According to the United Nations Environment Program(UNEP) sustainable living is the understanding of how our lifestyle choices impact the world around us and trying to find ways for everyone to live better and lighter.
Why Sustainable Living?
Now this definition is definitely open to interpretation. In our fast lives we are often perturbed by existential crises which haunt us with questions like “ what is the point of life?” For me trying little things for sustainability helps me find a reason to be. It gives me purpose and a goal that I work towards with zeal and energy.
What is Upcycling?
Upcycyling is a a new hobby that I have embarked on that helps me do my bit, albeit in a tiny way, for a sustainable life.
That mainly means that I am often found collecting jars and bottles from around the house. The next step is slapping on coats of acrylic paint with in between drying cycles. This goes on for a few days. Then one fine weekend morning, I sit with my fine tipped paint brushes and paint tiny flowers or patterns on the painted glass bottles. They often become my pretty new hand painted and upcycled water bottle or trinket jar! And the best part is, every time I look at the upcycled bottles, a warm satisfied feeling embraces my heart and makes me happy.
Art from Waste
So not only am I helping to reduce the waste load but I am also creating aesthetic pieces of art. This is definitely a win win situation.
Things that we practice for sustainable living
There are a few other things that we try to practice in our household for sustainability.
Reusing shopping bags
We try to carry our shopping bags with us and reuse them as often as
possible.
Recycling water
I try to preserve the water from washing rice and lentils for watering my plants. This helps to recycle the water as well as give a booster dose of vitamins and minerals for our plant babies.
Reusing Plastic ware
Plastic containers and plates are most often reused as planters and trays in our balcony garden.
Buying quality Clothes
We buy good quality clothes and don’t buy them too often. This helps in the way that if you buy cheap clothes, you have to buy them more often which creates an environmental load by increasing garbage. Better quality clothes mean, you wear them longer which helps to reduce our carbon foot print and is sustainable for the pocket as well.
Buy less Jeans
We don’t buy too many jeans because making one pair of denim jeans can take as much as 7600 litres of water! In todays world faced with a very real worry of climate change such a manufacturing process is extremely worrisome as the world faces severe fresh water shortage. According to a recent Central Groundwater Board survey there is as much as 52% average decline in groundwater levels across all Indian states.
So buying too many jeans is definitely a bad idea for the environment
These are some small things that we practice in our lifestyle for sustainability. I hope to do far more in this coming year 2023 about which I will update in future posts. This is the last post for 2022 which was a good year full of the usual ups and downs. Hope 2023 brings happiness and good news to all and life is full of hope and cheer. Remember to stay away from negativity with intent and love yourself which is equally important for a sustainable personal life. Adios 2022 and warm welcome to 2023!
This post is part of Blogchatter’s CauseAChatter.
•
•.
.
•
•.
.
