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.

Transport is responsible for less than 2 percent of worldwide carbon emissions.

You could stop every single ICE vehicle tomorrow and it would make diddly squat difference to the environment.

@onefinemess you're way out there. Transport represents 16.2% of global emissions, three quarters of which is road transport. In fact, road transport is the single most polluting sector.

I agree however with your later point about overpopulation.

Inspired by yet another message from David Attenborough.

● Car - I have one but rarely i
Use it. I use public transport daily as its easier very reliable where I live in Spain (trains are free)

Where I live there is very little plastic packaging so that's fairly easy for me.

Fruit and veg is local in all our shops so not a huge footprint

●Save water never have a bath, water is restricted in Spain anyway so it's showers only

My biggest ecological spend is air travel. We do biday a few times a year and we return to the UK for work and to visit relatives frequently not much I can do about that really

*DdraigGoch · Today 17:48
As for the two biggest things you can do personally- not flying and giving up meat and dairy

The biggest thing that you can do is sell your car. An omnivorous diet represents a mere fraction of the emissions of even an electric car.*

Not true- and unachievable for many.

And I'm going to have a rant now. I am sick of the greenwashing perpetuated by the agricultural industry. For sure other sectors do it, but it seems to be relatively more challenged. Why so? Because, to many, cute and cuddly cows represent "nature", so how can that be the problem? Because people feel personally attacked if you suggest cutting down on meat is a good thing to do? Possibly a bit of both of these, and other factors too. But, the science could not be clearer:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth

*"The study, published in the journal Science, created a huge dataset based on almost 40,000 farms in 119 countries and covering 40 food products that represent 90% of all that is eaten. It assessed the full impact of these foods, from farm to fork, on land use, climate change emissions, freshwater use and water pollution (eutrophication) and air pollution (acidification).
“A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Humans just 0.01% of all life but have destroyed 83% of wild mammals – study
Read more
“Agriculture is a sector that spans all the multitude of environmental problems,” he said. “Really it is animal products that are responsible for so much of this. Avoiding consumption of animal products delivers far better environmental benefits than trying to purchase sustainable meat and dairy.”"*

^This is an excerpt, but I would highly recommend reading the whole article.

And I don't speak as a militant vegan- as mentioned upthread I haven't managed to give up eggs and dairy myself. But at least I'm not in bloody denial! And the reason that not flying and seriously reducing meat are so insistently indicated as the best things that the average person can do to combat climate change? Their relative ease and lack of serious impact on day-to-day life. You can enjoy holidays and travelling without flying. You can enjoy delicious food without meat.

Completely giving up driving, for so many, is unachievable without medium term structural change- measures to make cycling safer, or the provision of a decent, functioning public transport system.

So, OP, you asked the biggest barrier to living sustainably? For so many it's denial, greenwashing, misinformation, industry lobbyists, bending of the truth. A tsunami of lies and propaganda, basically.

@crackofdoom so many Guardian articles are quite literally a crock of shit, this among them. If we don't eat or import factory farmed meat, we cannot be responsible for those emissions. There was also a recent article that ten companies are responsible for 90% of emissions, all of those companies were energy companies. You can't have it both ways. Yet again a total ignorance of carbon and environmental accounting practices.

It's really pretty simple, we need to stop burning fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels for power generation, industry and manufacturing, all forms of transport, local heating and cooling etc. Something like 5.8% of emissions are fugitive emissions from leaks, flaring, VOC releases during processing etc.

The single biggest thing anyone in the UK can do is sign up to a 100% renewable energy tariff. Number 2 switch to a renewable home heating system such as ASHP, insulation etc. Number 3 - transport, EVs, cycle, walk, public transport. Number 4 reduce consumption - clothes, tech, etc. Number 5 food

And we're a mixed vegan, veggie, low meat household.

I guess the main barrier for me is quite simple. I do not give a shit.

Too many actual real and devastating life stresses to give it any consideration whatsoever.

The biggest barrier for me is my disabilities.

I wfh and rarely use my car. There's only one bus a day each way here so I can't get myself to doc or hospital without the car.

I am eating less and less meat.

But I feel the cold so I need to run heating in the winter and even get cold atm. Even with an oodie on.

Being disabled has so many consequences in so many ways.

Be vegan ?
Campaign locally??

I run my car until it dies. Should I be replacing it? I can't have an EV here - no driveway.

Just for balance re the usual "no need to take action because of China" cliche that somebody always spouts out as their excuse for inaction ...., "Today, China is a veritable green power. It leads the world in renewable energy production figures and is the world’s largest producer of wind and solar energy, as well as the largest domestic and outbound investor in renewable energy.". The average Chinese citizen has a lower carbon footprint than UK person. Most of our stuff is made in China so should really count for OUR consumption, not China's but the figures are msleading as the ones used don't usually do that.

My top 6 (7!) easy peasy 'sustainability' actions for anybody who doesn't want to spend any extra time or money being green are:

1. buy less stuff (clothes, household, electricals, general tat) - a lot of what we buy we don't need (saves time and money)
2. waste less food - again saves tme and money. Food is a big carbon cost globally. (check out www.lovefoodhatewaste)
3. if you have a garden, let your lawn and hedge grow longer so plants, grasses and bushes can flower and don't use chemical fertilisers, herbicides, insecticides - again this one saves time and money
4. don't flush anything down toilets except '3 Ps' - poo, pee, toilet paper (no time or money for this one either).
5. fly less
6. eat less meat

7.This one is more effort initially but REALLy worth it if you have a baby - for convenience even more so than cost and environmental benefits, try using EC to reduce your nappy use (elimination communication and has other names like natural pottying, baby led pottying etc) How to start baby-led pottying TODAY! | Born Ready We tried it with DS number 2 - I was very sceptical but it was brilliant, saved lots of money, did less washing of poo leaked clothing, no nappy rash, no trying to clean poo out of his crevices! He didn't poo in his nappies from age 4 months which was when we discovered and tried this method. We were only using 1 'security' nappy a day usually from then on (and one at night).

After decades working in the environmental sector I've heard lots of arguments and read lots of info on why we should /shouldn't do various actions and the ones I've listed above are the ones that I know don't involve a big investment of time or money or hassle and are easy to fit into most daily habits with little effort. One persons actions DO make a difference if millions of us are doing it.

The carbon footprint of an electric car is higher than a petrol or diesel car at the moment (over its life).

This will not always be the case, but as it stands today a hybrid is a better option.

@HappiestSleeping The carbon footprint of an electric car is higher than a petrol or diesel car at the moment (over its life).

No it isn't. Polestar have done some really good work. You can download the EPDs here.

Op, why not keep a bike outside?

@crackofdoom
Livestock represent only 5.8% of emissions, compared with 11.9% from road transport. Bear in mind that 75% of the global population eat meat, whereas car owners represent only 18% of the population (and that's an average, some people have multiple cars so the actual number of motorists is fewer).

The lifecycle carbon footprint of an ICE car usually equates to 2.4 tonnes per year of use (an it can be much more than that, driving an SUV to Glasgow and back will burn a tonne in one hit). BEVs are 1.2 tonnes and a transatlantic return flight generates 1.6 tonnes. Even servicing your mortgage has a 1 tonne footprint. Switching from an omnivorous diet to a vegan one will only save 0.8 tonnes.

So the single biggest impact an individual can have is to sell their car and buy a bicycle.

But when you consider that huge percentage of, mostly rural, Chinese citizens live in poverty (13% officially and by officially I mean China only considers housholds earning below $5.50 per day to actually be in poverty) can you really consider their emissions per capita accurate? The above mentioned people are hardly contributiong to emissions.

I quite agree, but there will also be significant differences across any population. Pointing out the closeness of UK and Chinese p/c emissions was really to counter the "what about China" discourse of delay which comes up every time on these threads.

It's incredibly complex and very nuanced.