Revisited Jan 2025
Last year I wrote a blog post that listed a number of ways to save the planet. Today I revisited that list to see how well I did in achieving the list of promises
1. Washing – what if we shower in cold water sometimes, its supposedly good for you, invigorating they say. The energy usually used to heat the water could be saved for something else. I have not manged to wash in cold or even lukewarm water this year, instead I have sometimes cut down the amount of hot water I use for showering and baths. Saving 10-15%, I wonder if I can cut down further???
2. Laundry – what if we halved our washing cycles by wearing less outfits? I’ve found myself dressing for the pub, or yoga first thing, and then wearing some outfits for two days in a row, which I reckon to myself is probably acceptable when camping, so why not at home?! 30 degree washes beat 40 degree washes, the cooller the better. This resolution really took off by the end of this year and when working from home I found I could wear the same outfit for three days running, up to two days and a night out; baggy clothes are especially useful.
3. Soap and Plastic – Replace your bottled bath products with bars of soap, instead of shower gel, shampoo, and conditioner, imagine how many plastic bottles you could save every year with these new fangled bars?! Soap is ideally organic, or at least free of petrochemicals, so not to pollute the waterways and harm the wildlife. New Year’s Resolution 2024 is to migrate over to refillable shampoo and conditioner and continuewith bars of soap instead of shower gel. Refillable washing up liquid, laundry and bleach, but alas, still going through those shampoo bottles.
4. Food – go raw if you can handle it, haha, it’s meant to be super good for you. Then, most ecological after that, is vegan. Let’s say a 50:50 veg:non veg flexitarian saves 30% of GHGs, so being part time vegan knocks out a nice chunk of your footprint, and you get to eat more vitamins and minerals too. Hurray, my favourite promise, I ate lots of tasty food ths year, check out my Recipes for vegan inspiration if you are stuck
5. Locavore – shop local and seasonal to avoid the airline/shipping fuel on imports. Aaargh this is tough, I do love chocolate and bananas
6. Avoid packaged foods, or buy products with biodegradable/recyclable packaging only, such as brown paper bags. Not too shabby as I eat mainly whole foods, but could do better. Lots of soft plastic wrap on the veggies. I guess I should be looking at how to avoid plastic entirely…
7. Clothes – what if we wore our clothes until they fell apart instead of palming them off to charity, or worse yet throwing them away, many of us could probably halve our clothes shopping bill. Very difficult to maintain, but feel like I have stopped shopping, can I keep it going for another year?!
8. Heat – get decent loft insulation, install solar panels, wear more jumpers and furry slipper boots in the winter. I remember sleeping in a wood cabin one winter, it got to -15 degrees and I was sat in bed wrapped in jumpers, cardigan, woolly hat and gloves with my breath coming out in clouds of steam, yet I survived and was quite warm and cosy too. Always found wearing a scarf or a hat and my slipper boots
9. Cars – Don’t own a car or don’t use it as much as you used to, instead use trains, bicycles, walks, busses and community car share schemes. Work from home more, use the time saved in travelling to do something for yourself. Looking into buying an electric car, secong hand, or can I get away without it? Hmmm…
11. Create a craft box with old envelopes, packaging, chocolate wrappers etc to make your own cards, gift tags, shopping lists etc (this is one example of Reduce, which comes before everything else). I have not created a ‘Making Box’ this year but I did buy recyclable wrapping paper that wasn’t wraped in cellophane. My mum had saved so much paper from Christmas past that there were 15 different types of paper under the tree. Every little helps!
12. Compost your kitchen waste, and identify suppliers of biodegradable/compostable packaging when ordering online shopping. In fact recycle anything and everything that you can: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! This is difficult when there aren’t recycling spaces, but the more we recycle, the less we land fill, and the less finds it ways into the oceans and rivers. I have been freakig out about micro plastic this Christmas, hundreds of thousands of pieces in just a litre of water. What have we done to our planet?
If you want to know how well you are doing in saving carbon emissions and their equivalents, here is a survey designed by WWF:https://footprint.wwf.org.uk.
Sarasvati Flow 