- Don’t buy anything unless you badly need it
- Do not throw a feast to loved ones rather cook judiciously with more love
- Buy product from farmers and local vendors as much as you can
- The stomach is a muscle and the more you eat the more it expands. The less you eat, it contracts. Essentially, eat less.
These are some of the statements made by some of my friends. They follow them diligently as well. Sustainability according to me is all about being responsible and these are all classic examples of being sustainable.
Recently, I was reading Dr. Prasad Modak’s blog and he published this article ’30 resolutions for sustainable living in 2020.’ This was a mighty impressive list and I am culling out a few from the list that can be easily practiced by all of us and make our world a better place to live.
- Don’t buy in the first place unless you need – mindless consumption is expected to rise steeply leading to significant depletion and degradation of our resources. Aren’t we already hearing FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and FOBO (Fear Of Better Options) as conditions that psychologists have to deal with nowadays
- Buy refurbished goods and buy so with pride – it extends the product life and reduces impacts due to the extraction and processing of virgin materials. Some of the sites that sell refurbished goods are overcart.com, gobol.in, greendust.com, amazon refurbished and snapdeal refurbished
- Donate for reuse – donate anything that you do not use or rarely use to someone who needs it
- Maintain your vehicle regularly – make sure that your automobiles are serviced regularly. This would ensure that the cars run under prescribed emission levels making it easier on the environment
- Prefer to use public transport – pretty tough to execute this. At least, practice this for one-day-in-a-month. This can slowly become one-day-in-a-week and then every alternate day routine. This would drastically reduce per person fuel consumption and generation of Greenhouse gases. Alternately, use bicycles as much as you can or for that matter, engage in carpooling.
- Use less smart mobile phones – make it a habit to use them not more than 3 hours a day and in a few months, you can reduce it to an hour a day. This would reduce overconsumption and better your mental and physical health
- Engage yourself differently – exercise, play games, draw/write, take pictures of nature to share
- Icing on the cake – meet someone inspiring at least once in a week who has a story to tell on sustainable living. In case you don’t find anyone, let me know and I shall connect you with a bunch of people that I have access to
