for longer. Use Olio or Facebook bartering groups.
For more information on living a sustainable life, check out these books:
Is It Really Green? Everyday Eco Dilemmas Answered by Georgina Wilson-Powell:
We all want to do the right thing for the planet, but with so many factors at play it can be difficult to work out which is the greenest way. With answers to more than 140 everyday green-living questions, Is it really green? cuts through the confusion and gives you the facts.
Clean Green by Jen Chillingsworth:
How to tackle each room and cleaning task in a natural way. From laundry detergent, toilet cleaner and furniture polish to hand wash, dishwashing liquid, stain remover and air freshener, all the recipes for natural products in this book are quick and simple to make and, most important of all, they work! They're not expensive either, many will save you money in the long term and help you to cut down on your plastic waste too.
Sustainability by Maurie J. Cohen:
An introduction to the concept of sustainability, tracing its history and application from local land-use practices, construction techniques and reorientation of business models to national and global institutions seeking to foster sustainable practices. This book takes us on a journey to show that sustainability is as much about unchartered waters as it is about formulating answers to urgent global issues.
No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg:
A collection of the history-making, ground-breaking speeches of Greta Thunberg, the young activist who has become the voice of a generation.
This book is a rallying cry for why we must all wake up and fight to protect the living planet, no matter how powerless, or small, we feel. Our future depends upon it.
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