If you’re anything like me you hopefully you like to stay hydrated. I was purchasing 2-4 bottles of bottled water a day. I spend a lot of time on the road and it was easy to purchase a couple of bottles of “no particular brand” water from the nearby petrol station. They were usually on a “2 for” special, so that would suit me, I would need to stop every hour to go to the toilet but that was fine. And whenever I ran out then I would stop at the next station and get another 2. You might be thinking that these are recyclable so it’s okay. Unfortunately there aren’t as many recycling bins on the side of the road as maybe there should be, so more often than not they would end up in a rubbish bin. When we think about it recycling shouldn’t really excuse this unnecessary consumption. Especially since there is a much more sustainable alternative.

What I do now is have 2 drink bottles that I keep in my fridge, one comes with an Ice pack that fits inside to keep it cool while I drink the other one. For those that like the fruit flavoured water they make them now with infusers that add some flavour to your drink. There really is no reason for bottled water on a regular basis, I now only purchase bottled water if I am really thirsty and I am not nearby an easy water source, and I make sure I only buy one, and that bottle I take home to recycle. I have even brought empty bottles home in my carry on luggage when flying home because there were no recycling facilities at the airport. It is funny to think that over a year ago I would have just thrown it in the rubbish without a second thought. These plastic bottles are not returned to the bottled water companies to be cleaned, refilled and sent back out for sale. These plastics no longer meet the food-grade standards so and sent to plants where they are turned into things like rubbish bins and road cones. Do not get me wrong, I am not saying that these recycled bottle initiatives are a bad thing. I think it is fantastic that we have the ability to turn our waste into other things and minimise what goes to landfill. However these initiatives to have a cost. There is environmental costs in running these plants and turning these unwanted products into other things. So we end up double dipping when it comes to the energy it takes to power these factories because we had to create the item we are recycling in the first place.

So I leave you with a challenge. If you buy a lot of bottled water then try buying at least one sturdy drink bottle and refill it instead of buying bottled water. Do not beat yourself up if you end up buying some bottled water if you’re somewhere where you can not refill your drink bottle. Remember even if you can reduce your bottled water consumption by one a day, or one a week if you do not purchase it too often then you are making a difference and you will be well on your way to BeingGreen!!

Baby Steps…

If you’re like me, you have acknowledged that there is an environmental crisis going on all around us, or you feel there is more you can do to help you may be where I was a little while ago realising I have no idea where to start.

Don’t panic, BeingGreen isn’t about leaving your home in the suburbs and moving to a fully self sustained tiny house and making your own clothes. It definitely can be those that, and I admit my greater vision is to live in a self sustained “off the grid” home, but BeingGreen is about intention and doing what you can. If you choose to take a reusable coffee cup to your local cafe with you then you are BeingGreen, if you think about the products you buy and whether the packaging is recyclable or whether you can get it without the packaging then you are BeingGreen. It is not about doing everything, it is about doing SOMETHING. If we are taking responsibility for the impact we have on the environment then we can start to influence change. I had no idea where to start when i “woke up” to what impact I was causing, but I knew I could find out. I knew I wasn’t the only one, and I knew that if I had been made it this far in life with no thought to how my little decisions affected the environment, then there were people out there that could benefit from some help and some guidance. If I’m honest for me it just seemed too big, it seemed like a big problem that I could not fix. I was partly right, it is a big problem but I could help fix it, but certainly not all at once, and certainly not alone.  But was I alone? Are you alone? If you are reading this then you know you are not, and that is a great thing in itself. You are not alone and you can make a difference. A baby does not start out running, before that it must walk and in order to walk it must take it’s first steps. We too must take baby steps or else we could too easily become overwhelmed and disheartened if our goal is to run right from the outset.

But where to start I asked and you may be asking too. I would love to say that there is an easy answer to this, a step by step guide to create a minimal waste home. I say minimal waste because I think zero waste is an excellent goal and I would love to be able to achieve this but if that is the milestone, if that is the metric for success, then we may end up beating ourselves up every time we have to put an item in the rubbish, every time we receive a gift that isn’t packaged in something recyclable, every time we have buy something and it goes in a plastic shopping bag. So if we focus on minimising and set our goal to minimise our waste and in turn our affect on the environment then I think we will get closer to zero waste than if we treat any waste as a failure.

And so in no particular order we will begin to talk about some things we can start with, and if you have any great tips of your own, then feel free to leave a comment or send me an email, I am sure other readers will get some great value out of your contributions.

I can’t confidently say I recall how I got to where I am today. My life has dramatically changed in the past 5 years, it has been a whirlwind full of highs and lows. But here I am sitting writing my debut blog about how I want us all to save the planet.

Maybe it is the fact that I am soon to be a father for the first time, maybe it is the fact that I see my step-daughter, who is about to turn 7, growing and learning and asking questions about the world around her each day, then again it may just be the numerous documentaries I have watched on Netflix while trying to get some value out of my T.V time. In all honesty it is most likely a combination of all three. Though for whatever reason I look around the world today and I see it is in grave trouble. It is grossly overpopulated and we are raping it of it’s resources at a phenomenal and many of the world’s influential people have their heads in the sand about it all. Throughout my twenties I was definitely part of the majority of people who either didn’t care or thought that they could not do enough to make any real difference. I would most likely have said things like “the damage is done” or “what real difference does it make if I put this bottle in the rubbish or the recycling bin?” But as I mentioned before something has changed and I feel I can no longer sit by and ride the downward spiral to the earth’s impending doom.

The first problem I faced was Where do I start? How can I get my environmental impact down to zero, now!? The truth I realised is that you can’t, you can not do everything at once. That is, as I have learned, a sure fire way to fail. You end up beating yourself up every step of the way because you can not do it over night. So I started with a bit of research. I watched some more documentaries that have helped me get a bit of an idea of the problems we are causing. I looked into local council waste plans. I learned that not every district’s recycling bins take the same items. Not every recycling plant works the same way, and my heart broke when I realised that I have been putting my recycling in plastic bags and popping them into my yellow wheelie bin for the past 3 years and this is a big no no. I found out that all the recycling I had been doing for the past 3 years has most likely gone into a landfill. The good thing is that now I know, and now I can tell others when I see them putting their recycling into bags that it is the same as putting them in the rubbish.

The point of all this however is not to beat ourselves up about how we have been doing things wrong for years or how we have been ignoring the problem and acting like the proverbial ostrich with it’s head in the sand. The point is that we can learn and grow from this and we can help educate others. We won’t get it right 100% of the time but we can do the best we can and that is the only way we can change things. That is the only way we can make a difference. So if you are reading, then stick with me and lets see what we can do, and please feel free to get in touch as we go, I would love to read your thoughts and comments.

– Thomas