Living sustainably to me (as I mention every week haha) is not just about having a good attitude towards the environment but also allowing our lifestyle to be sustainable for us. There’s no point living a highly stressed life just so you can be producing no waste and having a carbon footprint of zero. A sustainable lifestyle should be sustainable for the planet AND for you. I have been reading a lot of articles recently on whether going ‘0 waste’ is actually a viable option for many people. My degree is in environmental science with human and physical geography so I am really interested in disparities between humans due to their socio-economic status. This specific article actually said that this 0 waste, healthy living sustainable lifestyle was only for people in the middle class with a lot of spare time on their hands and some extra money.
What I took away from this article is that not everyone has spare time to drive all the way to a famers market just to get seasonal local produce and not everyone has the time or access to shops where you can bulk buy oats for the month in refillable containers. I don’t drive and therefore I am confined to Keele campus unless I get a bus to Hanley. Firstly I don’t know of any shops in the local area where I can take my own containers and fill them up to reduce plastic waste and I don’t know any local farmers markets where I can get local produce whilst on a student budget. Even at home (whilst I don’t live in a city) I do not know of any shops like this in the area. Now I have a lovely home but the town I live in is much like Newcastle-Under-Lyme, mainly made up of bargain shops and charity shops. I feel in wealthier and possibly more ‘hipster’ areas like London and Brighton there would be a greater option of access to more sustainable resources like a shop where you can take your own containers to refill and there being better access to vegan restaurants and local produce. However, having said this I think in some places there just isn’t the demand for services like this maybe due to lack of education on sustainable living. For example my local town has a Facebook group page that anyone can post on. Most posts get around 20-30 comments depending on the topic. Last week there was a topic about possibly having a shop where you can take your refillable containers and only 7 people seemed interested by reacting to this post. This is one of the reasons why I believe it is so important to encourage children in schools to learn about being eco friendly and looking after our planet. At the end of the day it is this generation which will be dealing with the consequences in the future.
I don’t think people should be spending hours of their days just going out of their way to get access to more sustainable products. I feel like it should be something that should just be incorporated into everyday lives. Not everyone has the time to live a zero waste lifestyle. But everyone has the capability to make more sustainable choices; even something as small as taking their own shopping bags to the supermarket or composting any food waste. Simple things like this are what we are trying to encourage on campus and to everyone in their everyday lives. Don’t cause yourself stress over every small thing you do that is not deemed sustainable. Instead learn from what you have done and how you can make that choice more sustainable next time. For example say you forget your bags at the shops, buy more bags for life and just keep reusing them - they are brilliant for moving stuff in and out of uni when it comes to the end of the year. Don’t stay up all night transferring bulk items into mini containers, whilst everyone wants kitchen cupboards as aesthetic and as organised as Lily’s I personally don’t have time for this! Also some people spend their lives living pay check to pay check with their payslips going straight on rent, bills, childcare and food. Not everyone can afford to buy a months worth of food in one go. Whilst it can be cheaper in the long run not everyone has access to that amount of money at once and they find it easier to buy smaller amounts over a long period of time, similar to buying a phone outright or having it on a monthly contract.
In conclusion not everyone has the capability of living fully sustainable lifestyle the way it is presented on social media like Instagram and YouTube and we shouldn’t feel guilty for this. At the end of the day social media only shows us one side of the story and not what is happening behind the camera. I’m a strong believer of not believing everything we read online, I feel like we can be encouraged and motivated by it but we should never feel ashamed that we’re not doing enough. Making sustainable choices that fit into our lifestyles is a great start at making our lives as students greener!
