Sustainable Living is a lifestyle that recognizes the impact of an individual on the environment and aims at reducing human imprint through a reduction in the use or harvesting of Earth’s resources. In other words, sustainable living means making a conscious effort not to use up more resources than you give back to the natural world. Instead you can contribute by growing more trees and using less harmful materials.
To fully understand sustainable living, let us dive into the meaning of sustainability. Sustainability, according to Oxford dictionary is the “avoidance of the depletion of natural resources to maintain an ecological balance.” It is an attempt at creating an equilibrium between what we take from the Earth and what we give back to it.
Sustainable living looks different for everyone. While some people will advocate for growing your own food, sustainable living can also look like using electric cars instead of one gassed by fuel. Or maybe even buying food from local farmers, reducing reusable materials like water bottles and ceramic utensils instead of plastic one, and solar electricity instead of generators. There are many ways to be sustainable.
Sustainable living can teach you to be self-sufficient. How so? You may learn how to find alternative means of survival. It may even help you to cut down the costs from the items that you frequently spend your money on.
In recent days there has been an increase in the creation of innovations in sustainability. Some of these people include Bloom Nepal school. This is a school that recently won a Zayed sustainability price for turning waste into fuel. Or Seawater Greenhouse created by Charlie Paton which uses saltwater in arid areas like Oman, the UAE, Australia, and Somaliland.
Then there is even SOLshare which aims to provide affordable electricity to everyone in Bangladesh. How do they do this? They do this by connecting solar home systems and allowing people to sell their excess solar energy in return for money. There are many other innovations like these three which are doing decent work in reducing our carbon footprints and equipping people in remote areas with lesser access to opportunities with reusable, long-term materials, and inventions.
How you can live sustainably?
Sustainable living is easy. You do not have to immediately dispose of all the items that you feel might be damaging to the Earth. A good first step towards sustainable living is by recognizing your own Ecological footprint. The Ecological Footprint calculator is a metric which calculates your individual resource demand against Earth’s regenerative capabilities. From there, you can have a basic understanding of how much or what to cut back on.
You can also try planting trees or fruits and veggies. Give back and assist the Earth just as much as it is giving and assisting you. Donate to organizations that do these things if you do not have the time for it, or if you are reluctant to get your hands dirty.
Switch to renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. We use Fossil fuels for things like heating, generating electricity, transportation, and even used in our cosmetics, computers, and others. While fossil fuels do play a big part in our day-to-day life, their extraction is very damaging to the Earth. Moreover, they emit C02 (Carbon dioxide). Renewable energy includes energy from the sun like solar panels, water like the Hydra light lanterns which is powered by saltwater, wind, biomass, and so on.