Going green – play to your strengths
It’s all too easy to end up feeling overwhelmed by all the things you might be doing to live a more sustainable life. However, if you play to your strengths you’ll do the most good you can in a way that has the best chance of being sustainable for you. There’s no point going vegan, giving up the car and pledging never to buy new clothes again if you can only keep that up for a week. Meaningful action has to be for the longer term so it means looking for the things you can most realistically change.
It helps if there’s something you are especially passionate about. Surfers are often passionate about keeping sewerage and plastics out of the sea, as an obvious example. People who are already enthusiastic about walking and cycling are off to a head start for improving their transport choices. If you like sewing, then keeping clothes in use is more realistic for you.
I have a deep love of gift economy. That means keeping things out of landfill via charity shop donations and freegle works well for me. It’s an easy, happy thing.
It’s worth looking around for the options that align with your preferences. If you want to save money, there are plenty of greener choices that will help you do that. If you’re passionate about food, then sourcing well and avoiding food waste are good issues to explore. If you’re into fitness and body health then becoming your own mode of transport as much as possible makes sense.
If there are things you know you would struggle to change or to give up, don’t start there. Do what looks easiest. Make the changes that aren’t going to depress you. Think about the things that would take you towards the kind of life you actually want to lead. That might mean reducing single use packaging in your home by cooking everything from scratch because you love cooking. It might mean making your own soap so as to have nicer soap as well as being more environmentally friendly. You might decide to grow your own fruit because you love gardening, and so forth.
You won’t be able to do everything from scratch in the most sustainable way. You won’t be able to source everything you need second hand or grow it yourself. It’s important to be realistic. I can’t afford to buy everything I need in optimal ways, but I can get my soap and shampoo from my local eco-shop while supporting a charity I care about, and that’s something, and therefore worth doing. Don’t feel that your efforts are invalid if you can’t go as far as you want – focus on what you can do.
Making changes you can sustain is a really good choice. It helps against feelings of despair and powerlessness. If everyone made the changes they could most easily make we’d get a lot done quickly. It is the people who have most who most urgently need to do that – giving up their cruise holidays, their private jets, yachts, helicopters, second homes, third homes… In face of the resource squandering by those who have most it is important to remember firstly that there is some point in doing what you can and secondly that those doing most harm need to change the most. Refusing to aspire to those toxic, destructive lifestyles is a good place to start, and an easy, sustainable thing that the rest of us can do. Wanting to be envied is certainly part of what’s going on there, and being met instead with disgust might have some effect. Cultures can change and we are not obliged to look up to the people who are killing the planet.
If this sort of approach appeals to you, then do please have a look at my book on going beyond sustainability – https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/our-books/earth-spirit-beyond-sustainability
You can get the ebook half price from the publisher at the moment, using the code SUMMER23
