Simple Guide To Sustainable Living — 20 Ways to Live More Sustainably

We’ve all heard this common statistic: That water covers three-quarters of our planet. But did you know that only 3% of it is freshwater?

And here’s what is even more surprising: Two-thirds of this freshwater is unavailable because it’s locked up in icecaps and glaciers, while a large percentage of the one available is teeming with pollutants.

That aside!

Have you heard that the 10 warmest years ever recorded have all come in the last decade? And get this: this shocking stat isn’t from a random guy chasing clicks for their blog. It’s from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

What does this mean? Our Mother Earth is sending us a strong message. And we must listen and respond accordingly. And what better way than embracing sustainability is there to respond to it?

78% of consumers have already expressed interest in responding to this call! But just how can one do it?

Well, this is one of the questions addressed in this article. Here, we’ll examine what sustainability is and how you can embrace the practice in your home, community, workplace, and overall lifestyle.

What Is Sustainable Living?

According to Green Living Blog, green living or sustainable living involves making choices that make our lives today better and ensure future generations enjoy the same resources and quality of life as we do.

It involves assessing three aspects when making decisions:

• Social
• Economic
• Environment

Bay Property Management Group says that the social part entails choosing decisions that won’t negatively affect us or the generations after us. 

The economic element advocates for ensuring that the decisions we make today are financially feasible and won’t push us or the generations coming after us into poverty.

The last aspect, the environment, puts emphasis on choosing to do what won’t harm our planet, both in the short and long term. For anything to be considered as sustainable, it must balance all these three aspects. 

That means even if something is environmentally friendly but doesn’t meet the social or economic aspects, then it can’t be deemed sustainable. In that case, it can only be said to be eco-friendly.

Sustainability Practices To Embrace

We now understand what sustainable living entails. So, how can you embrace it in your everyday life?

That’s what we’re about to examine in this section.

To simplify things, we’ll categorize the practices according to where they can be applied: at home, in the community, at the workplace, and in your overall lifestyle.

Sustainability Practices To Embrace At Home

While you may think that adopting a sustainable life is something difficult, it actually isn’t, as you’re about to discover.

At our homes, we can embrace it through the following:

1. Water Conservation

As already seen, only 1% of the world’s water is potable, so the need to conserve this precious earth’s resource can never be overstated.

The average American uses 100 gallons of water daily, while the annual usage for a regular household is approximated as 100,000 gallons.

But guess what? These amounts can be significantly reduced with just a few tweaks in our everyday life.

Here are several ways to reduce your water use:

• Ensure that you fix all the leaking pipes
• Use water-efficient toilets and showerheads
• Opt for shorter showers 
• Only run the dishwasher while it’s full
• Invest in rainwater harvesting methods
• Turn off the faucet while brushing your teeth
• Water your plants in the evening or early in the morning to minimize evaporation
• Adopt water recycling practices
• Conducting a home energy efficiency inspection

As evident, some of the things you need to do to conserve water are pretty simple but have a long-reaching impact.

Let’s take the example of turning off your faucet. As simple as it seems, it can save you 8 gallons per day, as per the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). That’s 240 gallons in a month and an impressive 2,880 gallons in a year.

2. Energy Conservation

Energy conservation is another area you need to focus on if you want to embrace sustainability. According to Therm Test, energy production produces a significant amount of greenhouse gases (GHG), the number one cause of climate change.

Surprisingly, despite this fact, our energy use is still high, with the average American home using 10,791 kilowatt-hours (kWh) in a year. 

To work down these numbers, we need to implement simple strategies like:

• Unplugging appliances when not in use
• Switching to energy-efficient lighting solutions and appliances
• Using natural light, check out this guide from June Homes to learn how
• Sleeping with the lights off
• Weatherproofing our homes by sealing cracks and gaps in doors and windows
• Embracing alternative sources of energy like solar panels and wind turbines.

Of course, these are just some of the simple practices to help conserve energy, thus protecting the environment and reducing your electricity bill. If you can look around your home, there are so many avenues to save energy. Like architecture for instance, according to SAO Architects. You might even miss some of them, that’s why it’s also good practice to hire professional energy efficiency inspections from services like Good Life Inspections. 

3. Waste Reduction

Next, you will also want to reduce the amount of waste you’re generating in your home. The reason? Because more often, this waste ends up in landfills, and as more waste is generated, we’ll need more of these landfills, taking up more of the limited space we have.

But it’s not just about taking up our space. In some cases, the waste in landfills generates methane, a hazardous greenhouse gas that boasts 28x the potency of CO2 when it comes to trapping heat.

That means we must keep our waste generation as low as possible. Here are some tips to do that:

• Start a compost to help you better manage food waste
• Only buy what you need
• Reduce, recycle, and repurpose
• Repair rather than replace
• Donate items instead of disposing of them.
• Prioritize multi-purpose items over their single-use counterparts
• Use reusable items instead of disposable ones.

As long as we can reduce the amount of waste we produce in our homes, we’ll have less going to landfills, which really is a win-win for us and the environment.

4. Switch To Renewable Sources of Energy

Are you still depending on the grid for power? If you’re serious about embracing sustainability, then it’s time to join the 4.4 American households that are already using solar panels to power their homes.

Alternatively, you can go with the few who have chosen to use wind energy instead of the regular power that we get from the grid.

As aforesaid, producing the electricity that comes into our homes through the grid generates GHGs.  So, the more we use it, the more harm we are causing to our planet.

But that’s not the case with renewable energy sources.

Unlike the power from the grid, solar and wind energy do not give off GHGs. So, adopting them means that you can still enjoy your lifestyle without hurting the planet.

And if your municipality has implemented net metering, you can channel the excess energy you generate back to the public grid while getting incentives in return.

5. Create A Home Garden

If you have the space and are passionate about gardening, why not consider growing your own food? It will immensely reduce the carbon footprint associated with shipping food and your travel as well.

Plus, when growing your own food, you have total control over what you use throughout the process, unlike when you buy it from your local grocery store. This means you can eliminate chemicals and other harmful substances that could end up in your body.

And, of course, having your own farm comes with several therapeutic benefits. It can help reduce stress levels by allowing you to interact with nature.

6. Switch Organic Cleaning Products

Who doesn’t love to keep their homes sparkling clean? We all do! And in most cases, we turn to commercial cleaners because we believe they’re excellent at their work — which is true for most of them.

But did you know that most of the detergents we use in our homes contain harmful compounds in the form of VOCs?

That’s right!

VOCs, just so you know, are volatile compounds present in detergents, but you can also find them in drugs, paints, and refrigerants. 

In detergents, VOCs are added to enhance the product’s effectiveness. However, they also have a dark side — they are harmful to our health and can cause chronic respiratory issues, headaches, and allergic reactions.

But that’s not their only harm. VOCs also have a large negative environmental impact by contributing to air, land and water pollution.

The solution? Switching to organic cleaning products. Vinegar, baking soda, and essential oils are some of the options you can consider. These alternatives are purely natural and don’t contain toxins that can affect your life or the planet.

7. Digitize Your Home Library

If you’re an avid reader, you likely have a home library. But do you know that as much as knowledge is power, as we always say, books aren’t sustainable?

Here’s why: For every book you see in your home, a tree had to be felled for it. 

And that’s not even the worst part. For every pound of paper made, 6 gallons of water are used. 

So what’s the point? Digitize your library. By switching to an e-library, you’ll have done a lot of justice to the environment.

In fact, it won’t just save trees and water — it will also reduce carbon emissions that come with hauling books. Plus, it will save you money, as e-books are generally cheaper than their physical counterparts and sometimes even free, depending on where you source them!

Of course, that’s without forgetting the convenience you get when it comes to accessing your library.

In other words, there are a lot of perks that come with digitizing your library. Sure, it might take time to become accustomed to it, but in the long term, you’ll appreciate that you made the switch.

According to WallSauce, you can also cheat and create a visually faux library with an eco-friendly bookcase wall mural!

Sustainable Lifestyle Practices To Embrace at The Community

Sustainability living isn’t confined to the bounds of your home. It’s also something you can extend to the community.

Here are some of the ways to embrace sustainability at the community level:

1. Shop Locally

About 6% of global greenhouse gas production can be attributed to food transport. So, to minimize these emissions and promote the health of the planet, consider shopping locally for things that you can’t produce in your home.

Shopping local allows you to reduce the amount of transportation needed to haul goods, minimizing carbon emissions that come from food transportation.

Plus, when you shop locally, you’re supporting the local economy and, therefore, contributing to its growth and development. And, of course, you’re more likely to enjoy lower prices of the commodities you buy, as longer food supply chains always increase prices. For example, let’s take this tiny home in Asheville from Great Lakes Tiny Home. If you reside here, you can check out Google Maps to find everything you need locally, instead of purchasing outside the city. 

2. Planting Trees

Trees help absorb CO2 from the atmosphere in exchange for oxygen. Therefore, to revert the current environmental degradation caused by high CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, we can consider planting many of them.

According to the USDA, a mature tree’s annual CO2 absorption rate is 48 pounds. If we can team up in our communities to plant trees, we can be sure of passing a healthier planet to future generations.

Of course, as you participate in tree planting, also make sure that you participate in anti-deforestation movements. The global deforestation rate is about 10 million hectares per year, which is the same as saying that the amount of the world’s natural forests lost during the period is equal to the size of Portugal.

3. Volunteering In Earth-friendly Initiatives

Every year, we have several earth-friendly days, such as Earth Day, Ocean Day, Zero Waste Day, and World Environment Day.

These days are a great opportunity for us to make a positive impact on our planet at both individual and community levels.

How about coming together as a community to do projects that can improve the health of the planet? 

You can opt to start a community garden, do a clean-up, or even create public awareness about the need to embrace sustainable practices. The options you have here are basically endless. And according to Living Openhearted, giving back gives benefits to you too.

4. Educating Others

Not many people around us understand what sustainability entails, why we need it, and how we can embrace it. In fact, of the people who want to live sustainably, 61% of them still lack the knowledge needed to adopt the practice.

So, how about you use your voice to educate them? There are many ways you can do that. One is to organize community workshops where you teach people more about sustainability.

Alternatively, you can leverage the extensive reach of social media platforms, blogs, or other channels. Use these channels to share more information about sustainability. You’ll have spread the word and reached out to thousands or millions of people at no cost.

5. Donations

You see that TV you no longer use and are planning to dispose of it? Someone within your community could be in need of it. How about the clothes that you no longer wear? There could be someone within your community who’s in dire need of them.

So, how about you extend your generosity to these people? It will reduce waste and mean they won’t need to buy new ones, thus reducing the emissions released in the production and transportation of the items they need.

If you don’t have something to offer, you can consider supporting local organizations committed to promoting sustainability. Most of them, if not all, won’t mind the input you give, whether in terms of money or skills.

Sustainability Practices To Embrace At The Workplace

Sustainability practices shouldn’t just end at home and community levels. They should extend to the workplace as well.

Here are some practices that individuals and businesses can embrace to promote sustainability in the workplace:

1. Sustainable Procurement

If you’re a business owner, then where you source your supply of goods is important, especially if you’re truly advocating for sustainability.

Make sure that you embrace sustainability procurement when acquiring your goods. You can do that by only sourcing goods from suppliers who are ethical and have infused the sustainability aspect into their practices.

Let’s say you want to source office supplies. How about buying recycled paper instead of new ones? By doing this, you’ll be contributing to reducing deforestation and promoting the reuse of materials.

You can also opt for refurbished computers instead of new ones, reducing electronic waste and supporting the circular economy.

2. Go Paperless

Gone are the days when businesses relied on paper for everything. Currently, we have digitized everything, starting from communication, documentation, and record-keeping.

Now, if your business is still lagging behind in this area, it might be time to embrace a paperless system. 

Recent stats show that a whopping 4 billion trees are cut every year for paper making. Going paperless will reduce this number, helping conserve our forests.

Plus, a paperless system is less costly in the long term, allowing your business to save. Of course, it also means that the business will produce less waste and operate more efficiently.

In cases where paper must be used, the business should consider using techniques that minimize paper usage, such as double-sided printing. They can also opt for recycled paper as a way to make the most out of what is already there.

3. Employee Sustainability Programs

The other way for businesses to promote sustainability is by adopting programs that help encourage employees to participate in sustainable practices.

• These can include:
• Offering incentives for using alternative modes of transportation
• Providing recycling and composting facilities at the workplace
• Implementing energy-saving initiatives
• Company-sponsored public transportation programs
• Participating in volunteer events focused on environmental conservation efforts
• Encouraging employees to participate in sustainability initiatives outside the workplace.

These are just a few of the many ways businesses can actively promote sustainability and create a positive impact on the planet.

Sustainability Practices To Embrace As A Lifestyle

Of course,  embracing sustainability shouldn’t just be limited to our homes, communities, or even workplaces. Our lifestyles should also reflect our commitment to sustainability.

Let’s see some of the practices one can consider if they want to live a more sustainable lifestyle: 

1. Ditching Plastics

Who doesn’t love the convenience that comes with plastics? But do you know that plastics are one of the biggest pollutants on our planet?

Picture this: Every year, 18 to 23 million tons of plastic waste gets into our aquatic ecosystems. This infiltration compromises the quality of life of aquatic creatures and in some cases, causes deaths.

The Sea Turtle Conservancy says that every year, at least a million marine animals lose their deaths owing to plastic ingestion. Do we even need to mention the level of damage that this material causes to our environment throughout its life?

By ditching plastic, we can mitigate all these effects and many others not mentioned. Switch from plastic bags to reusable bags, use a reusable water bottle instead of single-use plastic bottles, and dodge single-use plastic items such as disposable cups and straws.

2. Cut On Meat Intake

If you’re a meat lover, you might not like what I’m about to say. But before you brush it off, hear me out. And no, I’m not saying that you give meat a wide berth altogether. Not at all. That’s a personal choice.

The thing is, 60% of all food-related greenhouse gases can be attributed to meat. That’s a whopping  11 to 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.

What does that mean? While meat is a worldwide cherished delicacy, it isn’t a very sustainable choice. It significantly pollutes our planet. So, to reduce the damage it’s causing to our Mother planet, we have to slash our meat intake or, even better, invest in plant-based alternatives.

If you do meat every day, how about trying Meatless Monday? It’s even better for your health! I know it won’t be the easiest thing to do, but you can reduce it gradually until you attain the desired level.

3. Eco-Travel

Do you always use your car to travel to work and cruise around for leisure? If you’re thinking about embracing sustainability, then one area of your lifestyle that you’ll need to change is how you move around.

Fossil fuels, which are the most commonly used fuels for transportation, are the number one cause of pollution on the planet. Statistics by the U.S. EPA show that for every gallon of gasoline that is burned, 8,887 grams of CO2 are released.

That’s a lot, right?

That’s why you need to rethink how you move around. Opt to walk or cycle if it’s a short distance that doesn’t need a car. 

If you must use a motor vehicle, use more sustainable transportation means such as buses or trains instead. They still use fossil fuels, but the former will take more than 50 cars off the road, while the latter can remove more than 600 cars — and that’s in a single trip.

You can also consider carpooling with friends or colleagues. And if you value privacy and have the capacity, then opt for electric cars. They’re way better than their counterparts in that they have zero emissions.

4. Buy Responsibly

Have you ever seen something that immediately felt like you should buy it even though it wasn’t planned? It happens to the best of us.

In fact, 84% of shoppers have admitted to yielding to the pressure of impulse buying at some point.

But do you realize that more often, what you buy impulsively doesn’t serve you as much as you thought? In most cases, it ends up as clutter in your home, which really isn’t a sustainable practice, to say the least.

That’s where buying responsibly comes in. Before you buy anything, ask yourself these questions:

• Do I really need this?
• Was it planned?
• Do I already have something that can serve in its place?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you can know whether or not what you’re about to do can be termed sustainable shopping. And, of course, whenever buying something, ensure that it’s made of sustainable materials and that it’s from a sustainable brand.

5. Be A DIY-er

There’s a certain satisfaction that comes with making something yourself. And even better, it’s a sustainable practice!

That’s right!

Let’s take repairing your textiles, for instance. It reduces the amount of waste you generate and saves you money. As you can see, it’s a win-win situation.

Let’s take another example — repairing your broken appliance this time. It won’t just save you the money you’d otherwise use to repair or buy a new appliance; it will also minimize the amount of e-waste you generate and reduce your carbon footprint by the fact that you won’t have to travel to a repair shop.

Why Is Sustainable Living Important?

We’ve provided a total of 20 ways to embrace sustainability. But why would you need to adopt it in the first place?

The answer is simple — sustainable living is crucial for our survival.

By now, you must have realized that most choices we make every day are bad for our planet. And while they may seem too minor to have any significant impact on this vast planet, when 8 billion people engage in them, the repercussions from the collective participation can be devastating, to say the least.

Welcoming sustainability practices into our everyday lives provides a way to reduce our contribution to these issues and helps keep our planet healthier for us and the generations that will come after us.

Sustainability also shows that we appreciate the resources we have and ensures that they will still be available for future use.

Of course, sustainable living is also generally healthy for our well-being. Let’s take the example of growing one’s food. It minimizes exposure to harmful pesticides and other agricultural chemicals often present in foods we buy from the store.

Lastly, adopting sustainability helps ensure that we have a continuity in biodiversity. I mean, do you want to live in a world where there are no more tigers, elephants, or even coral reefs? I don’t think so.

Conclusion

Sustainability is a crucial aspect of our lives that we must not ignore. And there are many ways to embrace it — from the food we eat to the products we buy to how we move around. Actually, this list is just endless.

But at the end of the day, always remember it’s all about the small things we do as individuals that team up to give us the change we want to see.

It might take time to get used to your new way of life. However, in the long run, you’ll look back and appreciate that you actually made the switch. So, let’s all do our part and embrace sustainable living for a better, healthier world.