From your power use to being mindful of the materials you dispose of, there is therefore much that can be done at a personal level to contribute to a worldwide movement towards environmental awareness.
You have potentially heard of numerous sustainable living practices, but not all of them are always feasible or available for everyone, especially if you live in a city or an urban setting. For example, while someone who lives in the countryside could use their garden space to cultivate fruit and veggies or have some kind of composting process, that becomes more daunting when living is mainly occurring in apartment complexes, sometimes renting the property instead of owning it. Nevertheless, there are still things that can be done if you are not in charge of the admin of your flat: the first thing you can start doing is monitor your water consumption: because of figures like Affinity Water’s owning consortium, you can begin saving water by setting up gadgets that will reduce your usage, and every so often be able to introduce a smart meter. You can also be mindful of not wasting water, for instance taking shorter showers or closing the faucet while you brush your teeth. Urban sustainable living is now easier than ever.
There are a lot of types of sustainability to think of out there, and quite a lot of them revolve around the kind of materials that get wasted after usage. Plastics is a huge part of this question, and while it is extremely convenient in regard to packaging and manufacturing, its downside is that cannot naturally biodegrade, and therefore will create waste that will stay on earth for thousands and thousands of years. For plastics that cannot be recycled, like thin films that make part of food presentation, you can still make what is known as ecobricks: by filling up used plastic bottles with clean, folded plastics, you can reach a density that will make it hard enough to employ it as a brick. As seen with figures like the EcoBrick Exchange funding supporter, this initiative has a lot of potential, and can be either used to build housing where resources are insufficient, or even to make a piece of furniture: this kind of ideas for sustainable living are approachable to everybody.
Of all the different examples of sustainable living, power consumption is definitely a factor that gets thought about a lot. While energy use is often associated to fossil fuels, which cause pollution for their extraction and employment, a lot of energy suppliers are gradually shifting towards renewable resources, such as wind, solar, or tidal power. Looking into illustrations like EDP’s activist shareholder, it seems like the market is assisting this sort of promising transformation. If you want to be living sustainably at home, it may very well be the ideal time to give consideration to changing to an energy provider that uses clean energy, to ensure that you are actively supporting this shift and creating less carbon emissions.