With Christmas slowly fading to a memory, you may well find that your New Year’s resolutions will go the same way. According to a recent survey by Sky Real Lives (found through my daily binge on Sky news), green issues feature highly in people’s resolutions but 70% of those expected failure on their part.
Personally, I recommend not calling, or thinking of them, as resolutions. It guarantees failure in my books and those of many other people I know! Look on them as lifestyle changes and rather than trying to implement them all in one go, why not try and make a change every few weeks? If you make a small change here and there you won’t notice it so much and before you know it you’ll be well on your way.
So, what sort of changes am I talking about? It’s well reported that people are becoming more and more aware of living an ethical lifestyle and taking care of the environment. After years of living in a built up town, I now live in the countryside and I think the peacefulness of it, along with the wildlife surrounding me have had a positive influence and have definitely made me more aware of my environment.
Without sounding too self-righteous, here are a few suggestions that you could use to get started both in the home and at work. They aren’t all fair trade related but I’ll continue to add to this in the future (sorry about that!):-
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Fair trade food. With the amount of choice and availability increasing there’s bound to be something you love. Why not try and switch some of your “standard” brands to fair trade? Tea, coffee, chocolate, fruit, drinks, sugar, nuts, snacks…….. even if you switch one or two brands, you will know that the farmer and workers who have produced it have received a fair price and work in fair conditions.
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Fair trade gifts and items for the home. Well, this is an obvious one to come from me I’m afraid. Although I’ve been up and running for a few months now, I’m still encountering people who aren’t quite sure of fair trade. Honestly, the quality is fantastic, the prices are nowhere near as expensive as you might think and it’s readily available!
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Support your local farmers. I dislike the way supermarket fruit and veg is all the same size and colour. They should be natural and that’s what you’ll find in farm shops. We also make full use of a local butcher where the meat is slaughtered on site and prepared to your order. There’s hardly any ever excess fat nor the watery excess that comes from some supermarket meat.
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Use recycled stationery. Refill and/or recycle your ink cartridges.
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Reduce your paper usage – email where possible. Reuse all scrap paper.
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Don’t leave electrical items on standby. So what if it only emits a small amount of energy? It all adds up. This is a big bug bear for me as it’s so wasteful. I’m always going around after people turning things off, it probably annoys them but I continue to do it!
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Use low energy light bulbs. Save some pennies and the environment. Enough said!
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Avoid excess packaging. Where possible I try to keep all fruit and veg loose and I try to check packaging on other items I use. This isn’t always possible to do but worth trying.
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Following on from the packaging – ditch the plastic and switch to a reusable bag. Our cotton bags fold up tightly and will fit into your pocket/handbag easily so you won’t be caught short.
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Recycle! In our area, we’re extremely lucky that we don’t have to sort through all of our recycling. All tins, plastic, glass, cardboard, paper etc goes into one bin. Definitely makes life a lot easier for us.There are a huge amount of fabulous gifts available made from recycled items. Why not check them out? We have a selection of items made from recycled materials and there are many more widely available on the web.
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Turn off the tap and conserve water. Need I expand?
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Following on from above, only boil the water you need. I’m using the Tefal Quick Cup which heats the exact amount of water you require at 95 degrees celsius in 3 seconds.
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eBay! Anyone that knows me will say I’m a bit of an eBay addict. I know it’s often seen as a way to pass time (skiving at work!), but its also a great way to recycle unwanted gifts, old furniture, clothes, books – pretty much anything! Not only that but it’s a great way of earning a bit of cash!
That should get you going.
