Sustainability – A Pretty Interesting Journey

Over the part couple of weeks I’ve become more interested in environmentalism and sustainability. You hear a lot about this topic on social media like going to a zero-waste lifestyle, minimalism, switching to a vegetarian/vegan diet etc. etc. And I’ve been seeing this a lot more recently on my social media feed. Maybe it’s because of the people I follow like Jack and Finn Harries, two creaters who are very much involved in taking action against climate change and living in a sustainable world, or maybe it’s because I watched Our Planet on Netflix and got inspired.

Either way, here I am now diving head first into this topic and trying to see how I can change my habits, become a more consious consumer, and just have a more sustainable lifestyle. Here in this blog post, I’m just going to scratch the surface of this topic, and some of the ways that I’ve been trying to live a more sustainable lifes. It’s all still a big learning process for me, my journey is just beginning.

What is Sustainability?

In short, sustainability looks to protect our natural environment, human and ecological health, while driving innovation and not compromising our current way of life or the ability of future generations to meet their own needs [source | source]. It draws on politics, economics and, philosophy and other social sciences as well as hard sciences in order to share the planet and create a livable future for everything inhabiting the Earth [source | source].

Sustainable Living – My Journey So Far

When I search “Sustainable living” on Youtube, the first videos I see are DIYs and life hacks to living a zero-waste lifestyle, minimalism for beginners, and the simple how-to videos on how to live a sustainable lifestyle. It’s nice to see that there are many people covering these topics, but it was pretty daunting to see how many videos there actual were to being eco-friendly. I didn’t know where to start – which one should I watch first? Which one has more reasonable solutions for my current situation? Which one would actually help me and resonate with me and inspire me to change my ways and stick to it?

As I was scrolling endlessly through the list of videos, I realized that I didn’t exactly know how what I was doing effected the environment. I knew that living sustainable would help reduce my carbon footprint, but I didn’t know how it would help and why it would help. I just had general knowledge, like how plastic is bad, that the meat industry is a major contributor to CO2 emissions, general stuff like that that I learned in my classes. I also felt that I wasn’t totally motivated to change as I felt unequipped to do so effectively.

So I dove deeper into Youtube and found Our Changing Climate and Levi Hildebrand. Our Changing Climate is a channel that makes very well made, informative and insightful video essays that looks at humanity’s relationship with the natural world and have video topics that include: Is fast fashion destroying our environment? and Why is Fjällräven so expensive? Levi “Save the World” Hildebrand’s channel is that it’s a channel that “proves that you don’t need to be a hero to save the plant” (that’s his actual catch-phrase and I love it). He showcases innovations and shares the information you need to help make the world a better place with videos such as Can You Be One Percent Better? (Earth day 2019) and The Truth About Tentree?. Honestly, both were such great channels to start my journey off with and I highly reccomend checking them out! Links to their socials are down below!

Powered with new inspiration and insights into sustainability, I watched even more videos. I’ve been slowly changing my thought processes when purchasing items and also changing the way I eat. I found these two videos to be really insightful beginners guides to sustainable living:

3 keys to START Sustainable living

A Beginner’s Guide: How To Be More Sustainable

So far, some of the things I’ve been doing and trying my best to stick to are:

Shifting my diet to a more plant-based diet
Using a metal straw instead of plastic ones and being consious of single-use plastics
I got a Kindle E-reader to reduce the amount of physical books I buy
I’ve been trying my best to avoid fast-fashion
And I’ve been trying to educate myself more on good companies – i.e. companies that are ethically and sustainably good (like Patagonia)

Overall, I’ve been trying my best to think about what I’m buying, why I’m buying it, and if I am supporting something good. This is not going to be a super easy change. I’m roughly two weeks in and I’m just starting to get used to everything and this new mindset. There are so many things to learn and to think about in this field. For example, there are somethings that might seem environmentally/eco-freindly but actually aren’t.

7 “Eco-Friendly” Habits That Are Mostly Just Money-Wasters | The Financial Diet

So far, I feel like I’m doing pretty well. I hope to learn more and be able to communicate what I’ve learn to all of you guys, and learn from you guys as well.

I’m still pretty new to this topic so please just bare with me if I get something wrong or don’t explain a certain aspect correctly (just comment down below or send me a message. It’s a journey, if you’ve read this far, then thanks so much! I hope to post more updates and insights in the coming weeks 🙂