With the clocks going forward and more daylight hours it’s the perfect time to start spending more time connecting to the earth and spending time outdoors. It’s also a brilliant time to start thinking about how you can introduce more sustainable swaps into your everyday life.
Whilst a quick search of #sustainableswaps on Instagram will leave your feed filled with products that you can buy to be more sustainable I’m a believer in the idea that sustainability shouldn’t be expensive. So here’s three simple things I’m doing this spring to be a little more sustainable that don’t cost the earth.
Using less water
I am so bad for using far too much water. The problem I have is that I don’t have a proper shower in my bathroom. We live in an old cottage which has a rather odd shaped bathroom which makes it difficult to put up a shower curtain so our landlord never fitted an electric shower. Instead we have a shower attachment for our bath taps.
Most days when I have a shower I will be sat in the bath and so my shower ends up being more of a bath. I never used to spend ages in the shower but since I’ve started working from home and no longer have the time pressure of catching a train in the morning I’ve started to really enjoy that time to myself in the morning. But I also know that it’s a bit of a bad habit to have gotten into. I feel like I’m using a lot of water, which from a sustainability perspective isn’t great, especially as our boiler is not particularly energy efficient so heating the water is wasteful in many ways.
The water industry currently makes up around 1% of the UK’s annual carbon footprint. When you think about it that’s huge. Obviously those emissions aren’t going to be eliminated simply through reducing water use in the home but it doesn’t mean it’s not worth being more mindful in our water use.
It’s also really easy to do. I’ve started setting a timer on my phone to make sure I don’t spend more than four minutes in the shower – including the blast of cold water I try to include before getting out. Cold water has so many benefits and while I would love to be able to go wild swimming every morning, a blast of cold water is an easy way to get some of the benefits without leaving the house. I’m also loving the four minute song playlist that Yorkshire Water have created.
It’s not just my morning shower that I’m keeping an eye on either. I’ve always been pretty good at turning the tap off rather than letting the water run while I’m brushing my teeth or washing my face but I’ve recently started putting the plug in to collect the water to use to water our houseplants rather than let it go to waste. I’ve also ordered a free water saving kit – if you are in the UK check out savewatersavemoney.co.uk to see if you can get a free products to reduce your household water use. It’s another really simple thing that can have a impact on water use.
Reducing plastic in our shopping
Next on my task list for sustainable swaps this spring is reducing the plastic in our shopping. We were actually doing really well at plastic-free shopping back last year before lockdown as we tended to shop locally at small grocers and a farm shop close to where we live. But when the lockdown came in we found that doing one big supermarket shop made things easier.
We established a routine where N would go to a supermarket on a Monday evening and try to buy everything we needed for the week ahead. It reduced the number of trips we needed to make out of the house and meant N could go later in the evening when the shops were quieter. But it also meant an increase in the amount of packaging – not just from swapping from our local farm shop but because choices are often limited by the end of the day.
While we do try to recycle as much as we can I know this is far from a silver bullet and many items simply can’t be recycled. So this spring I want to get back on track with our plastic-free shopping.
Luckily for us our town has a brilliant packaging-free shop that we can get refills of a lot of the products that we use. I’m hoping that the easing in lockdown restrictions will also make it easier to get back to shopping at smaller, local shops.
I have made this slightly harder for myself by going fully plant-based (a change that was a long time coming) as some of the brilliant plant-based options that are available come in plastic packaging. But I’m not going to aim for zero-waste as that feels like a whole extra level of pressure. For now the focus is on reducing rather than eliminating our plastic consumption.
Growing more veg
When we lived down in Hampshire we had an allotment and it was amazing (you can hear me wax lyrical about the joy of allotment gardening in episode 3 and episode 5 of The Intentional Mum. A ridiculous amount of hard work, especially keeping on top of the weeds but amazing nonetheless. Since moving back to Yorkshire I’ve really missed the constant supply of produce that our allotment gave us.
We don’t have a big garden at the moment and the huge sycamore tree at the bottom of it casts a shadow over most of the garden during the summer – less than ideal for growing veggies. But last spring we made a couple raised beds and successfully grew some vegetables, including an abundance of Brussel sprouts.
There’s something wonderful about growing your own vegetables, not least because home grown almost always tastes better. I love summer days spent pottering around the garden checking how all my plants are getting on. But in order to achieve that summer dream there needs to be a bit of work during the spring.
I’m a big fan of no-dig gardening and of being fairly relaxed about how I sow my plants. I’d much rather have a pumpkin plant nestled between a rosebush and a sprinkling of salad leaves than worry too much about neat drills. So while this generally reduces the amount of work in gardening there’s still a fair amount of time to be spent outside in less-than-brilliant spring weather.
It’s part of the reason why my gardening plans can sometimes fall by the wayside. But I’m determined to remind myself that putting in the work now is worth it – especially if it means reducing our shopping bills (and the plastic in our shopping). And this year I get the even greater joy of introducing R to the wonder of planting and growing.
Being more sustainable doesn’t have to be complicated or costly. It really can be simple changes that we can all make without overhauling our lifestyles.
Let me know if you are planning some simple sustainable swaps for spring.
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