How To Green With Your New Year Resolution
With the UK parliament declaring a climate emergency and Greta Thunberg being chosen as TIME’s person of the year for 2019, concern for the environment has taken centre stage in a lot of people’s lives. Brands are making the switch from single-use plastic to sustainable alternatives, and it’s becoming more common for people to leave the house decked out with keep-cups and reusable straws.
However, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by all the eco things we should be doing. A lot of us feel like we could be doing more to incorporate sustainable swaps into our daily lives, but it’s difficult to know where to begin.
The New Year has always been a great excuse for turning over a new leaf, with many of us setting ambitious resolutions every year. It’s the perfect time to incorporate a new, achievable green habit into our lives.
Here are a few ideas of resolutions you could set yourself, to make your 2020 a little bit greener.
1. Get yourself a reusable water bottle and commit to avoiding plastic bottles for the whole year.
2. Aim to reduce waste to the point of filling your wheelie bin once a month, rather than once a fortnight. A great way to do this is by switching to a smaller kitchen bin, which will make you question whether what you’re throwing away really needs to go to landfill, or if it could be recycled or reused instead.
3. Increase the number of days you take a packed lunch to work, instead of eating out (this one will be good for your bank balance as well as your carbon footprint!)
4. In the same vein, if you drive to work, you could swap your car for public transport once a week, or try looking at ride share apps, or ask around work and see if anyone else makes the same journey!
5. If you have a garden, compost your own food waste rather than putting it out for collection. You can then use the compost to grow your own veg, to harvest later on in the year and impress everyone you have over for dinner.
6. Switch one trip abroad for a holiday in the UK. Get to know part of the country that you’ve never been to before and reduce your carbon emissions while you’re at it. If you’re desperate to jet off in the summer, consider swapping your flight for train travel instead. Most of Europe can be reached by train, and you may find you get to see more sights along the way.
7. Ditch fast fashion for second-hand shopping. If you need something, scout out your local charity shops or scroll through Depop and Ebay instead of hitting the high street.
8. Reduce the amount of single-use plastic you bring home in your food shop. Buy chocolate wrapped in paper and foil instead of plastic, swap your plastic-wrapped veggies for the loose option, and maybe try bringing Tupperware from home to buy cheese from the counter rather than from the shelf.
9. Get your milk delivered in a reusable glass bottle (Milk&More cover most of the UK), rather than buying it in plastic from the supermarket.
10. Challenge yourself to cut down your meat consumption – you could go vegetarian for a few meals a week, join in with Meat Free Mondays, or even cut it out altogether.
Even implementing a small green habit will create a huge difference over the course of the year. With any resolution though, it’s important to be self-compassionate – you may only keep up with your goal for a few weeks, or you may be caught out a couple of times over the year. This is totally normal, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up about it.
Any progress towards a goal is good progress, and any sustainable swap is better than no swap at all.
Written By Jasmin Perry