How do we become more sustainable at home?

How do we become more sustainable at home?

We all need to take responsibility for sustainability and strive to make better decisions to reduce our impact on the planet.

Home is a great place to begin when looking for ways to become eco-friendlier and more sustainable, although sometimes it can feel overwhelming to know where to start.

Suppose we all make small changes in our homes. In that case, they will add to environmental benefits and contribute to ensuring that future generations have the same access to resources that we do today.

Reducing energy consumption or installing renewable resources like solar power, isn't always manageable, especially at this current time, so I wanted to share a few of the things that we do at home to try and become more sustainable:

Electrical items

We switch off as many devices as possible at the mains because electrical items like TVs drain small amounts of electricity when in standby mode.

Reducing plastic waste

We support our local ethical and zero-waste cooperative by using their refill station to buy things like dried fruit, lentils, beans, mixed nuts, and seeds. Using the refill station, we can purchase surface cleaners, washing up liquid, etc. This service reduces the need for plastic bags and jars as we take our containers or use paper bags.

There are many of these services available across the whole of the UK, so it's easy to utilise them.

We also buy washable cleaning cloths that we wash multiple times in the washing machine before composting. We've also started purchasing 5-litre bottles of eco-friendly shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and liquid/fabric conditioner. We use our old bottles and fill them up from the 5L bottles each time we need them.

I also use washable make-up remover cloths, which work well as they come in a little bag you can put in your washing machine.

Single-use plastics

I know it's difficult to remove all the single-use plastics we use, so we check the single-use plastic food bags to see whether they contain the "recycle in larger supermarkets" notice. My husband waits until we've got a sizeable enough "bag of bags" and takes them to the supermarket to put in the recycle bins.

Not just in the summer

My son takes a Thermos food flask to school with hot food we've warmed up for him in the microwave. I remember my dad always used to take a Thermos flask for his tea to work or on holiday that would be hot later that day. Using a food flask is the same, and it works well for us as my son is coeliac (as am I), so school lunches are a bit tricky.

We also use reusable bottles with a thermal layer similar to the Thermos flask. Cold drinks stay cold, even in summer, and hot beverages stay hot (which has been great during the colder months).

Even in the loo

We have a subscription with "Cheeky Panda" for bamboo toilet paper and kitchen rolls, which are more sustainable alternatives to regular products. They are delivered in cardboard boxes with no plastic covering.

Recycle your clothes.

I'd love to say that my weight has been the same over the years, but it's not been. So I have a clothes cull and take any I've "grown out of", as it were, to a clothes bank or charity shop rather than just binning them. In this current climate, there will be plenty of people who will use them.

I did the same with my son's clothes when he was younger; they went to relatives with young children or the clothes bank/charity shops.

I'm not saying we're perfect, and it does take a bit of effort, but we can all do our bit to become more sustainable at home. There is so much more that we could do, and we've yet to scratch the surface of the things we could do.

I'd like to understand if you do anything similar or if it's something I've never even thought of; please let me know.

For more information on recycling, here's a link to Recycle Now?https://www.recyclenow.com/repeatthecycle

Thanks for reading?

Liz

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