Beginner’s Guide to Sustainable Living and Zero Waste – 10 Easy Tips

I wanted to go back to the basics with this blog post. I’ve always aimed for my content to be completely beginner friendly, however I’ve never actually sat down and outlined a beginner’s guide to sustainable living to help people get started with it.

I discussed this a little in my recent post about what stops people from living sustainably, but more people are interested in making their lifestyle for sustainable – however, they don’t always know where to start. It can seem daunting and there’s a common misconception that it will cost you money or your time.

This is simply not the case and I’ll show you how in my beginner’s guide to sustainable living below.

What Is Sustainable Living?

Before we get started with the practical tips, I thought it was important to answer the question what is sustainable living first, to give you an idea of what it all means.

Sustainable living is a way of life that means that you avoid anything in your lifestyle that could be potentially harmful to our planet. This could mean by choosing eco friendly products when you shop and reducing your personal or household’s carbon footprint in general.

The definition from Wikipedia is as follows:

“Sustainable living describes a lifestyle that attempts to reduce an individual’s or society’s use of the Earth’s natural resources, and one’s personal resources. It is often called as “earth harmony living” or “net zero living”. Its practitioners often attempt to reduce their ecological footprint (including their carbon footprint) by altering their methods of transportation, energy consumption, and/or diet. Its proponents aim to conduct their lives in ways that are consistent with sustainability, naturally balanced, and respectful of humanity’s symbiotic relationship with the Earth’s natural ecology.”

My favourite way of describing sustainable living would be to say that it’s a constant process of eliminating parts of your life which could be potentially harmful to the environment. That doesn’t mean that you have to be perfect though, it’s about doing what you can with your personal circumstances and limits. This post what you need to know about sustainability goes into more detail about this.

What Is Zero Waste?

I’ve wrote a blog post earlier on in the year, is zero waste possible. In this post I talk a lot about the history behind zero waste. However, zero waste was never meant to be for individuals. The term does mean the practice of creating little to no waste, but it was created with businesses in mind. So what is zero waste?

Zero-Waste adjective

Variations – Zero Waste

Definition: generating little or no waste e.g a zero waste event or zero waste manufacturing

zero waste noun

The creative waste management strategy of “zero waste” is a combination of community and industrial responsibility deconstruction in spite of demolition, composting to keep odorous organic waste out of landfills, recycling and a screening facility to allow more separation and reuse of waste rather than incineration. – Aimee Dolloff

Bea Johnson made the term popular when she created her blog Zero Waste Home in the 21st century and now it’s commonly recognised as a lifestyle that seeks to produce the smallest amount of waste.

I think the main issue with the term zero waste is that it seems a little intimidating. When people usually think of zero waste, they think of the mason jar to put plastic in and that can seem a bit unattainable to some people. I did actually avoid using the term zero waste for a while because I thought ‘sustainable living’ sounded much more reachable, however zero waste is very widely recognised so I do use the term a bit more now.

That-being-said I’m definitely not someone who produces ‘zero waste’. I’m working towards it but it’s definitely not something that I can do overnight. I think this will be the case for most people and that’s completely fine.

Why Is Sustainability Important?

At this point you may be wondering why is sustainability important? Well first of all, let’s look at the definition for sustainability.

“Sustainability: the idea that goods and services should be produced in ways that do not use resources that cannot be replaced and that do not damage the environment:”

Dictionary Cambridge

Sustainability in more detail, can also be broken down into the following sections:

• Environmental Protection – the protection of the natural world
• Social Development – seeking to make lives better for individuals and therefore society as a whole
• Economic Development – the process of changing and growing the economy to the benefit of everyone

All of these sections are equally important for sustainability in general.

If you’re not familiar with these business terms, you might still be wondering so why is sustainability important? Well sustainability is quite literally essential for humans to continue to live on this planet. Scientists have been telling us for years that our planet is in trouble and now we have approximately 9 years until we’ve done irreversible damage.

This is of course extremely terrifying but I think it’s so important to remember when answering why is sustainability important. Now’s not the time to bury our heads in the sand, sustainability is so important and although it shouldn’t just be put on consumers to change the world – there are some things that we can do to help.

If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed and you think you may be suffering from eco anxiety, consider reading my blog post as I have lots of practical tips to cope with it.

10 Main Tips For Getting Started With Sustainable Living

Now we’ve got to the main tips for this beginner’s guide to sustainable living. There is a lot of information here so if you feel a bit overwhelmed then save the post and come back to it later.

I know that everyone does things at a different pace and just because I’ve provided these tips for getting started with sustainable living – it doesn’t mean you have to do everything straight away.

1. Assess

Assess your personal or household’s carbon footprint, this is a great place to start because you can then see if there’s any part of your lifestyle that you can adjust in any way. I have done a video on my YouTube channel with some tips for calculating your carbon footprint. If you’re a big fan of filling out quizzes and calculating, you might want to give it a watch.

If not, my favourite calculator that I used was the Climate Hero calculator although the WWF calculator is also very popular. Regardless of your result though, please don’t feel guilty about it. The reason I recommend this is because it’s a great way to establish the impact of different areas of your life.

I found out earlier on in the year that BP popularised the term ‘Carbon footprint’ to push the responsibility back onto consumers, they created a carbon footprint calculator back in the early 2000’s as a manipulative PR stunt. How sneaky is that!

That-being-said I do still think that using a carbon footprint calculator can be helpful and therefore I’m recommending it in this beginner’s guide to sustainable living.

2. Be A Conscious Consumer

I always say that mindful purchases are soo important. What I mean by this, is really think about where and what you spend your money on. It’s such an important one, research about brands before you buy anything from them and watch out for greenwashing. It’s about time that people stop giving their money to unethical and unsustainable brands. It’s all to do with supply and demand and if we continue to buy things from these brands, then they will continue to make these products and nothing will change.

“As consumers, we have so much power to change the world by just being careful in what we buy.”

– Emma Watson

If you don’t have the time to research for each brand that you buy, consider using Good On You app for fashion, this eco friendly app is a great way to check individual brands and see how they are rated. These type of apps are so helpful for people trying to be a conscious consumer.

It might also help to follow people on social media, I generally learn about sustainable brands on Instagram and that’s really helpful when you know you might need to buy something.

Something else that I think is worth mentioning is that buying less in general is very important as well, ie taking more of a minimal approach to your lifestyle. Pretty much everything you buy new will have a carbon footprint so buying less is one of my favourite tips for getting started with sustainable living.

If you want to learn more about eco friendly habits for everyday life, you can read my post.

3. Do A Plastic Audit

This is a really useful tip that I wanted to include in this beginner’s guide to sustainable living.

In 2020 I took part in the Everyday Plastic Survey which is a survey in the UK where several people collected plastic for a week and recorded the results so we could see what we could change in our household to create less plastic waste. This was really eye opening for me and ever since I’ve been doing plastic audits, which I usually share on Instagram. I do this to document my progress over time.

Doing a plastic audit can really help you to see just how much plastic waste you are throwing away so you then know what you can work on eliminating. When you see the plastic laid out on the floor it can really be quite shocking but it’s quite an important step of the process. Sometimes we don’t really quite know how much we are putting in the bin. I certainly didn’t and I found this experience really useful.

4. Take One Swap At A Time

One of the best tips for getting started with sustainable living, is to pick just one thing that you can swap or change in your lifestyle. The idea is if you just concentrate on that one thing that you can change – you are less likely to feel like you have to give up, because you can’t do everything.

Once you’ve changed that one aspect of your lifestyle, then you can try swapping to plastic free or zero waste items throughout the rest of your house. I concentrated on my bathroom products first and then moved onto the kitchen. You can do whatever works best for you, you could just go with something simple like a reusable water bottle or reusable bags to start. I have a post with some of the best zero waste kitchen essentials if you’d like some specific suggestions.

When I first decided to go on my journey to zero waste last year, it was really tempting to just swap everything in my house and throw away everything that’s made from plastic – but of course that’s not the answer. Plus that’s incredibly wasteful and not good for the environment.

The most sustainable item is the one you already own so if you have plastic sandwiches boxes for example, you don’t need to throw them away to replace with glass or stainless steel. Using what you already have is always the best option.

5. Buy Everything Second-hand

This is my favourite tip because I like to think of myself as the thrifting queen! It’s been almost a challenge for me over the years to buy everything that I can second-hand or refurbished.

Not a lot of people are aware of this but brand new clothes are really bad for the environment, not to mention the unethical practices in sweatshops. Second-hand clothes are fairly easy to find in the UK, we have charity shops and online there’s Depop Ebay and Facebook Marketplace that you can find lots of secondhand clothes for children and adults. If you want more ideas on where to buy thrift clothes online and offline, you can read my post on this subject.

The only thing that I buy new is pants and socks, for obvious reasons.

The same applies to things in my home such as furniture and tech items. I always buy these secondhand or refurbished, not only does it save you so much money – it’s also much better for the environment.

If you think about it, these items are already in circulation so when you buy them it doesn’t trigger a manufacturer to make more. The biggest part of it’s carbon footprint was when it was being produced as a new item and then transported.

6. Consider Other Modes Of Transportation

I know for some people, having a car is quite important. Certain areas are definitely difficult to get around when they don’t have bicycle lanes or if the public transport is unreliable.

However, if you can walk or cycle on certain journeys it’s much better for the environment and your health.

Making use of public transport as well if you can, is another option if the distance you need to travel is quite far.

If you find that you are someone that does require a car, consider running errands together and avoid using your car for short journeys at all. I’m quite stubborn and always walk the school run regardless of the weather, it’s a 10 minute walk and so I’m fortunate enough not to need the car to take my son to school. This might not be an option for you and that’s ok.

Another thing you can do is to consider car sharing for certain journeys such as to work or anything else. There are even apps now where you can put your journey in and request if anyone can take you anywhere or you can offer other people a lift. It’s like a modern way of hitchhiking and not with the purpose of saving money, with the purpose of reducing your impact from travel.

If you can afford to get a hybrid car or an electric car, that would be an amazing next step. I have dreams of owning an electric car one day in the future.

7. Go Paperless

This is quite a simple one but all of those bank statements and bills that you might receive in the post, switch to paperless. You might already be aware of this but most bills etc can be viewed online so there’s usually not much need to receive the copies in the post. Plus of course it saves paper when you request to go paperless.

There’s also a service in the UK with Royal Mail that you can request to opt-out of receiving advertisers leaflets in the mail aka junk mail. All I had to do was write to the Freepost address and ask to opt-out, they then sent me a form to fill out and return.

8. Reduce Your Meat And Dairy Consumption

This will likely be an unpopular one for some people, however animal agriculture is one of the leading causes of global warming and deforestation. The trouble is that the population has grown so much in recent times that the demand for meat has grown to a stage that it’s just not sustainable. It is thought that there’s 150 billions animals killed every year for meat, which is just crazy. Eating beef once a day is calculated as producing approximately 5 tonnes of Co2 per year and therefore if you consume a lot of meat and dairy products that will make up a big part of your overall carbon footprint.

I would never assume that everyone could go vegan, that would be really closed-minded. It’s not going to be possible for everyone, however if everyone made an effort to reduce their meat and dairy consumption – that would make such a big difference.

In the western world we have become so far removed from nature in how we eat, everything is prepacked and bought in the supermarket. Eating a more plant-based diet is better environmentally. Plus eating local and in season, fruit and vegetables would reduce your footprint even further.

I genuinely love to hear when people are trying Veganuary or Meatless Mondays, it does always help. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing when it comes to trying to live more sustainably.

9. Avoid Flying

I’m sometimes a bit reluctant to talk about flying because I know that for some people, flying is necessary for their job or to visit family in other countries. However flying and especially long flights are particularly bad for our environment.

If you can avoid flying altogether that’s great, consider if there’s another way you can get to your destination eg a train or ferry?

If flying is your only option then another way you can absolve any guilt is to offset your carbon footprint. Most places that offset either do this by planting trees or investing in environmental schemes. I don’t think this is essential though, avoiding flying is the best tip for getting started with sustainable living and if you can afford to, consider offsetting.

I’ve heard that a lot of airlines these days are offering customers to offset their carbon footprint which is a bit sneaky in my opinion. They’re pushing the responsibility off of them and they still get to make money from customers so it’s essentially greenwashing.

10. Switch To A Green Bank & A Green Energy Supplier

I’ve written a blog post about switching to a green bank and switching to a green energy supplier, so check those out if you want to learn which are the green banks and green energy suppliers in the UK.

However, I switched to a green energy supplier back in 2019 and I chose one with 100% renewable electricity and they offset the carbon for the gas that I use. Switching to a green energy supplier was such a simple process and I would recommend anyone gives it a go, if they can.

Switching to a green bank, might not be a possibility to everyone. When I mentioned to my family that several of the main banks in the UK are funding fossil fuels and deforestation, they were shocked! A few family members mentioned that they were unable to switch currently due to mortgages and other commitments to these banks.

Due to this I know switching to a green bank, might not be an option for everyone. However, if it something that you can do – it’s such a great way to get started with sustainable living. If you switch banks, make sure you tell the bank why you are switching to a different bank!

I hope these tips for getting started with sustainable living have been helpful. I know it’s a lot of information in this beginner’s guide to sustainable living, so I hope that I didn’t overwhelm you. If you’re looking for a guide to zero waste & DIY cleaning products for some more tips.

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