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.

I feel like I try more than most but in overall scheme of things it feels very little. I do usual recycle reuse etc but have stepped it up.

• I try to shop in local fruit and veg shop which has zero packaging. Not always possible though
• free range eggs and chicken
• reduce milk by about 30% using alternatives
• Less red meat especially beef
• never use single use wipes for cleaning
• I love my coffee and recycle coffee pods, most people don't bother
• wiping down kids clothes to be reworn where possible not just throwing into laundry. Reduced laundry load by about 15% so far.
• never buying products outside Europe if I can help it. No Egyptian strawberries in winter, we don't need them. Never buy new world wines anymore either.

Barriers for me are

• weather for outdoor drying is v poor here so I use the dryer a bit, maybe less than half my laundry as clothes horse is always full and half the house is taken over.
• my diesel car, didn't get a choice when I needed a people carrier. I don't use it for work or school runs so consumption is low but still it's not ideal
• packaging in shops. Ridiculous
• a general feeling of powerlessness about it all

@onefinemess re your 15 year old diesel. 40,000 people a year die from particulate emission linked diseases. I hope your pleased with yourself? No doubt in your world a good day maybe most of these will be children.

@onefinemess
Flying is actually an incredibly efficient and environmentally friendly mode of mass transit

Hmm, It depends how you are comparing different types of transit. I suspect you are looking at the statistics on a per mile basis but that's not relevant really. It doesn't matter if it potentially greener to fly, say, 5000 miles than to take a bus 5000 miles. The point is no one should be travelling 5000 miles (or whatever) in the first place certainly not for fun. A more meaningful comparison should be, for example, driving to Cornwall for a holiday and flying to Greece for a holiday.

Flying is not green, aviation is a contributor to climate change.

I am off on a long haul holiday next week 🛩️🧳🧳🌞. 🫤

Move to some dirt poor country you nutters. All your goat and chickens will be free range and you'll most likely have so little meat in your diet that you'll be able to pat yourselves on the back daily. (though protein malnutrition hurts).
You won't have a car.
No plane travel.
You'll grow your own.
Hand-wash nappy rags.
No option for heating.
You'll die young and free up some space on the planet.

So many benefits to just clear the eff away somewhere where your "green" lifestyle is abundant.

The psychotic self-hatred of green zealots is what's off-putting.

I don't think it's particularly sustainable to scrap a load of petrol and diesel cars which have a load of life left in them, and if everyone replaced their cars with electric now overnight, even if people could afford to, there are not enough electric cars to go round, it uses up loads of resources to make them, there is probably not enough lithium for the batteries, and the charging infrastructure still needs serious work.

What we should really be doing is having much simpler and slower electric vehicles - think golf buggies, etc, for all the short distance trips we do then have a pool of more powerful vehicles in any location which you can hire for longer trips. Of course the car industry won't allow this to happen. It would be great if everyone used cargo bikes, say, (electric or otherwise) for supermarket trips, but they are highly nickable and don't fit in bicycle parking bays, plus you have to have at least a big shed to store it off road at home.

We have been waiting for years locally for a safe cycle route even to local schools, and recently the council tried to cut dozens of school bus services overnight- the sort of distances kids are travelling to school meant for many the car was the only other option.

It just feels like many individuals are trying to do what they can but big business and government are only paying lip service, profiteering and greenwashing and not making the massive wholesale changes to society and infrastructure that are surely needed to slow man made climate change.

Even things like flying, it's often cheaper to fly from one end of the country to the other. It's often cheaper to fly 2000 miles than it is to take a train 200 miles.

And this weekend - I'm now driving 350 miles to see friends as my train was cancelled due to the strikes.

These are the barriers, massive societal, governmental, business and infrastructure ones.

yes, I love these threads. they make me feel like people are doing something. Like it is worth the effort. Even though the benefits that cone with gardening, walking etc are obvious anyway.

The council closed off a few roads here, made a few more one way and as a result the main road is absolutely bombed every day. The houses on that road mostly have drives, no plants, between 2-4 cars (4!) and all have window stickers about clean air. I used to think fuck them, they are the problem but actually none of us are the problem and also we all are the problem.
There is no point playing the blame game. No-one is to blame. We all are to blame.

You could argue that those cars are doing a good job reducing population, you could argue that the man who nicks meat from the supermarket and selling it at the local pub is doing a good job reducing sainsburies giant profits, you could argue that terrorists are doing great work reducing the invasive species (us). You can spin anything anyway.

Barrier for us is money as well. I looked into switching to shampoo bars to limit the plastic but they’re about £8 each! I pay £3 for a bottle of shampoo currently, and that’s a big Tresemme one that lasts forever. We have switched to soap however as you can buy that cheap.

Clothes I mainly buy from Vinted but it’s hit and miss, sometimes it’s much cheaper to buy a multipack of t shirts/vests/pyjamas for the kids than to buy individually then pay postage online.

Food - we don’t eat much red meat, maybe once a week or less. One day a week we have chicken and the rest fish or veggie. I don’t think we’re too bad on that front, when the children are old enough to decide then I’d be more than happy to go 100% vegetarian.

We don’t buy many toys, a lot gets passed around the family as there are lots of little kids in it. And they tend to be reusable toys like Lego or play doh that get taken out time and time again rather than a big shiny light up thing where the buttons only get pressed a few times.

I don’t use disposable wipes for anything - kitchen, bathroom, baby’s bum. All reusable cloths, a lot of my cleaning cloths are muslins that have been reused from DC1.

I need to look into non toxic cleaning as I currently use my trusty Cif for pretty much everything. Don’t use air fresheners or febreeze etc just an essential oil Reed diffuser. Kids are bathed every other day (DD has long thick hair which takes ages to dry and dry skin), I shower every day and take a bath twice a week or so. I need to cut the baths out I know.

We don’t waste much food at all, but I’m a bugger for ordering online and accruing loads of packaging.

Always buy free range products if I can or British stamped meat. Never cheap frozen meat from dodgy countries.

It just feels like many individuals are trying to do what they can but big business and government are only paying lip service, profiteering and greenwashing and not making the massive wholesale changes to society and infrastructure that are surely needed to slow man made climate change.

But we are the companies - the products they make and sell are for us, we want cheap items so they do things in a non-environmentally-friendly but cut price way. Take my post just now - I buy plastic bottles of shampoo because shampoo bars are £££ and don’t last as long. It’s all very well ‘blaming the corporations’ but we are their customers and don’t have much money to spend these days. They’re just catering to us.

Has anyone tried the laundry egg by the way?

It doesn't work like that though. I can want everyone to drive golf buggies and cargo bikes all I like but it takes industry and government to make the infrastructure happen.

I mean this is it. I'd be happy to wash my hair less, but society demand I'm clean and not smelly so I wash it every other day.
Same with birthday parties, you have to bring a present or else your kid is ostracised.
Same with branded goods (which are easier to buy on line can you believe!)
I used to watch a YouTube sustainable bigger type person. she had a baby, cloth nappies and even she bought a crap plastic toy for a party present because she values her own kids fitting in with their peers higher than changing the world and it's fine we can't do everything. That's what puts people off and pits people against eachother.

cargo bikes are £££.

we are their customers and don’t have much money to spend these days. They’re just catering to us.

And why don't we have as much money to spend? Because energy producers and oligarchs have decided to hoover up more of our disposable income and because of shit government policy.

It’s not just energy bills though is it? And even if it was, it wouldn’t change what I was saying. The main expenditures are housing/rent, energy and food.

Absolutely. If the government changed the rules so every item sold had to be as eco friendly as possible to manufacture and packaging was 100% recyclable, the public would be in uproar as the prices would be astronomical.

We rely heavily on cheap goods made in poor countries. Fast fashion is particularly evil - to be honest there should be enormous taxes on imported clothes, because nobody ‘needs’ a new wardrobe every few months particularly when the clothes are such bad quality and we have Vinted etc

Car - I wfh 4 days a week but need car for school run and 1 day commuting. 9,000 miles per year.

Heat - we have a wood burner and I cut and stack our own wood all year so I use less gas then most. Utilities in last 12 months were about £1200. House is well insulated.

Food - I grow most of our veg/salad in the summer plus some fruit. Obviously not in the winter. I buy local meat, normally chicken, pork or venison. Hardly ever beef or lamb. We eat some fish.

Water - we use about half of normal level for two people.

Flights - every four or five years.

I do my best to keep our carbon footprint down. Try to recycle most things. Generate a wheelie bin of rubbish about every 6/7 weeks.

We are trying to be more conscious… we drive much less than we did although I plan to cut it down further this year.

We eat a lot less meat than we did. Again could probably cut it down more. Also eat much less dairy than we used to although still eat a lot of eggs.

We have always been very meagre with heating. We mainly shower/kids share bath water.

We recycle all of our clothing and buy second hand books or download onto a kindle.

We have just ordered a water butt for the garden and I would love to add solar panels as we are south facing but the cost is prohibitive.

The tumble dryer is all but redundant…

We have lots of trees and our flower beds are full of pollinator friendly plants. We have nesting boxes on the far end of the garden with blue tits.

BUT we do wash clothes a lot as our children are still very young. And we do go abroad once a year most years. Too much of our food comes plastic wrapped which irks me - I’m slowly trying to shift us all always from plastic wrapped snacks but it’s easier said than done.

A ridiculous response. That figure is an estimate, and doesn't relate solely to particulate emissions.
All motor vehicles emit particulates - yes even electric ones from tyres and brakes.
Another very significant source of particulates is wood burners.
This ridiculous ignorance about diesel cars is silly.
Running an old diesel car while it's still viable actually saves the earth's resources, and the uncomfortable (for many) truth is that diesels are better in terms of carbon emissions.
It's ridiculous over-simplification of this type that just shows up wannabe eco-warriors as bandwagon jumping frauds.

We holiday in the U.K., recycle, have meat free nights, buy our milk from a vending machine at the village farm. We do have children and I do drive a 1.2 car but work in rural community nursing covering a wide rural area so public transport isn’t going to work and our area is not yet ready for electric cars as well as I don’t have a drive. The need for community nurses is not going to stop any time soon so I will always need a car.

masses of waste from the nhs of course but no idea how to tackle this e.g. those with leg ulcers and compression bandaging not being able to be used again etc not to mention the dressings used as well as

Public transport is dreadful around us. I occasionally work til 7pm and there are no buses at that time of night. Dh would have to either change buses or do a combo of bus or car to the station for his commute. It currently takes him 40 minutes by car but would take 2 hours roughly every other way. We manage with only one car just.

We buy all our limited red meat from a farm a 10 minute walk away and regularly visit farmers markets/farm shops for vegetables/meat/Seafood. I grow herbs and my mil grows most of our vegetables in summer as well as loads of fruit.

School is a 2 min walk.

The house is old and stone but seems to keep heat well plus we have loads of extra blankets lying around.

We buy a lot of second hand clothes and toys as well as passing on things our kids outgrow. I use the library a lot and books I do buy I give to friends/put in the village free book box. Shoes etc I buy "good" so they last but I know we are lucky to be able to do that.

We limit flights.

Similar to you. We have chosen spend more on living in a town centre and therefore have minimal car use because we can walk and regular buses. Our car is a self charging hybrid.
I take soft plastics to the recycling at Tescos so at least, hopefully, it's recycled.
Minimal meat, usually 3-4 dinners a week and never for lunch.
Try and only buy fruit and veg grown in UK, or at least in Europe
I rarely buy new clothes, get almost everything from Vinted.
Never flown in the UK, and we get the train a lot rather than driving in the UK.
Never have any food waste at home, and always free range eggs.
Have an energy supplier which does renewable electricity.
We're moving to a house soon after years in a flat, I'm very excited to grow veg!

@Garethkeenansstapler 100% recyclable, the public would be in uproar as the prices would be astronomical.

It's called extended producer responsibility. Current rules cover cars at 85% recyclable content and WEII which covers electrical goods.

Running an old diesel car is more environmentally damaging than a new EV after about 150,000km. Lot's of studies to support that.

The study into non exhaust particulate emissions was dodgy at best, and beyond was really badly reported. I suspect you haven't read the paper, I have.

Woodburners should be banned in suburban and urban areas. Agreed.

It is well recognised that there are approximately (no statistic is 100% certain) 40,000 deaths in the UK each year due to particulate emissions. If you really don't think this is an issue there are some absolute bargain properties next to congestion hot spots - fill your boots.

I can't use public transport because first bus of the day is 10am and they are every 2 hours (that bus takes 22 minutes, the only other routing takes 1 hour 45, car takes 14 minutes) no space to grow veg as all gardens are size of postage stamps (have 6 pots of herbs), no greengrocer in town, butcher is a luxury one 5x price of lidl, no fishmonger.

On the positive side I have a house built to very high energy efficiency so heating switches off mostly. I have triple glazing etc.