How to stick to your sustainable habits

Food

Cutting down on meat and fish and widely regarded as key to reducing climate change. There are a long list of reasons why cutting down on meat is a good idea – this isn’t a place to make you feel bad. For starters, not only is much greater amounts of land used to rear animals, yet more land is needed to grow food for them.

Whatever your reasons, getting into the right frame of mind is key. Of course, there’s lots of meat replacement products out there, but this isn’t the only option for making your diet more veggie (personally I don’t use these much – they are heavily processed, pricey and tend to come wrapped in plastic ☹ ).

One of the most difficult things is coming up with new meals (or new ways to do meals you like without ‘missing the meat’). Like anything, it requires a bit of commitment – buy some cook books and make an effort to try one new recipe a week (trying something new every night is exhausting – build up!). There are hundreds of cook books out there now, why not try Joe Wicks, for super easy quick but nutritious meals, Bosh for something a bit fancier and super delicious (not to mention mostly vegan) or reliable favourites like Jamie Oliver (who also has plenty of free recipes online). There are plenty of free resources like BBC Good Food and newspaper website which include many more veggie meals than they used to.

Packaging – 70% or plastic waste is food packaging (EU) – think about whether you actually need to buy that. For example, I have cut out the microwave rice packets and yoghurts we used to eat every week. It’s about breaking the habit – if you can do it for 2 weeks, you can probably stick to it.

The obvious choice is to use refill/zero waste shops (I am a weekly visitor to the fantastic and ever evolving Plentiful in Ramsbottom which has come so far from the original tiny shop days – I’m am so glad I support it!). The downside is that sometimes this isn’t quite as convenient as the supermarket (opening hours, deliveries etc). Planning is key here. Make a list throughout the week and try and keep a regular slot to visit. If you can’t go weekly, one of the big plus points to a refill shop is the ability to stock up – this works especially well for toiletries like shower gel, handwash and shampoo.

Shopping

Food is the obvious place to start, and receives a lot of press, but now you can apply the same principles to other shopping. Try to interrogate where products are from and what they are made of. Personally, I like natural materials like cotton, wool (for long term biodegradability) and valuable materials like metal which are both long lasting and offer some value in recycling (many things don’t, even if the company says they are technically recyclable).

If you can’t find out much about the who, what and where of a product – consider a different source. Why hide this information? We have clear icons on each of our product pages, plus our meet the maker page to say hello to our favourites 😊 . If you wouldn’t accept poor working conditions and landfill being incinerated near your home – why buy into companies that do?

A biggie – accepting that things may cost more. If you drill down into the cost of items – which commonly include significant marketing budgets as well as fixed costs like transporting items around – I think we have to accept somethings are too cheap to be true. To win business on pure cost, each person in the supply chain exploits the next one down and eventually the people (or plant) and the end of the chain is left with almost nothing. This consumerism cascades down from our buying choices. Show business leaders that the race to the bottom on prices isn’t the most important thing, as long as we can see that the extra cost is justified in ethical choices for that product or service – things like certified material sources and living wage commitments.

And finally – don’t worry too much! Not every choice is the perfect one, and sometimes the perfect one isn’t on offer. Shops wrap all sort of things in plastic unnecessarily and we all have to eat (and enjoy food/life!). Many companies choose not to be transparent for a reason, and sometimes for reasons of cost, choice or convenience we use them.

Try to keep those habits going little by little, and one day it will seem amazing that you ever accepted some things before!