I decided to make my lifestyle more sustainable for a month, but did it make any difference?
By Zarah Hill // 蜜芽传媒 The Social contributor // 11 November 2021
Like most of us, I know that the scale of the climate crisis facing the world is kind of a big deal - but what could one person really do to make a difference? Not much by the sounds of things...and it all sounded like so much effort. Easier to just put your feet up and let the world burn right? WRONG.
Never one to turn down a challenge, I decided to overhaul my lifestyle by trying to change the way I eat, the way I consume energy and even improve the air quality around me.
What a journey it was...let's begin!
Food
Sustainable Food Challenge
Zarah tries eating sustainably for a month to see how it affects her wellbeing and wallet.
After consulting with a food expert, I decided to completely transform my diet for four weeks. I swapped the supermarket for my local refill shop, avocados for turnips and got locally grown fruit and veg boxes delivered.
The advice from the expert was clear:
- Reduce packaging
- Follow a more plant based diet
- Reduce food waste
- Shop local
Easy right...
PROS: Improved mental wellbeing and energy.
CONS: Cost, intense farts.
VERDICT: I experienced a hugely positive difference to my well-being and energy levels, my plastic packaging use was also way down but on the downside, my farts were off the charts for the first week! This eating plan was also much more expensive than my previous monthly food budget had been - so definitely a tricky one to maintain long term. I did enjoy shopping locally though as I'm quite new to the area where I live and it helped me find out more about it.
Energy
Reducing Electricity Use Challenge
Zarah tried cutting down her energy use for a month but will it actually pay off?
This experiment started with me getting stinking in the name of science - by wearing a T-shirt non-stop for a week straight without washing it. Instead of the usual 40 degree wash, I switched to cold washing all my clothes, including the now stinking T-shirt, to see if I would notice a big difference in freshness. As 90% of the energy used by a washing machine is used to heat up the water temperature, this seemed like a major step forward towards a more sustainable lifestyle.
I then looked at vampire draw, which is when you leave appliances on standby, plugged into the mains, all the time - meaning they constantly draw power. So before bed every night, I went round my house, switching everything off at the plugs. This quickly got seriously boring so I invested in some smart plugs to make it all more convenient.
PROS: Cold hard cash...my electricity bill dropped dramatically!
CONS: My towels did get a bit minging after a while with cold washes alone.
VERDICT: This was one of the experiments I will definitely be continuing with because of how much money I saved. A no brainer!
Plants / Clean Air
Improving Air Quality with Plants Challenge
Can more house plants in your home improve the air quality?
Ok so this one seemed a bit far fetched but there's a few studies going around that claim to show having more plants in your house could potentially improve the air quality in their immediate surroundings. So I just had to try this one, for the good of the environment of course, but also because houseplants look oh so chic!
I piled all the plants into the house and monitored the air quality in the room every day with a wee air purity measuring device, but did it do anything?
Anything at all....
Eh no. Nothing.
PROS: My room looked cool and I got some great jungle look pictures for Instagram.
CONS: The air measuring device showed lots of varying results, especially one day when it showed a terrible reading, which caused me to freak out a bit...this will be forever known as "danger day".
VERDICT: This one didn't show any definitive results and the plants cost a lot of money.. so definitely not the most sucessful part of my eco journey.
