The ultimate guide to sustainable living

1. The ultimate guide to sustainable living bagmaya.com 1

2. Contents • What is sustainability? 3 • At home 4 • In the garden 5 • Finance 6 • Travel 7 • Food 8 • Clothing 10 • Toiletries 11 • Cleaning 12 • The waste-free life 13 bagmaya.com 2

3. What is sustainability? Sustainability is defined as ‘the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level’. In discussions about the environment, it more specifically relates to ‘the avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance’. Businesses that follow the path of sustainable development are guided by the triple bottom line of people, profit, planet. But what, as individuals, can we do to further the goal of sustainability? To answer this question, this guide takes an in-depth look at a few different aspects of lifestyle, and how you can change your lifestyle to be more sustainable. bagmaya.com 3

4. At home • Check how green your current energy supplier is on the Earth Day Switch website. This guide from Money Saving Expert provides advice on switching to a ‘green’ tariff. • Check your Energy Performance Certificate to find out how energy-efficient your home is. If you don’t have one, it costs between £60 and £120 to have your home assessed — it’s worth shopping around to get a few quotes. • Consider getting a smart meter installed, to help you stay on top of your energy usage. • A common recommendation is to improve the insulation of your home. This could include loft insulation or cavity wall insulation — these are both jobs for professionals. However, DIY improvements can be made, such as installing secondary glazing on your windows, caulking windows, or adding stick-on insulation to drafty doors. Simply hanging thicker curtains can help to insulate your home. • If you are a renter, you can still make small changes yourself, such as fitting draft-stoppers on doors or caulking windows. You could even ask your landlord if they intend to make larger changes themselves — recent legislation means that landlords owning the least efficient homes are legally obliged to upgrade them. • Your boiler accounts for up to 60% of your domestic carbon dioxide emissions. If it’s 10 years old or more, consider upgrading to a more efficient model. • Check the efficiency of your appliances. All large domestic appliances are graded on a scale of G (inefficient) to A (efficient), with A being further divided into A+, A++, and, A+++ for certain products. Bear this in mind when shopping for replacements. • In the UK, there are financial assistance schemes for making efficiency improvements to your home. You can check if you’re eligible on the Energy Saving Trust website. bagmaya.com 4

5. In the garden • You could grow your own fruit and vegetables, reducing your reliance on industrialised farming practices. • Find out how to make your garden more wildlife-friendly with this guide from the Wildlife Garden Project. • If you have space, consider planting trees — this guide on British trees from the Woodland Trust is a good place to start. • When managing your garden, remember that pesticides can harm both your health and the environment, so it’s best to use natural and organic alternatives. What if I don’t have a garden? • If you don’t have much outdoor space, consider window boxes. For advice on how to plant these up, check out this feature from Gardener’s World. • Indoor plants have been proven to improve people’s mental health and air quality. So no matter how small your space is, think about getting some plants in with you! bagmaya.com 5

6. Finance • You can find out if your bank supports polluting industries on the Earth Day Switch website. If you discover that your current bank is performing badly, the site also provides some greener alternatives • Think about whether you need paper bank statements — one study found that if just 20% of US households went paperless, 1.8 million trees would be preserved each year! If you have online banking, you can probably switch to paperless banking with a single click. • If you are an investor, consider whether the companies you invest in are pursuing sustainability. Some investment management services, such as Nutmeg or Canaccord, score companies according to their environmental and social responsibility practices, allowing you to ensure that your money only supports sustainable causes. bagmaya.com 6

7. Travel • Consider holidaying closer to home — ‘staycations’ are becoming increasingly popular, where families stay at home, but dedicate time to visiting local attractions. More broadly, if you’re in the UK, you can reach most of Europe via train. • Switch to shared or public transport for your commute to work. Consider walking or cycling, or work from home to void causing greenhouse gas emissions entirely! • When making a journey, think critically about whether you need to use a car. In 2014, 42% of people said that they frequently used their car for journeys less than two miles, that they could have walked. Short car journeys are bad for the environment because catalytic converters (anti-pollution devices fitted in cars) are least efficient over short distances. • If you decide to keep your car, consider switching to a low- emissions, hybrid, or electric vehicle. As well as being more environmentally-friendly, they have lower overall running costs, and the UK government provides financial incentives to purchase them. A journey from London to Madrid by plane releases 265 kg of emissions, compared to just 43 kg of emissions if the same journey was taken by train! • If you have to fly, consider paying to offset the carbon produced by your flight. You can work out the emissions released using this carbon footprint calculator, which also provides a list of schemes that you could invest in to offset this carbon. Gold Standard also provides a well-regarded carbon offsetting service. • Cruise ships have a horrendous environmental impact, demanding as much fuel as whole towns, and being responsible for a number of hazardous waste leaks; they should be avoided. bagmaya.com 7

8. Food names. For a comprehensive list of palm oil labelling techniques, and products to be avoided, have a look at this list, compiled by Dr Michelle Merrill. A glance through will show you that avoiding unsustainable palm oil is a huge task! Fortunately, the Giki app, supported by the World Wildlife Fund, scans the barcodes of products and can tell you if the oil used was sustainable or not before you decide to buy. • Human food production and animal feed production both contribute to deforestation. When buying products, try to buy Rainforest Alliance, UTZ or Fairtrade certified, as these products will have been assessed for, among other things, their environmental impact. • Prof Smith, of the UN’s IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, stated that “All meats have a higher climate, land and water footprint than the same quantity of plant-based foods”. Going vegan is the single biggest change you can make to reduce your environmental impact. Research shows that if every family in the UK swapped a red meat meal to a plant-based meal just once a week, the environmental impact would be the same as taking 16 million cars off the road. So if you can’t manage vegan or vegetarian, try flexitarianwhich is where you try to reduce the amount of meat in your diet to twice a week or less, instead. • The devastation caused by palm oil production means that palm oil is best avoided, wherever possible. This can be difficult because palm oil can be referred to with different • When buying fresh produce, or indeed, any of your food, it’s best to choose organic. Organic food is better for wildlife and is produced without the use of synthetic chemicals and bagmaya.com 8

9. to high standards of welfare. Indeed, you can find up to 50% more wildlife on organic farms. everything that can be recycled, and composting your food waste. You should also try to minimise the amount of time you leave appliances on for. If your oven heats up in ten minutes, it’s a huge waste of energy to turn it on half an hour before you need it! • When buying fish, make sure you only buy from sustainable line-caught or farmed sources and make sure you are buying in the correct season. For a comprehensive guide to when each type of fish should be avoided, take a look at the marine conservation society’s guide. • Food waste is a huge problem — we’re not just wasting food, we’re also wasting all the resources it took to produce it. The estimated area of land required to produce food thrown away by UK households is 19,000 square kilometres, an area just slightly smaller than Slovenia! Never go shopping when you’re hungry—you’ll end up buying far more than you need. • Remember that food that has travelled further to reach your plate is likely to have had a higher carbon footprint than food that was produced locally — particularly if it travelled by air freight. The best way to mitigate this in your diet is to eat local and seasonal foods. A good way to do this is to check out your local farmer’s market or farm shop. • Even if you’re sensible about what you buy and cook, everyone ends up with leftovers sometimes. To find out what you can make with the odds and ends left in your fridge, why not try out apps like SuperCook and Epicurious? Before you throw away leftover food, consider checking leftover recipe collections like this one from the BBC, to see if there’s anything else you can do with it. • As a rule of thumb, the more complex the process your food has been through, the more emissions it has released. Thus, heavily-processed foods should be avoided. • You should avoid products packaged in black plastic, as this is usually not recyclable. If there is an option to buy your chosen product in paper or cardboard rather than plastic packaging, you should try to do so. Even better, avoid using any new packaging at all. The Zero Waster provides a list of zero-waste stores in your local area — give them a go! • When preparing your food, make sure that you’re recycling bagmaya.com 9

10. Clothing • Consider buying second-hand or vintage clothing. Often, second-hand clothes have been infrequently or never worn. By buying more second-hand clothes, we contribute to keeping them out of landfills and slowing down the fashion industry by developing a more circular economy. • Fast fashion culture means that, in the UK alone, 300,000 tonnes of clothing go to landfill each year— that’s £12.5 billion worth of clothing. When clearing out your wardrobe, remember to donate to charity and recycle. • Avoid buying clothes made from synthetic fabrics. Synthetic fibres, which are plastics synthesised from unsustainable fossil fuels, account for 72% of all clothing items. These do not biodegrade and will sit in landfills for about 200 years before decomposing. Moreover, every time they are washed, they release harmful micro-plastics into the ecosystem (though, products such as high-tech filters and the Guppyfriend can help mitigate this effect). • If you’re buying cotton products, check whether the cotton used was organic. Non-organic cotton can be environmentally harmful. To read more about sustainable fabrics, check out our blog post on the topic, here. • If you must purchase new, consider purchasing from ethical, slow fashion brands. ‘Slow fashion’ is the counterpart to ‘fast fashion’; under this philosophy, clothing should be made of sustainable materials, re-worn frequently, and only replaced when truly necessary. Unlike flimsy fast fashion products, slow fashion products are built to stand the test of time. • Re-wear your garments for as long as you can. When they start to show signs of wear, learn to fix small problems, like missing buttons or small rips yourself. If you’ve never done it before, a great guide can be found at Love Your Clothes. bagmaya.com 10

11. Toiletries certain that you’re not contributing to the problem. • Rather than paying for expensive beauty products, you can make your owneco-friendly lip balm or face scrub with ingredients you have in your kitchen. It doesn’t get much more natural than that! • To reduce the amount of plastic in your hygiene routine, consider switching your shampoo to a shampoo bar, like Beco’s or those recommended by the Evening Standard, or to a vegan formula in a recyclable bottle. If these products don’t work for you, you could try refillable eco-friendly shampoo and conditioner services. • Switch your liquid soaps and body washes to bar soaps. The carbon footprint of liquid soap is 25% greater than that of solid soap. This is attributable at least in part to the fact that liquid soaps are heavier, are packaged in plastic, and are often derived from petroleum. In contrast, bar soaps are more compact, more commonly packaged in paper or cardboard, and are derived from sustainable plant or animal fats! • You should try to avoid micro-plastics wherever possible. As a rule, if something contains an ingredient starting with ‘poly-‘, then it contains micro-plastics. Another helpful resource for avoiding micro-plastics is Beat the Microbead’s App and Certifications. If you make sure you’re buying your products from certified zero-microbead brands, you can be • Consider switching away from disposable razors. If rechargeable electronic razors aren’t for you, you could bagmaya.com 11

12. Cleaning consider switching to a reusable safety razor like this one from WeEarth or, if you’re feeling very brave, switching to a straight razor. Reusable razors produce far less waste, and the traditional products commonly used with them are made from natural materials and are more efficiently packaged. • Before using harsh, synthetic chemicals when cleaning your home, consider trying old-fashioned methods first. Not only is more eco-friendly to clean using baking soda, lemon, and white vinegar, it’s also much cheaper. • People who menstruate could switch to reusable sanitary products like a Mooncup or DivaCup if you prefer tampons, or washable period pads (free sample available from Party Pants Pads here) like the ones from Eco Femme or washable period pants such as Modibodi, Wuka, or Thinx if you prefer pads. • Try to avoid using disposable cotton products. You can buy machine washable cotton pads and make-up remover pads — or you could do things the old fashioned way, and just use a flannel to wash your face. Plastic cotton buds can similarly be replaced with eco-friendly alternatives. • Finally, something that you might not have thought about is the type of suncream you’re using. Multiple academic studies have confirmed the harmful effect that many sunscreens have on marine life and the global ecosystem. The Independent has compiled a list of the best eco- friendly sunscreens currently available in the UK. • If you need to buy conventional cleaning products, try Ecover. They’re vegan, sustainable, and cruelty-free. Their packaging, while plastic, is a mix of recycled plastic and Plant Plastic (a plastic-like substance derived from sugar cane). bagmaya.com 12

13. The waste-free life • It almost goes without saying that you should endeavour to recycle items according to your local government advice. A number of products are now recyclable, not by local councils, but by supermarkets if you bring them back to the store when you’re done. Check your packets to see if this is the case. For unavoidable single-use plastics, consider constructing eco-bricks, rather than sending them to landfill. • The saying goes ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.’ So while reusing and recycling are great, the best way to live waste-free is to reduce the number of things you buy. ENJOY YOUR SUSTAINABILITY JOURNEY AND SHARE IT WITH US! • Think about whether or not you truly need things before you buy them. This could mean waiting to buy a product for a week or so, to check if you really want it. • Before you throw something out, think about whether it could be up-cycled or reused. To get you thinking, there are some great ideas on this Twisted Sifter page. bagmaya.com 13