15 Ways To Be Sustainable In Everyday Life
Photo of person with green dip fingers holding spring leaf by Alena Koval on Pexels
Updated 2024.07.22
Sustainability is defined as the ability to maintain things at a certain level, to uphold or defend something.
When it refers to the environment, it means making sure that what you’re doing is economically, ecologically, and socially sound for generations to come.
Sustainable actions support environmental and human vitality indefinitely. As someone with a degree in resource conservation and the environmental sciences, I view sustainability as building out your life so it is not only supporting environmental and human vitality, but also easily maintained and it regenerates itself indefinitely.
Sustainability initiatives are all of our responsibility, since we are all drops in the ocean of life, every action we each take can impact the greater good, assuring there are plenty of resources for all.
Resource conservation and mindful consumption are at the heart of sustainability principles, and below are a few sustainability tips.
You can become more sustainable in your own everyday life. Here are a 15 ways how:
Photo of person with reusable water bottle at hip by cottonbro studio on Pexels with text overlay 15 ways to be more sustainable in everyday life
1 - Use Cold Water
Hot water accounts for 20% of your home’s energy use. Keeping your energy use down helps reduce your bill and your carbon footprint.
Try to incorporate cold water in your laundry, dish washing and even showers. Cold water showers have been shown to have health benefits like increasing endorphins, improving metabolism and enhancing circulation.
2 - Ditch Single Use Products
Say goodbye to k-cups and sheet masks. Single use products increase the number of items going to the landfill, which increases greenhouse gas emissions, like methane.
The more that you buy with the eye for longevity, considering your purchases like investments into your future, the fewer items in our landfill and ideally, the lower the greenhouse gases.
3 - Consider A Minimalist Wardrobe
BiologicalDiversity.org estimates that the fast fashion industry is responsible for 10% of all carbon emissions, which contributes to global warming. The fashion industry is also responsible for one-fifth of water pollution worldwide, stemming from dyes used in clothing.
The less clothing you buy, the less you are contributing to these pollution externalities. When you do buy clothing, look into the manufacturer's commitment to the environment.
4 - Use The 30 Wears Test
When shopping for new clothes, ask yourself if you could see yourself wearing the item more than 30 times.
To reduce the risk of sending pieces of clothing to the landfill, consider investing in pieces of clothing that are versatile and made for multiple purposes, perhaps you can even wear them year round.
5 - Wash Your Clothes Less
Use less water, preserve your purchases and decrease the release of microplastics and dyes into the waterways.
Depending on what you did while wearing the clothing, garments can often be worn multiple times before you need to wash them.
Washing your clothes, especially synthetic ones, releases microplastics into the waterways. These toxic particles can degrade ecosystem vitality. Additionally, more frequent washing of organic materials can cause them to break down more quickly.
6 - Reuse & Recycle
Take a look at your waste stream!
According to the Harvard Business Review, the U.S. recycling rate is 32%. If we were able to get the rate to 75%, it would be akin to removing 50 million passenger cars from U.S. roads.
Before throwing anything away, inspect the item to see if there are any pieces of it that can be recycled into other projects. Get creative.
Reusing, repurposing and recycling products can slow down the flow of items going to landfills, which can reduce greenhouse gasses and the manufacturing need to produce new items.
7 - Sustainable Procurement
When you invest in items for the home, research the company’s stance on sustainability. If you have a chance to talk to your suppliers, let them know that environmental and ethical practices matter to you.
In an office setting, create guidelines for staff on what to look for, what to avoid, what they can purchase and what they can’t.
8 - Go Paperless!
Limit your use of the printer in the home office or workplace office and see if any of your files really need to be printed or if not, they can be PDF’d.
The paper industry is part of the reason for deforestation. Paper is made by cutting down trees and harvesting all the wood products from them, including paper. The less paper you need, the more habitats you save for your favorite forest critters.
Forests help produce oxygen, beneficial phyto-chemicals and can be attributed to healing, especially in cancer research. We need them for our wellness.
9 - Decrease Your Screen Brightness
According to a Harvard Professor, decreasing your screen’s brightness from 100% to 70% can save up to 20% of your monitor’s energy. It also reduces eye strain.
10 - Say No To Cruises
These luxury ships sure do look fun, but they’re not known for being pillars of sustainability. In fact, they contribute quite heavily to greenhouse gas emissions. For example, Carnival Corporation’s fleet of 63 cruise ships emits more sulfur oxides (SOx) than all the cars in Europe.
Opt for local or more sustainable options for tourism instead.
Sustainable tourism involves reducing your carbon footprint as you travel through actions like avoiding littering, using reusable containers for food and drink, taking shorter showers, and using less air conditioning in your accommodation.
11 - Use the Most Fuel Efficient Route
On apps like Google Maps, you can opt for the most fuel efficient path to your destination. Look for the little green leaf in your app, which indicates the fuel friendly route.
12 - Use Environmentally Friendly Cleaning Products
Read the labels and check the certification. There is a wealth of environmentally friendly cleaning products available on the market today.
When you shift to more environmentally friendly cleaning products, you reduce the amount of toxic chemicals going into your water system and you can also reduce the potential for allergic or respiratory reactions from contact with some of the more harmful chemicals in some cleaning products.
13 - Reuse Aluminum Foil
Simply wipe it down, fold it up and save it for another use. If it’s dirty, and there are no tears, you can even wash aluminum foil for future uses.
14 - Avoid Highly Processed Foods
Foods that have been through alot of manufacturing have higher carbon footprints due to the travel, distribution, and packing processes.
15 - Reduce Food Packaging
Plastic bags, boxes, individually wrapped sections of the cracker box, these all contribute to the waste in landfills. Select minimally processed foods like bananas and sweet potatoes, which require less packing to bring home from the grocery store.
Photo of person holding green recycling bin by Lara Jameson at Pexels
Alright, so these are just a few ways you can conserve your resources, and contribute to a more sustainable future for the earth.
One of my favorite parts of sustainability is that the practices are usually hand in hand with saving you money, which is nice. Some practices, like choosing more fuel efficient routes, can also save you time.
So not only do sustainable practices save resources for future generations, they can also save you time and money. For that reason, being more sustainable in everyday life is a win-win for all.
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