Tips for Sustainable Living from Sustainable Indiana

In the last couple of decades, the state of our planet has changed significantly. The constant economic growth along with demographic development affects our environment drastically. As a result, we experience a sharp rise in demand for all the natural resources. Thankfully, nowadays, people have become conscious about the impact human beings have on the planet and started taking steps to promote greener habits. You can find many sustainable changes one can make to reduce the negative impact of his/her daily activities on the environment. You can easily start your journey towards sustainable living by simply following the below tips from Sustainable Indiana.

Always Look for the Eco-Friendly Alternatives

Eco-friendly alternatives have been making tremendous strides and restraining the increasing amount of waste. At the same time, we should not forget that reducing waste is also a matter of not creating it in the first place. So, we can take different steps like zero plastic usage to restrain the increasing amount of waste. However, it is impossible to adopt the zero plastic policy suddenly, but you can make small changes in your home, like replacing every plastic container with an eco-friendly container. The same things you can do for vegetable, fruits, and snack shopping by replacing plastic bags with compostable ones. So, you should always look for eco-friendly alternatives to start your journey towards sustainable living.

Reduce the Amount of Waste

As per a 2016 report from Statista, our country produced 2.24 million tons of plastic waste through littering, illegal dumping, and many other ways. Besides that, every household dumps a huge amount of plastic waste every year. Most of these wastes cannot be recycled and take years to break down due to their massive carbon footprint. So, it is very important to go for greener alternatives to reduce the impact of these plastic wastes. All you have to do is go for eco-friendly alternatives to reduce the amount of waste. Eco-friendly alternatives are completely plastic-free and compostable without leaving any toxic residue in the environment.

Rethink Your Consumption Habits

You should rethink your consumption habits whenever you have time on your hand. At the same time, you should look for eco-friendly ways to reuse items whenever possible. Try to purchase only recyclable items to minimize your carbon footprint on the earth. So, always offer your current lifestyle an eco-friendly rebirth.

Look for Reusable Products Rather Than One-Time Compostable Products

This is an important tip for adopting a sustainable lifestyle. Since compostable products require additional natural resources to manufacture, they will increase carbon footprints. So, it is very much important for everyone to know the importance of reusing by switching to reusable products that can be upcycled or reused multiple times, just like kitchen towels.

We hope now you have a clear idea of the tips for sustainable living. In the future, these tips from Sustainable Indiana will surely help you to create a sustainable living environment at your home, workplace, or in your community.

The Benefits of Sustainable Living

Although the concept of “sustainable living” is designed with the main goal of conserving natural resources, it is proven extremely beneficial for an individual as he/she changes his/her lifestyle to adopt sustainable living. Initially, he/she may face difficulties changing his/her old, unhealthy habits, but some small changes can help the individual improve his/her lifestyle in the long run. In this way, sustainable living always leaves a prominent mark on an individual’s well-being and happiness. Besides that, sustainable living offers numerous benefits. This blog post will outline the most fruitful benefits of sustainable living.

Become More Healthier and Happier

Sustainable living always promotes a healthier and happier lifestyle for an individual. For example, you can use cycling or walking to reach a place without opting for the luxury and comfort of your car. It will take a little longer but will provide you with two types of benefits. The first one is you will be healthier due to the exercise and the second one is you will contribute less pollution.

Save More Money by Preventing Resource Wastage

Completely transforming your lifestyle into a sustainable living will always provide extra cash in your pocket at the end of every month. For example, we have to use different mediums of transportation to reach our destinations like school, college, workplace, etc, regularly. Instead of traveling in different mediums, we can choose an eco-friendly option like an electric bike to reach that place. This will save a lot of money in the long run since the cost of fuel is increasing day by day. At the same time, this will leave a less environmental impact due to less or no carbon emissions. 

Similarly, we can wash our clothes at a constant lower temperature or switch off the heating apart from when we need it. This small change will result in less energy consumption and smaller electricity bills. So keeping low the waste stream is one of the important aspects of sustainable living to save more money.

Feel a Renewed Sense of Purpose

Besides providing enormous health benefits, a sustainable lifestyle will make you feel better about every action and decision you have taken as well. Every time you take action or decision that will benefit the environment, you will know that you’re on the right track to sustainable living! A sustainable lifestyle always provides you with the opportunity to stay motivated, connect with nature, and live in the moment. In addition, it is an excellent way to increase your creativity and find interesting hobbies like up-cycling, crafting, and gardening!

Connect with Your Community

Another benefit of sustainable living is that it will provide endless opportunities to meet new people and connect with them. You can meet different people with similar interests in local cultural activities, community projects, local stores, and others. This will help you share your thoughts on sustainable living with them and vice versa. Besides that, you can even inspire other people to live more sustainably to reap the benefits of sustainable living.

We hope now you have a complete understanding of the benefits of sustainable living. For more information about the benefits, don’t hesitate to join our community programs at our Community Research Center for Sustainable Living in Indiana.

Importance of Sustainable Living

There is no doubt that sustainable living is often overlooked in our world, where many of us can live beyond our means. In fact, many of us are completely unaware of when we are doing these types of activities. For example, sometimes, you may leave your electronics plugged in overnight or throw away something that can be reused or recycled. In both cases, you truly live behind your energy means. However, the impact of these actions is not noticeable in the short term, but they have long-term consequences.

Sustainable living is your best bet to get rid of the long-term consequences of these actions. It actually promotes a complete understanding of how one individual’s lifestyle impacts our planet. At the same time, it points out the possible ways to live better and lighter for everyone. A sustainable lifestyle can be incorporated into every aspect of living, including eating, transportation, socialization, energy use, waste disposal, and many more. So, maintaining a sustainable lifestyle means not only meeting the needs of the current state without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their individual needs.

Why Live Sustainably?

We often hear this question from our clients in different workshops, inspirational talks, discussions, debates, demonstrations, training, and other events while promoting sustainable living. If you believe in the Sustainable Lifestyles Innovation Brief released in 2006, you can find the answer. As per this innovation brief, we would need five planets for everyone in the future if we continue to consume resources in the same quantities and at the same rates.

No doubt, developed nations consume the maximum amount of resources, and as a result, they always have the greatest impact on the environment. Only 20% population of the whole world living in a developed country consumes 86% of our world’s resources. As long as this 1/5th of the population continues to consume the maximum amount of resources, it is impossible to develop the sustainable living concept. So, it is very much important to adopt the concept of sustainable living so that we can break the link between economic growth and environmental damage. 

How to Live Sustainably?

Undoubtedly, many of us consume too much energy and create waste at an unsustainable rate. Many of us do not even realize when we are doing these types of activities. However, the impact of these actions does not have a short-term effect, but they have long-term consequences, including pollution, climate change, and different environmental impacts. So what would we do to prevent this? All we have to do is implement a few small changes to our lifestyles to reduce our personal carbon footprints and tackle these issues.    And the benefits are numerous. Most important, you are always less responsible for causing the regular damage to the environment. Besides, you can create a better world for the next generation. Moreover, it also provides you with the opportunities to live healthier. So, sustainable living is cheaper, healthier, and the most responsible choice for living on our planet.