In the past half year, my life has changed drastically. I went from living in a student flat in Amsterdam with 13 others, working 32 hours a week in an office in Amsterdam 20 minutes from home, to living with my in-laws in Harderwijk and working 36 hours a week at an office at 2,5 hour distance from home. Like I said, it’s been over 5 months now, and just like every other phase in life, this one comes with different sustainability challenges. Today I want to share my 3 biggest sustainability challenges at this moment, July 2024.
1 | Reducing my use of public transportation
When I calculate how many earths we’d need if everybody lived like me, the category public transportation is usually the biggest one. It makes sense, since I don’t own a car and don’t fly. The only options left are public transportation, biking and walking. That’s fine, but I still try to reduce the amount of kilometers I travel with public transportation. Because the less kilometers, the less impact. In this phase in life, I really struggle with this. That’s mostly because the office I work at is quite far from my home. In the normal situation, the commute takes me 5 hours per day. 3 hours public transportation, 1 hours walking and 1 hours biking. The part in public transportation is 234 kilometers per day, so that adds up. I travel to the office 3 times a week.
I plan to change this in the future, because I want to move closer to my job. Then, the total time and kilometers will be about half. It will save me impact and time. I don’t know when this will happen, we’re talking to a realtor about it, but the house market for renting is terrible in the Netherlands at the moment. I also travel a lot with public transportation to see friends and family, but that’s not something I am looking to reduce. The same goes for holidays. Since my total impact is still below 1 earths, I can still go on these holidays by public transportation.
2 | Package free groceries
While I live with my in-laws, we have agreed that I do a part of my own groceries. Since I follow a mostly whole-foods vegan diet, this way I can make sure we have everything in the home I need. I do my own groceries for my own lunch, snacks and the protein source during dinner (tofu, tempeh, beans). So I mostly buy fruits, veggies, and these protein sources I mentioned. My in-laws buy everything else. This blog once started with me trying to live as zero waste as possible, and I still try to do so. When I lived in Amsterdam, this was reasonably easy. There you have package free shops and grocery stores that offer organic ánd package-free groceries. Here in Harderwijk this is a challenge.
The first criteria that I have is that the groceries have to be organic. The impact from the product being non-organic is bigger than the impact of the packaging. Buying these groceries that I do myself organic is easy, piece of cake. But organic ánd package free is hard in this city. There are no shops enabling me to do so. I try to go with 100% recyclable packaging as much as possible, glass and cans, but it’s not possible for most products. That’s because I mostly buy veggies, fruits and tofu/tempeh. Dry foods can be bought organic and package free online at Pieter Pot, but I don’t buy those. I buy the fresh ingredients. The consequence is that I still buy the biggest share of this food in plastic. I hope to change this when I move to Utrecht the coming months. In that city, package free is very well possible.
3 | Avoiding plastic in secondhand clothing
Buying only secondhand clothing is a piece of cake for me after all these years of living an eco-positive lifestyle. When it comes to secondhand clothing, I try to take it to the next step. For me, that’s making my wardrobe low-plastic (entirely plastic free is not a doable goal for me). I want to buy mostly secondhand clothing without plastic, fabrics like cotton, linnen or hemp basically. I want to avoid synthetic clothing like polyester or nylon. That’s because it’s made out of oil and does not compost easily. Beside that, the quality is usually low and it makes me sweat a lot. Wearing polyester feels like wearing a plastic bag to me. I also avoid clothing that’s not vegan. Wool or viscose are not an option for me, even though they are plastic free.
The theory is nice, but I still struggle with taking this into practice. The struggle usually occurs with clothing that is made out of mixed materials. If clothing is 100% polyester for example, I manage to avoid it. I can tell that it’s 100% polyester when the clothing is on the rack, so I barely even look at these items. When I do pick a plastic item and see on the label that it’s 100% plastic, I find it easy to put it back. However, when I find secondhand clothing that I love and see that it’s partly made out of plastic, I find it a challenge to refuse it. When something is 60% cotton and 40% polyester for example. Viscose or spandex are also fabrics that I usually see mixed. I find it hard to say no to these items.
Focus on the big picture
At least 2 out of the 3 challenges that I mentioned today (the ones about packaging and clothing) are details when it comes to living a sustainable/eco-positive lifestyle. The concept of an eco-positive lifestyle is living within the earth’s capacity. There’s a tool to calculate quite precisely whether you do so or not. I use this tool every year and manage to live within the earth’s capacity. This tool focuses on the big impact. Whether you bought new items for example, or if (and if so, how much) you ate meat. This base is already good for me personally. The challenges I mentioned here are mostly details. It’s important to remember this, because we should always focus on the biggest impact with the least effort. If we put most of our effort into details, a sustainable lifestyle is far away.
So yes, the challenges I mentioned are details. But to me, that does not mean that they’re not important. The contrary is true. I have the base on point. And so, I have time to look at the details. In my opinion I should never neglect those. I personally love evaluating and seeing how I can improve. It’s something I love to do, so I will probably never stop haha. For now, these were my 3 biggest sustainability challenges at this moment, July 2024.
Yours sincerely,
Romee