What is sustainable living?
Sustainable living is less of a philosophy and more of a lifestyle. Every one of us must have come around this term. Activists and prosperous NGOs encourage us to move towards sustainable living. You must have heard this term during the marketing or advertisement. Where the brand promises to make relevant things out of waste. But what does it mean to live a sustainable and eco-friendly life?
Practicing sustainability can start in our household such as composting. The community and lifestyle can ensure the use of renewable resources without compromising the needs of future generations. In simple words, sustainable living shall not deteriorate the resources that can be useful for future generations. Sustainable and eco-friendly living can start with oneself and then we can expand further.
What is the right and efficient goal of sustainable living?
The right connection between us and sustainability depends upon the roots and the way we live. As per the global principle of Brundtland report of 1987, the notion aims to present the environment concerning issues and challenges in the aspect of political, social, and economic development. And the United nations’ sustainable development goal is to preserve the planet for our beloved future generation so that they do not need to fight climate change, energy use, and land and water management.
Sustainable and eco-friendly living can differ in aspect from person to person. Several brands are entering the greenwash products and eco-friendly market. For Indian people, their enriched culture, and tradition are so evolving that the environmental knowledge comes with the historical tradition. And the tradition of a community imparts traditional ecological knowledge, also known as TEK. We can acknowledge the ecological effect of biodiversity and the ways where the impact carries a huge capacity of the environment.
For some people, sustainability has no cultural significance but it depends upon a solid lifestyle. Sustainable living shall be part of day-to-day activity and the supreme way to enhance the same. You can cater to enhance the lifestyle by bringing sustainability and eco-friendly things in the habit form. The habit form blends to extend in a community and then sustainable living on a large scale.
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In what way does sustainable living Matter?
Sustainable living matters to the individual action where the actions are accountable to lessen the impact on our planet. Our strong choices make the difference. The choice of selecting the right thing whether it is impact-worthy or not. While we address sustainability, we talk about climate change and environmental degradation. And here indeed personal choices matter and it caters to making a difference.
The individual actions accumulate for greater contribution to a stronger movement that aims to reduce human actions on the environment. Hence a sustainable lifestyle is beyond your household. It is about the contribution to the community, economy, and the environment.
Let us elaborate on the same with an example where you buy the product from your local farmer to eat a plant-based diet. Hence you are reducing the risk of chronic illness by having clean food. You are also contributing to the economy by shopping with the locals and filling their pockets. You are also reducing greenhouse gas as you use limited or public travel to get the produce. As per the report of 1988, the global industrial emission is mostly by the 25 corporates and state-producing entities like manufacturers. And the same has produced 500 gigatonnes of Co2 over the last 30 years in a declining row. While working on the statistics and keeping it in perspective, the average production of 15.6 tonnes of CO2 is by one Canadian person every year.
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Here are some of the living examples of sustainable living in your home and community:
Reduce the consumption
You can either reduce the consumption or change the habit of consuming. And you can take a step towards sustainable living. The word relates to food, energy, and water. It also encompasses material things such as clothing, electronics, and accessories meant for building a lifestyle. You can start anywhere at any point in time. By opting to switch off the lights and investing in energy-efficient appliances we can take a steep growth towards energy consumption.
Reduce the waste:
If we are consuming less, we are wasting less. No matter how much we try to keep our trash empty, there is always excess packaging, food, electronics, and so on. When we are working with the motive of reducing waste, it means recycling the waste. For non-recyclable products, we can stop buying them and move to repurpose them before throwing them in the trash.
The technique of Do it yourself:
You can start being creative and follow the technique of DIY by sustainable and eco-friendly living. You can hog upon to find new sustainable ways to produce, create and substitute things that have self-sufficiency with having less impact on our environment.
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FAQs
What are the relevant ways to live an eco-friendly and sustainable life?
Here are some of the ways through which you can step toward the world of sustainable living:
- Plastic Free Initiative
- Drive green by Driving less
- Make your home Green
- Lessen the consumption
- Go DIY (Do it yourself)
What are the major challenges of eco-friendly and sustainable living?
The route to sustainable and eco-friendly life has enormous challenges, but at each step we can we would require to fight and overcome. Here are a few challenges enumerated:
- Break the old and wrong habits
- Cost and convenience
- Requires a massive change in mentality
- Shame or humiliation at some juncture
Epilogue:
The way to sustainable and eco-friendly living is less costly when you have the right mindset for developing a more sustainable lifestyle. The eco-friendly sense comes after being sustainable in lifestyle. The synergy and composition of both can bring a massive change in our day-to-day living.
