What are your barriers to sustainable living? What would it take for you to ^get there^?

[greenspaceplace]

Inspired by yet another message from David Attenborough.

● Car - I can't afford one, DH gets to work in a company van (up to 10 men at a time) but he works all over so the emissions are still probably very high.
● Bicycle - Storage and cost was a problem before I moved out of my flat
● Public transport - great where I live and cheap.
○ Plastic packaging - I cant afford butcher, fruit and veg shop, zero waste shops are too much
● Grow fruit and veg (loads of community gardens and allotments to pick from, now I have a garden I have space, it was a barrier living in a flat), my grandparents had fruit trees so I got fruit from them
●Buy mostly second hand (easy its cheaper)
●Save water (easy with small children sharing a bath, use the bath water in the garden etc
● Passing on used clothes/ toys- Charity shops collect round here but you need to have more than 20 black bags worth. So it's easy when we have a massive sort through.
○Buying things that last- Tricky for us, we buy about 3 pairs of rubbish s hool shoes per child per year. I can't afford the upfront cost of a better pair and to be honest I thought £20 was expensive for school shoes
○Recycling- we didn't have Recycling bins in our flat, I've recently moved and have normal and Recycling bin. The council took all of the big recycling bins when they gave residents Recycling bins but people in flats didn't get one.
●Electric and gas usage, even before the cost of living we live in terrace and a flat so it was easy enough t o keep the house warm with little heating. We didn't have central heating in our flat and used to only use hot water bottles and blankets to stay warm when we first moved out. It was scary when we had a newborn and it was freezing though. I used to make a den in the kids bunk bed and sleep in bottom bunk altogether when it was really cold. We didn't have heating in there for 7 years! Now we have heating after we moved it's difficult to not use it, but we only have it on about half hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. old habits and all. We were ready for the Cost of living crisis at least.

I can't think of any more right now, but the main barrier for me is plastic packaging.
If supermarkets gave the option I would buy without.
If the local bakery self bread fir less than £6 a loaf I'd come in every day.
I used to go to the butcher and fruit and veg shop but when I moved (5 min walk from an aldi and lidl) I stopped going, the cost and convenience of a supermarket has to win.
I'm a sahm so I have time to mess about with charity shops, a vegetable garden etc.

I want to know what everyone else's barriers are, in a perfect world I'd live in the shire and my food would come from next door.

Well, other than posters doing the oil companies' work for them by constantly spewing out misleading whataboutery on threads like this....🙄

A lot of it is structural, and out of the reach of the average person. For example, I have air source heating and a well insulated home and it's amazing, but that's thanks to having a forward looking HA as landlord. Renters have little control over how their homes are heated, and many homeowners can't afford to upgrade.

Transport: we live rurally. Work and DS2 's school are within walking distance and DS1 takes the school bus to secondary, but all his mates are on the other side of the bloody catchment area and there's no bus after after school clubs, so I do a lot of driving him around. He would love to cycle, but the roads are very dangerous- single track, heavily used, lots of blind bends.

As for the two biggest things you can do personally- not flying and giving up meat and dairy- the former is pretty easy. From where we live, it's cheaper to go by train with an Interrail pass- we've just come back from a 2 week Interrailing holiday to Italy.

The latter? Well, I'm vegetarian and gave up cow milk (actually prefer oat), but kind of got stuck on cheese and eggs 😬 Um....the barrier is greed, really.

This is a big barrier, But we are the many, they are the few and your changes make an impact. For example, when I got into growing food other people I knew were interested too. One person got an allotment, one started a veg patch in their garden, another just had a few pots of herbs but it is a change in attitudes.
My grandad has fruit trees. We picked apples for apple pie, now my children know we pick apples and eat apples in autumn and winter. they aren't a summer or spring fruit, blackberries, plums, tomatoes etc are seasonal and when they are older they start off with more knowledge than me. And with more fruit trees to pick from. imagine if we put gardens and orchards in schools, and 250 kids have the opportunity to start thinking about food seasonally?

Then we won't need to pick apples from Africa. An apples travelled further than I have. its fucked up!

^This right here.

I don’t give a monkeys anymore. I had a baby and can’t be effed to recycle when most of it gets spoilt by other residents throwing in organic matter and dirty nappies. It all goes in one big black bag now.

The sorts of concerns the OP listed are for privileged people with time and capacity to bother about this.

The above post is perfect proof of the corrosive effect of all these "What about China?" posts (and it's always China, never any of the other big polluters like USA, Russia, Australia etc 🙄) The people who post this stuff may not be aware of what they're doing, but the people who spend billions on PR campaigns dripfeeding exactly these sentiments to a friendly media know exactly^ what they're fucking doing.

I think you can be irate and feel hopeless about what big corporations and private jets get up to, but it still makes sense to do what we are able to.

For us, we only manage the following:

• Walk to local primary school and car share or bus for the secondary
• Run one car
• Cycle where possible
• Buy milk from local farm vending machine in glass refills
• Meat from local small producers, used more sparingly. If can't get there M&S for higher welfare stuff.
• Rarely travel, 1 flight per year
• Efficient house
• New boiler
• Grow our own where we can (I'm not very good at it)
• Plan for solar in the future
• Heating on low, limited tumble use
• Buy second hand for the vast majority of stuff

Wow, italics gone rogue 😬

Not affording a car, holiday or heating isn't privileged, I'm a sahm in a one income household with a family of six who recently moved out if a tiny flat that was so crap it didn't even have heating!

The only thing I think was privileged was the no waiting list on allotment plots and access to local community gardens and good transport.

I fully agree with other residents messing up the recycling bins with nappies. That's why ours were taken (after they tried to split 4 bins between 50 flats, no wonder it didn't work) I think we had them installed maybe 6 months before they were taken away.

I’d like David Attenborough to move out of the eight bedroom Georgian detached three storey house which he lives in on his own except for his nurse.

It’s not all about China, of course. There are problems with USA, Brazil, India, etc. The UK is a tiny country and anyone here thinking they can make a difference has delusions of grandeur.

Sustainable living is a nice sentiment but unless the other 6.9 billion people in the world want to get on board, we’re on a fool’s errand. If your life is empty and it keeps you busy, fine, but I don’t have the time, space, financial or mental capacity to fret about my footprint.

I'm a bit jaundiced re recycling. I got a car load of stuff to take to the recycling centre, all organised into different types, including a few small electricals, some hard plastics (a bin, knackered old watering can etc), some timber from an old fence, etc At the recycling centre, the wood, plastics and small electrical skips were all closed and were clearly full, so the guy working there just glibly said to throw it all in the non recycling skip! I asked whether they'd be emptied later that day or the following day as I was happy to go back, but he just shrugged and said he didn't know. I went back the next day and they were still blocked off so I just dumped them as he said in the non recycling as I couldn't leave the car full of it for another day! I really don't believe that recycling is taken seriously by the councils/waste firms at all - we've all seen the "recycling" being dumped in landfill or transported across the world to be dumped in third world countries!

Fully agree. It works. there was a 40 minute piece on the news about the government basically fudging the numbers on emissions.

there is a big UK coal plant that apparently 0 emissions because we bought the coal from China, so our emissions get counted towards China's emissions.

There is also the issue of who's responsible for the emissions for imported goods? The people who produce them of course (china). It doesn't matter that the UK buys it and discards it but China made it, its their fault.

I use a lunchbox with compartments for the kids lunches, a bento box type thing. I haven't needed cling film or food wraps for years. Same with leftovers in the fridge. They go in a sealed container.

Pyrex dishes with lids to use for cooking in the oven rather than covering food wth aluminium foil.

Taking pride in having mismatched dishes and kitchen ware! Only replacing single items as they break and not worrying if they don't match.

I don't do air travel. I holiday in the UK or travel by ferry or train, if going abroad. I loathe the airport experience, so its not hard!

I like the idea of the airport taxes increasing with each flight. Love hearing about these things here first.

I went for 18 months without a car (by choice) but I couldn't get to see my elderly parents very easily or safely on foot or by bike as they live down 60mph country lanes. SO, I've written to my local Councillor to ask to reduce speed limits on tiny country lanes from 60mph and put a decent footpath on one side of the road. Doubt much will come of it. In the meantime, I had to get a small car.

I try to choose products with minimal or biodegradable packaging. Price is still a big issue for me though.

You are part of the problem. Organizing your recycling takes minutes. I can't believe you don't care more about your babies future.

@greenspaceplace there is a big UK coal plant that apparently 0 emissions because we bought the coal from China, so our emissions get counted towards China's emissions.

I'm really surprised by that, the UK government will be audited. My understanding is that coal fired power stations are only fired up in extreme circumstances.

Could you link the documentary please?

Agree. I don't care for recycling. plastic is a waste and only can be down cycled.
Glass and tin and paper is the way but we don't have the space to deal with the amount of waste th uk produces. We should have big community compost bins though, so many black bags of garden waste gets dumped into the woods here. Just empty the bag!

Flytipping is a big problem here.

No interest in doing this whatsoever. Removing all technological advances and significantly degrading our standard of living so we can feel virtuous about "being first" whilst every other country looks at us and laughs. And advances ahead of us economically.

I think it's a shame these ideas have become so mainstream.

I live in a tiny flat that barely has room for one kitchen bin, let alone the 7 that are coming our way. Check your privilege. “Green” issues are just another whip to beat and subdue ordinary people from living their lives to the full.

I can't find it, it was a 40 min video on YouTube from news chanel, BBC I think. I am looking for it

We can only do what is within our control, entire nations aren’t within our control. Living sustainably to varying extents is within our control so why not do it? I totally understand that for many people it isn’t possible due to finances/other factors but for others it is.

I’m no hero for the record. But I really try not to be a massive consumer of stuff.

In answer to OP finances are such a limitation. Would love an electric/hybrid car but they are too expensive. However, not buying new stuff unless you need it has a huge impact. Particularly when it comes to unnecessarily upgrading things like phones, tablets, electronics.

Money and Time. I don't have the money for solar panels or a new electric commercial vehicle. I don't have time to grow my own. And I'm not going to live a joyless life of no wine, avocados, chocolate, European cheese, holidays, new clothes etc etc while those in charge make no changes to their own lifestyles.

On the other hand, I only have one child, we are both vegetarian, I have rewilded my garden and put a wildlife pond in and on use eco cleaning stuff, shampoo, moisturiser etc etc.

Things that would help me be more eco:
Safe, separated from cars and pedestrians bike lanes (I won't bike on the road or path)
No plastic around fruit & veg as standard in the supermarket
Easier availability of people who can retrofit insulation, add solar panels, put in heat pumps etc. I'd happily pay for this sort of thing but it's hard to work out what to get/ who will do it properly etc.

Honestly? I think I'm doing my bit. Don't fly (>15 years). Went car-free voluntarily for environmental reasons. Vegetarian and consider food miles. Shop secondhand for the majority of items. Pay extra for renewable energy.

I'm sick of car-driving, flight-taking, fast fasion-wearing people pretending to care about the environment, I'm sick of green-washing by companies, and I'm sick of governments for being so weak on this issue.

The whole topic makes me +

All waste should go in the same bin in the home and get sorted offsite. We do separate it but I find that really annoying.

I couldn't give a fig about any pollution my car puts out. I will never stop driving. Do you know one cargo ships puts out the equivalent pollution of 50 million diesel cars.

My barrier is ADHD / executive function. I need to do things in the easiest way possible or it doesn’t happen at all. I throw things out because taking them to charity / selling / freecycle is too much for me to manage.

I need a car to get the children to school. And live rurally so public transport is poor.