[venkat_partha]

Thanks for starting this wonderful thread.

Sustainable living is a goal that needs to be ingrained in ourselves and our children. Our children learn by our behaviour in real life. If we ourselves practice sustainable living, our children will automatically follow us.

What we are doing for sustainable living:
1. My car is 15+ years old, peak condition, will refrain from buying another till it is not sustainable (financially + environmentally) to run it.
2. We generally buy it for life. Repair, Reuse, Repurpose are generally followed wherever possible.
3. All plastic packaging is reused. Most of the times (atleast).
4. Garbage Segregation - as a practice, daily.
5. Reduce consumption. Buy only when necessary. Buy once, for life. This requires a lot of research and some buying before you hit the sweet spot of product quality and longevity. Once identified, buy 2 of the item (if budget permits).
This might be counter-intutive. However, in my experience, buying 2 of an item ensures that you have a product that you like for longer.
6. Do not get influenced by feature creep (that is marketed as the latest feature) to upgrade regularly.
7. Carry your litter back home and dispose properly
8. Carry your own water. Avoid buying packaged drinking water. Refill wherever the source is clean and you are permitted to refill.

My thoughts seem disjointed. However, we are within friends, and such disjointed thoughts are permitted (i hope) among friends.

Keep Safe,
Venkat

[freakmuzik]

Most favourite topic!!

1. Use of Metro/ extensive walking as much as I can - almost all airport and railway station trips are by metro and I love walking to places as much as possible.
2. If we order via swiggy, we rinse and keep all plastic containers and give them up for recycling along with waste paper, plastic bags of groceries etc.
3. Easiest step - BUY LESS! Nothing else beats this and I try my best to do this.
4. Own Water Bottle, Grocery bags, always.
5. When at home, I tried planting the seeds from mangoes we get and buy, and out of them, 8-10 have turned out well and we're looking to plant them somewhere.
6. Not to attack on diet - I'm a vegetarian, but trying to reduce dairy (I was a vegan for 5 years but then stopped at a point). I'm still debating myself regarding certain aspects though.

Some drastic steps I tried but couldn't sustain:

1. Buying organic and safe Detergents and Soap
2. Switching to tooth Powder
3. Vegan
4. Avoid Flights

STILL, the best thing I wish for is to push Manufacturers to make goods that become part of REUSE and RECYCLE chain. Imagine if any thing manufactured also has a process to recycle or reuse built-in. If Swiggy recycles the plastic containers, if Amazon recycles the paper boxes and plastic, if BigBasket does the same, if Nestle group takes back their waste. Some of them have this initiative but it's more name sake as of now. More stringent measures at the top will reduce so much of environmental issues. Pushing everything to the consumer is a long and never-ending process. We should learn from Nature - what it creates goes back into it seamlessly. Hence it lives long.

Does not mean I won't do what I can.

[GreenerPlanet]

I think whenever we talk of green initiatives or sustainability, we should have a sense of what action of ours has what impact.

My own ideas were shaken when I read a good writeup on quora.

Please see the infographic.

I have quoted it previously:

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/comme...ml#post4668054 (Europe: Air travel hit by Flight Shaming)

[anish]

One of the biggest change we have made in the last 2 years is to switch to a regular gravity water filter ( Tata Swatch ) from a RO filter. One litre of water to be filtered in regular RO set up results in loss of 3 litre of water.
In our family of 3, we use ~12 litres water everyday (9 litre drinking and 3 litres for making food/tea etc ). In last 2 years we have ended up saving 25,000 litres of water from being wasted Plus the amount of electricity and money saved everyday.
The water is as safe and pure as from an RO and we only need to change filters once every 3000 litres.

IMHO switching out from RO to regular gravity filter is the easiest lifestyle change most of us can undertake and it has immediate positive impact on the environment

[pandey.jai]

Originally Posted by anish

One litre of water to be filtered in regular RO set up results in loss of 3 litre of water.

We’ve been collecting the water in a bucket and using it for various purposes in the house. I believe it’s the most basic form of conservation that one can (and should) practice.

[Tom Sooraj]

A great thread!

What I do:

1) Carrying bags for shopping (most of the time).
2) Washing aluminium foils, boxes, covers, and plastic containers, which we get when we buy food parcel, and give them to a nearby recycling shop.
3) Giving old batteries to the recycling shop.
4) Burning daily wastes (bits of paper, plastic covers, tablet strips, etc.) in a pit behind our house (yes, I know burning of wastes is harmful, but garbage-collecting trucks won't come to our area. I feel it's better to burn them instead of letting them spread all over the place. Reason: Years ago, I saw a video in which a group of veterinary doctors performed a surgery on a cow, to remove 52 kgs of plastic IIRC.)
5) Not throwing non-biodegradable wastes on the road.
6) During my college days, my friends used to buy food items packed in plastic covers. They eat the food and simply throw away the plastic covers. I try my best to take the cover secretly and put them in the dustbin. I have failed on many occasions too.
7) Disposing baby diapers in a garbage dump yard, 3 kms away from our house, once in a week.
8) Using biodegradable dish washing liquids and bathroom cleaners.

What I don't:

1) Walking/cycling/using 2 wheelers to nearby stores. We don't have any shops within 1.5 kms range and we don't have any 2 wheelers. And our area has many snakes, so using a 4 wheeler is a safer option.

What I try to change:

1) Giving empty toothpaste and ointment tubes, and old, non-working tube lights, to the recycling shop.
2) Reducing plastic usage even further.

Other experiences:

1) Sometime in 2020, I and my friend went to the beach. I was literally shocked to see so many broken thermocol sheets lying almost everywhere on the beach. I couldn't do much. I took a video of that, and put that as my whatsapp status, requesting people not to throw garbage simply as such.

The last time when I had gone to the beach, so many plastic covers and thermocol bowls were lying in and around the beach.

Usually, going to beach relaxes my mind, but now, thinking of going to beach makes me stressed.

We need more and more awareness on this topic, and we need more facilities so that the wastes can be recycled effectively.

P.S.: There will also be some other things I need to change, but I can only remember these now.

[rkv_2401]

Great thread! I would like to suggest - use your computers and mobile phones for as long as you can! I purchase flagship-grade phones and keep them for 3-4 or more years, barring unexpected hardware failures or theft. It's also easier on the wallet! This cycle has worked out pretty well for me over the last 10 years or so.

Any computer with a 3rd generation i5 or newer is probably still good, still fast, just dust out the cooling vents and swap out the hard drive for an SSD and try it before buying a new one! I have a 12 year old laptop that runs the latest version of Windows 10 and is still perfect for browsing and light usage! I strongly feel that this needs to be promoted more (the tech YouTubers group do have videos about it, but they haven't attracted as much attention as I think they should) - Windows 10 removes some or most of the hard drive optimizations of the past versions and this disproportionately affects the system's perceived speed, as data I/O from the hard drive/SSD is the slowest part of the system.

I can prove it, in fact. On my powerful Ryzen 3600 machine w/24GB of RAM and an RTX 2060, turning on the PC and getting to the Windows desktop takes 2 mins and 50 seconds with a 2TB 5400RPM hard drive. On one of the cheapest 250GB SSDs I could find? 10-15 seconds!! And I have a video clip of my 12 year old Inspiron i5-430M (underclocked to 1.6Ghz because of poor thermals) chugging along just fine, installing a browser or some app while browsing a webpage on another browser after I installed an SSD. Before the SSD, the damn thing would take 20 seconds to open MS Word.

I can almost guarantee that any well-kept machine with a desktop i5 3rd gen(Ivy Bridge from 2012) or a laptop i5 5th gen(Broadwell from 2015) or better, with an SSD, can do anything that a more modern machine can and do it in a reasonable amount of time. I still have my Surface Pro 2 - a well-kept tablet PC with an i5 4th gen from 2013 - and an SSD, and I bet that it can do anything reasonable that my 2020 desktop can. Couple of hours of battery life, check. 1080p display, check. Visual Code usage, check. Run an intensive stress test, say Prime95, in the background whilst browsing without perceivable lag or overheating? Check!

[prasi55]

Originally Posted by Vasanth

Fluoride is one of the most important content of Toothpaste or tooth powder. It is the anti caries agent in the tooth paste. It forms fluorapatite crystals which act as defence mechanism from cariogenic bacteria

Partly agree, I mentioned it here (What sustainability choices do you make on a daily basis??). Many branded toothpaste powder options (from Colgate included) contain fluoride. Instead of making my own powder, I used existing tooth powder and added some clove oil to it. One could do the same with a fluoride-containing tooth powder.

[Strider24]

Nice thread. I am also learning here what sustainable choices i can make along with few below things that I already do:

1. I switch off all lights/fan when we all go out of home.
2. switch off all TV, sound bar, laptop/mobile charging points at night. overnight standby mode consumes significant amount of electricity.
3. use clothe bag for grocerry, now a days there is no dearth of them as swiggy gives all home delivery of groceries in nice cloth bags.
4. carry & use own water bottle everywhere we go, be it malls or a day long roadtrip. we even use a Milton Coolkeg on long road trips. Buy water bottle only when there is an emergency.
5. instructed car cleaner not to use water for car wash on daily basis. in today's WFH age when I am not driving to office daily, car too doesn't need daily car wash. just a generous and carful dusting is sufficient.

[sukhbirST]

Agree with most points given in above contributions. Have been following most suggestions given by freakmuzik ,strider24 , Tom Soraj etc to name a few. Covid has taught me and my family sustainability choices we never even dreamed off. Thanks for sharing. One important point is the limit to which we can go. Finally not changing things till we can manage is the key.

[KeepReading]

Wonderful thread.
Few from my side.

• Using cycle for short distance
• Carrying cloth bags
• Delaying life-style upgrades as much as possible (Wife cribs, but agrees to point. few can not be avoided. :()
• Reduced non-veg food. Increased fruits
• Planting
• Reducing plastic footprint in house

One point I want to highlight.
Corporates look for profit. they dont look for good things for mother earth.
Strategies are not eoc-friendly. Few examples are plastic usage.
For many products, there is no clear plan for end of life handling.

[Jaguar]

Originally Posted by Strider24

2. switch off all TV, sound bar, laptop/mobile charging points at night. overnight standby mode consumes significant amount of electricity.
3. use clothe bag for grocerry, now a days there is no dearth of them as swiggy gives all home delivery of groceries in nice cloth bags.

I did a rough calculation for switching off 30 computers overnight. The total cost savings came to less than 3k for the year. So, not much a power saving.

The second part of getting a cloth bag for every Swiggy order is counter-intuitive IMO. The production of more cloth bags is not a sustainable choice. Instead, switch to services that deliver groceries in containers which they take back (big basket for eg) and not use any bags at all.

I personally feel Swiggy and Zomato are a couple of businesses that need to be shamed in this thread. Convenience aside, they are bad for the environment, increase traffic and make people lazy. People order small quantities of food items, remember the old man ordering a single laddu in the ad, from nearby restaurants, for which the delivery person travels multiple kilometers burning petrol and waste a ton of packing material as well. The offers built into the app often make it cheaper to order using the app than walking to the restaurant next door. There should be some regulations like the minimum order quantity and the distance to the restaurant etc to make the services more sustainable.

[Jaisalmeriya]

Thanks for starting a great thread for the sheer variety of ideas one can pick up to do one's bit for Mother Nature.

Rather than specific choices, our family is conciously adopting the concept of "Minimalism" across all facets of life. It has been an enriching, satisfying and an eye-opener of an effort on how "less" we need but still "how much much More" we accumulate in the course of life.

The onset of pandemic was when I got started and the amount of space, air and energy flow I have been able to create in my house has been overwhelming. Some of the choices/decisions we made:

1) Minimise Water Waste - Installed Water aerators across the taps
2) Use recyclable dustbin bags
3) Carry cloth bags for shopping
4) Use 2-wheeler unless going out full-house
5) Minimize single use items across kitchen, office, kids school and houselhold
6) I personally own less than 40 pieces of clothing (right from undergarments to office and party wear) and bringing around my family to see the benefits not just on environment but on emotional and psychological health of self
7) Repair, reuse, recycle as much as I can
8) Donate to underprivileged kids and housekeeping staff around me
9) Trying to influence my dad to not buy a new car (counter-instinctive for a petrol head) as he simply does not have a running of more than 30 kms a week.
10) I plan to go for no gifts policy starting 2022 for birthdays and other parties I host

Wow, there is so much more that can be done.

[arunrajk81]

In my view, the Sustainability efforts should start from food which a basic need. That’s what pandemic taught me.

I started my backyard garden with raised beds, container gardening, vertical planters and few fruit trees on ground.The place we stay, it’s tough to grow most of veggies during winter. So, we Freeze (Yes Freeze, not refrigerate) the excess produce for off season rather than keep it in refrigerator and throwing once its spoiled.

With that said, I am happy to say that we never brought tomatoes, Leafy Veggies from shop since the pandemic started. I was also able to drastically reduce the purchase of other veggies like Chilies, Beetroot, Carrots etc from store and thereby reducing frequency of store visits for Veggies. Our fruit trees are yet to yield other than few apples we got last year. Thanks to the previous homeowner who planted some sweet limes and normal ones that already giving us fruits.

[deathwalkr]

Originally Posted by arunrajk81

I started my backyard garden with raised beds, container gardening, vertical planters and few fruit trees on ground.

Maybe you could post a few pics in the gardening thread? Would love to see it. I just started raised garden beds a couple of weeks back for brinjals and chillies with basil and mint as companion plants.

Tomatoes are in the terrace. Following the twine, hook and clip system for them and seeing good results

Next bed i have planned for Okras and cilantro as companion.

Fruit trees are a plenty but plucking them is a chore