To ask what sacrifices you make for the environment

[HarryElephante]

So, do you make any? And I mean actual sacrifices. Not just putting recycling outside your front door or re-using old shopping bags.

And for the sake of this question, I will assume you agree we are harming the planet. If you don't agree that is for another thread!

I make annoyingly few sacrifices but am going to start.

We have sacrificed choice, convenience, time and money to be greener. BUT what we do isn't really a sacrifice. It's a lifestyle choice.

We live without a second car. I've bought a tandem bike to act as our second car. Most journeys where we'd benefit from a second car (due to busy lifestyle, time and conflicting timetables) are less than a kilometre so we're doing without.

We stopped at two children.

Every choice we make one of the main considerations is environmental.

We only fly every three years. Short haul.

We buy milk in glass bottles - though it's expensive so if we had to economise this would be one of the first things to go.

We recycle everything we can

We buy second hand whenever possible

Our food waste is only peelings and shells, so they are composted.

Our landfill bin is only ever half full and goes out once per month

Our energy costs are low (only £60 pcm for both has and electricity) family of 4

I only wash bed linen and towels every two weeks (though I'd like to do it more often) to save water and electricity.

I make my own laundry powder and don't use fabric conditioner

We have many meat free days

We have used sandwich wrappers, metal straws, reusable cups, reusable bags, reusable nappies and san pro for about 12-15 years now

We love our gadgets but buy those second hand too.

I say no to the children about many things.

We have fewer toys and clothes than many of our friends.

We support environmental charities

We do our best and are always willing to do more.

We put extra insulation into our attic and tried to get solar panels - but our roof is the wrong way round. D'oh.

All journeys done by car are maximised so we accomplish several tasks on the same trip - to avoid making lots of little trips. This often means our house is a state while we wait to take things to recycling or charity shop.

We try and grow our own food too and buy local/in season.

I don't really see much of the changes I've made as a sacrifice. Some where concious environmental changes and some are economical but do have an environmental impact.

-Longterm use of a menstural cup(also gave one to teenage daughter) and cloth pads.
-Walk to work, don't drive(use public transport).
-Mostly cook from scratch.
-Use reusable shopping bags and have done so for over 15 years.
-Line dry clothes weather permitting.
-Don't wash clothes if only worn for a few hours.
-Dry hair naturally.
-Use extra clothes throws etc. to reduce heating use.
-Never use conditioner and use soap powder to avoid plastic use.
-Bar soap instead of shower gel and refillable shampoo.
-Don't buy meat and only eat if free. Dh works in food industry so --brings home leftover foods (company allow) which would otherwise be wasted which I reuse in family meals.
-Reuse leftovers for lunch.
-Go by smell sight not use by date for food.
-Compost food waste. Rarely peel vegetables so cut down on food waste. I do buy organic carrots.
-Haven't got any pets.
-Forage for free food.
-Grow nettles in garden.

-Can't afford expensive ethical brands so most of my clothes are second hand or from Uniqlo which wear well . Haven't bought any new clothes or footwear this year.

• Iron clothes only for formal occasions.Try to source clothes that don't require ironing.

-Use cloths instead of wipes. -Avoid use of cling film. Have reusable covers for food containers in fridge. -Don't update technology with latest models.

• Use old items rather than replace. I have odd plates etc. and would love from an asthetic point of view to replace my tatty saucepans but cannot justify replacing.
• Buy loose tea . Have a flask with a tea strainer for work.

Negatives
-Both my family and DH's live overseas so diffcult to see them without flying.
-Dh has a diesel car which he uses to go to work but we plan to replace as soon as we can afford to.
-Need to grow more fruit and vegetables.
-Packaging from supermarket shopping. Have still too much plastic waste.
-Need to update our boiler to a more energy efficent one.

• Haven't got a water butt for the garden.

I use the following website to learn what I can do help the environment. It's free to join.
www.greenredeem.co.uk/earn-detail/referafriend-45896
You earn points for doing environmental quizes, making pledges, or watching videos. The change the topics monthly. You can use the points you earn on various rewards usually discounts or to enter their montly prize draws .This month the prize draw is every two weeks
You can also donate points earned to charity.
In some areas you also earn points for recycling and water use.

Stopped at 2 children.

Walk everywhere and have not flown for 6 years.

Recycle everything possible, buy second hand and declutter on a quarterly basis
for the charity shops.

We already go for the plastic free option where possible and there is a wormery in the garden.

We have planted a lot of herbs, bee-friendly flowers and vegetables this year. I don't use pesticides or weedkiller either. Next up is a bug hotel and some running water for animals to drink from.

Finally, I am trying to convert my family to vegan or vegetarian meals for two days a week. It's bloody hard going! Ideally, I would like to switch the ratio's around so 75% of our weekly meals are meat free.

@TeacupDrama yes you’re right some isn’t suitable for growing plants and those areas can be rewilded. If you look a few pages back you’ll also see a study which says grass fed meat is not a solution.

I try not to drive less than three miles.
Sometimes it’s an absolute joy to walk or cycle instead - and sometimes it’s wet cold dark exhausting (hilly city) and downright dangerous. So yes, sometimes it’s a sacrifice.
Also we chose to live in a place where we are not reliant on the car. As housing is much more expensive here we sacrifice daily space in our home to live here in walking/cycling distance of everything.

I walk or cycle everywhere I can but tbh that's mainly because I hate driving.

I also have no children but again, because I don't want any rather than through a noble sacrifice.

I don't make any.

I mean I do things that help the environment but they aren't a sacrifice. I pay a little more for things or try and save energy a bit but essentially I do nothing. I guess the only thing that put me out a bit was using cloth nappies.

Genuine question, did anybody really give up having kids purely for environmental causes despite being ragingly broody and having means to look after extra child? Or they just didn't feel like having one, enjoying rewards of childfree lifestyle/smaller family too much and environmental reason seems like another good reason not to add a child?

I don't know what I've done that feels like genuine sacrifice.
Not having a car? Again, not exactly a problem with London and Uber, even though I'd have liked to have taken kids to forests, National Trusts, quiet beaches and pick-your-own farms.

Not giving up flights - but my lame excuse, it is cultural education for kids. If we want beach, we got Devon/Cornwall - no interest in Spain.

Cloth nappies on all my 3 kids - again, I am glad I made effort and it turned out not to be too bad, I didn't become slave to washing machine as imagined.

I really want all my food to have as little eco footprint as possible and make huge effort accordingly, but still failing. But I also have my health to consider. Banana from Ecuador may be better than local lamb meat but high carb plant based diet just wrecks my PCOS-addled body.

I wish we had good friends helping each other out. People around me are even less interested than me. I better get cracking on anyhow.

HarryElephante You have admitted you don't do anything for the environment - well some of us have a lifetime of activism behind us.
You assume I haven't looked into the subject, and you are wrong.

Veganism has a high carbon footprint, the food relies heavily on imports, it still relies on monocrops and agribusiness, and for those reasons it is not sustainable.

If you understood how farming actually works in real life, not just in a neat exercise on paper, you'd understand why cutting meat consumption is less important that stopping monoculture and reducing imports.
Some farms can only grow grass. They cannot grow any other crop. You cannot eat grass, but hardly sheep and cattle breeds can.
Veganism would take these farms out of food production altogether, and that means veganism would produce less food. Not more.
Vegan farming methods are unsustainable as they need land to lie fallow or grow green manure for one year.
Another field has to be taken out of food production to grow the seed crops for the green manure.

Small mixed farms are more productive than large scale ones, they employ more people, and they use land that agribusiness cant be bothered with. that brings more land into food production.

Small mixed farms are more resistant to climate change and other disasters such as pests or diseases, they are more flexible and responsive to market changes, mostly because they don't rely on one crop.
They are better able to work with the environment and retain hedges and wildlife.

Buy the least that you can and ad much local produce as much as you can. Thats the best choice you can make if you care about the environment.

Permaculture farming isn't a new concept. I read Omnivore Dilemma many years ago. Shame it hasn't taken off as much as I hoped it would.

I don't know what I've done that feels like genuine sacrifice.

Yeah I’m not sure how much of anyone’s behaviour on here could be described as sacrifice. What people are doing are things that make sense to them for other reasons and/or are easy. Let’s face it, a keep cup isn’t a sacrifice

Like for us, we didn’t want to be car dependent anyway, so we organised our life so we didn’t have to. But it isn’t a sacrifice and it isn’t purely for environmental reasons.

Going vegan would feel like a sacrifice to me. Notably, I haven’t done it.

well some of us have a lifetime of activism behind us

Lifetime in activism for what cause(s) ? It's kind if relevant to the rest of your post.

@kiki I have read the 3 references even with the grass fed beef they are actually talking about grass fed animals on arable land not hill farms, so while not disagreeing with you entirely I am saying that eating meat is a bit more nuanced than some think.
I am well aware that though counter intuitive it might well be better to eat Kenyan tomatoes grown without the need for heated greenhouses etc than local ones using heated greenhouses it is very complex and the food miles question is not easy
I would agree regarding pork, chicken and some beef that large amounts of land are being used to feed animals to feed us
however none of the resources actually looked at animals that rarely if ever require feeding and are on non arable land
I am not an expert everything but I know quite a lot about the history of agriculture and livestock in the highlands of Scotland
This was always subsistence living but the highlands were always populated with wild deer for venison wild grazing sheep for wool and male lambs for meat ( the sheep would typically only be rounded up twice a year once for shearing and again brought down closer to village for lambing) the few highland cattle would mostly be used for milk and hence cheese) and plenty of salmon, mackerel and shellfish seasonally, until the clearances when greedy landowners decided that livestock and birds for shooting were more important than people the community and the animal eating were sustainable, people only ate beef after the summer when male calves were fat enough from summer grazing.

the highlands like the Norwegian coast only have a tiny amount of land that is suitable for crop production maybe 3-5 fields per village if that
In England there are sheep on prime agricultural land but many sheep in the Yorkshire moors, the welsh mountains the salt marshes of Romney and mountains of Scotland are in their natural habitat, these areas were never really livestock free, it is impossible to intensively farm a hillside, when there is no livestock to graze ferns and rhododendrons take over these are not natural food to any native british wildlife
I would agree that meat consumption should come down but all meat consumption is not equally bad, if people ate from nose to tail rather than just chicken breasts and knew what to do with the liver , oxtail and pig trotters there would be less waste
humans have been omnivores since the earliest records however meat has never been the staple food even in Western society grains were the staple, supplemented by meat either hunted or later on tamed and bred for food, the earliest humans were hunter gatherers grain production and farming came later
Historically only the rich could afford beef etc the poor ate rabbits and fish if near the sea, a pig was often killed once a year and cured so the meat from 1 pig would fed a family for a year supplemented by rabbit fish shellfish etc, in fact there were rules saying you could not give your apprentice oysters / salmon more than 3 times a week as they were poor peoples protein
Making poaching an offence was not about conservation it was about greed and the thrill of the hunt by and large no-one ate the 1000 pheasants shot in a day but if the locals had been allowed to take 1 pheasant" for the pot" the pheasants would be been a sustainable part of the economy instead of 10 pheasants being eaten and the 990 buried as waste
Personally I think we are omnivores and I am not going to go entirely meat or diary free, as the WWF report said there is more than enough food on the planet to fed everyone well but often it is in the wrong place some have too much and waste too much others don't have enough; some could have enough but political decisions deprive them ie in Zimbabwe where the leaders would rather people starved and had hyperinflation than allow white farmers to farm efficiently a lot of land which was farmed successfully is now lying barren and famine has resulted, the country has enough land and resources to fed everyone three times over without importing very much at all though this is now improving
www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-03/zimbabwes-exiled-farmers-urged-to-return/9392322

Veganism also have a huge effect in the planet, look at the process of avacado, the resources they use to produce, transport, mafia wars, yet people can't get enough of them.
Eat all in moderation, avoid/reduce obvious dangers, local produce be it meat or vegetables are best for changes. I'd love to do more and have got lots of extras ideas from this thread.
I can't see a world of vegans being the answer.

@EmeraldShamrock you don’t need to eat avocados to be vegan.

Local is not better- if you see study a few pages back you’re better to eat plants produced abroad than local animal products.

@TeaCupDrama thanks for reading the resources.

On hill farming and re wilding:

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2013/may/22/britain-uplands-farming-subsidies

sustainable living needs to be the default option, not something that you do as a sacrifice

www.fwi.co.uk/farm-life/opinion-monbiot-is-wrong-about-sheep
Monbiot is forever talking shite about sheep

Most of my changes are probably more because I am lazy/tight with money.
Only 1 child (not environmental reason more medical/mental health)
No car (between the cost to learn to drive, taxes, petrol, maintenance it always seemed an unreasonable cost for me)
Secondhand everything possible and electronics have to be modern/energy saving (cost saving/supports charities that matter to me)
Live in a top floor flat minutes walk from town/beach/nursery/parks. (Cheaper gas costs as heat rises, not the best decoration so cheaper than others in area, near everything we need so no need for public transport)
Rarely eat meat (not a big fan)
Only wear knickers in summer inside flat, toddler nothing. (Saves on washing/I don't like clothes)
Sink wash most days (helps skin condition, plus use coconut oil. Same for toddler)
Only use oven once/twice a week (mostly eat cold after like quiches, veg crisps, veggie pate, potato brava, bean salad)
Take backpack and own containers shopping to local shops (no plastic bags/ I can carry a lot more on my back than arms)
Very rarely wear make up (lazy/damages skin)
Wash hair once a week (curly hair/coconut oil stops it smelling)

Most people don't know I am this extreme, but it works for us.

Like Farmer's Weekly is gonna be objective.

Like Farmer's Weekly is gonna be objective. Probably not but at least the woman in the article was telling of her real life experience.

@derxa an article marked “opinion” from farmers weekly, by a sheep farmer no less, is not a reputable resource. I’d rather trust the research that went into the State of Nature report.

I wouldn’t say sacrifice, but the changes we have made include

• Using cloth nappies and wipes (vast majority bought second hand)
• We have a composter and water butt in the garden. Also planted bee and butterfly friendly flowers.
• I don’t drive, we don’t fly (the latter mainly for financial reasons though)
• Use Splosh cleaning products and washable cloths, sponges etc
• Only buy plastic toys second hand. Don’t give plastic toys as gifts.
• Only buy second hand clothes unless absolutely necessary.
• We eat veggie 5 days a week.
• Use beeswax wraps instead of cling film.
• Bar toiletries, no plastic bottles.
• Don’t buy drinks in disposable cups or bottles, always bring own bags.
• Reuse or recycle as much as possible.
• buy local and in season produce

We’ve just had a zero packaging shop opened locally so want to check that out. Also looking to stop using bin bags but there’s some confusion over wether the council allows this.

They’re all tiny changes in the grand scheme of things, but we always want to do what we can even in the smallest way.