Sustainability as a Student
The blame is placed onto individual consumers for climate change, but it shouldn’t be. ‘100 energy companies have been responsible for 71% of all industrial emissions since human-driven climate change was officially recognized.’. I am a big believer in changing my habits and altering where I spend my money, to support a more sustainable lifestyle. Big corporations follow trends in consumer spending, so shifting to lower impact options has effect when done by a majority.
I am a part time student and barista. My income is very low and my rent very high. As much as I drool over the idea of a weekly shop in Planet Organic; buying solar panels or investing in an electric car, this is not an option for me, and many others. Instead, I make small daily changes in order to lessen my impact. These small changes add up over a lifetime.
Transport
Travel is a large part of my daily life. I study away from my family and often travel back for holidays. This is a four-hour journey (on a good day). Many of my friends enlist the help of parents to do the monotonous round trip to pick them up, lugging bags of clothes and textbooks into their cars. I hate cars. My license sees more use as ID for buying a bottle of wine than for driving. Public transport is often a quicker, easier and more sustainable option. I’ve trialed combinations of coaches and trains, each with their pros and cons depending on my destination. If I’m off to London to visit my boyfriend then a coach and tube combo is the cheapest and often fastest way. If it’s to my family on the coast then I go for an easier trip of two trains as I often have more baggage — sacrificing a little on cost. Choosing to spend my money on public transport as opposed to a petrol station on the drive is a conscious choice for me. Where we spend our money as consumers has a direct impact on which companies grow and invest in new projects.
When trains have been expensive, I have been lucky enough to coordinate with a housemate and have one parent pick us both up. Remembering that being perfect is not the goal, this still takes one car off the road that day. Car sharing not only saves money and means one less grumpy parent, but also reduces both of our environmental footprints.
For my day-to-day transport I use an electric scooter. My job is a 40-minute walk away. I love a walk, but that’s a long commute! I could cycle, but if I’m honest I hate cycling with a burning passion. My city is too hilly. My electric scooter takes 12 minutes door-to-door. It was a one-off investment of £399.00, which seems expensive for a student budget. The alternative is an 11-minute tram ride with a student ticket costing £3.10. This means it would take 129 scooter rides to recoup the cost so I feel I’ve gotten value for money. Electric transportation produces a lower quantity of greenhouse gasses and air pollutants than petrol alternatives — even when considering production and electricity generation. Of course a second-hand bike would be a perfect substitute for my scooter. But I’m not perfect, let me reiterate, I hate cycling!
Fashion
Clothing is a difficult topic to cover for a few reasons. Sustainable and independent brands are often wildly expensive; they are often not size inclusive. The gentrification of thrift shopping could be a whole blog post in itself. Greenwashing is prevalent in the industry and combatting sweat shops is not as simple of an issue as it first appears. This makes it a minefield, with very little us as consumers can do other than forcing complete systematic change. Instead of getting bogged down in the intricacies of it all I simply aim to reduce how often I purchase clothing.
I enjoy products that are built to last and have a timeless design, my Eastpak rucksack, Birkenstocks and Dr. Martens for example. These were one off purchases that I know I will not need to buy again for a long time. Often clothing is made from plastics which will survive longer than we will. By simply reducing the number of items I buy, no matter the company they were bought from, is still a more sustainable way to shop. By doing this I save money while also reducing my personal waste.
The items of clothing I do have, I wear to death. I am often sewing up holes or stitching back on buttons. By learning these simple skills I’ve been able to prolong the lifespan of items I love as often these repairs are not noticeable. This stops me from needing to purchase a replacement. Damaged items cannot be donated and so often end up in landfill. The sewing kit I have was £3 and has saved me from repeat purchases. I also have stitched up items for my housemates, stopping them from having to part with favorite items. The basic sewing skills can be found on YouTube or just find an arty friend you can bribe by doing their dishes.
Food
How can you tell if a person is vegan? They’ll tell you, and I will happily scream it from the rooftops. My transition to vegan started when I was about 15. Flash forward to now I have been vegan for about 4 years and have never looked back. Apart from the fact that meat, dairy and egg industry are a cesspit of animal cruelty (which I won’t discuss here), they also are some of the world’s largest contributors to the environmental crisis. In order to drink dairy, a cow must be housed and fed for its entire working life, requiring large amounts of grain, land and water. Alternatives such as oat milk remove the cow and convert grain into a “milk” thus reducing water and land usage. The NRDC states ‘it takes 14 kilo-calories (kcal) of fossil fuels to produce a single kcal of dairy milk, whereas just 1 kcal of fossil fuels can produce 3.2 kcal of soybeans. That measurement takes into account the fertilizers, pesticides, and other industrial inputs used in agriculture.’.
I believe the price of vegan food gets a bad reputation. A vegan diet, like all diets, can be done on a budget or lavishly depending on personal circumstances. For example, Aldi oat milk sells for 55p per litre but there are branded alternatives such as
Rude Health Fresh Coconut Drink which sells for £2.79 a litre. Vegan proteins such as lentils and beans are some of the cheapest items in supermarkets but are overshadowed by meat alternatives such as Biona’s Black Bean Cashew Burgers selling for £4.29. A direct comparison would be to say being a carnivore is expensive as I cannot afford to eat exclusively lobster. Both diets can be done on a budget (in the UK) if you know what to buy.
Let’s talk packaging. I am lucky enough to have a student focused zero waste shop on campus. This is where I buy my lentils, pasta, oats, laundry liquid and oil. Bringing your own containers saves 20p per product with the side benefit of only needing to buy as much as you need for a recipe. As this is on campus, prices are kept low. This unfortunately isn’t the case with lots of independent zero waste shops. As I said at the beginning, consumers are not the issue, big corporations are. I don’t beat myself up over buying rice or pasta in plastic as that’s all Aldi has. It is important to remember that nobody is perfect. If the products are not available at an accessible price, then as a consumer we have done all we can. I buy as many products as I can in tins and glass as opposed to plastic. Metals and glass can be recycled into more food containers whereas plastic can only be down-cycled into a lower quality material. This means that even though it is going in your recycling bin, it is not a fully sustainable option. Food in tins and glass is also a very affordable way to buy products such as beans, soups and pasta sauces. I just make sure to clean, dry and separate my recycling according to the information online for my county’s bin collection.
Wherever possible I shop with small and local brands. I’m a big coffee lover and enjoy nothing more than working on my laptop in a cafe. The city I live in has a thriving cafe scene with lots of independent venues who charge the same as Costa or Starbucks but with a much nicer coffee. By making the effort to go to a smaller business I know that the owners have sourced their coffee responsibly, paying the workers a fair wage. The money I spend will be circulated back into the local economy as opposed to being hoarded offshore. These local cafes have been forced to price match these chains and so often have very small profit margins. As an environmentalist it is easy to focus on the rainforest or ice bergs and overlook the surroundings outside your front door. By supporting small businesses it boosts the local economy and directly helps individuals in your own community.
Conclusion
I still know that I am far from perfect with the choices I make but I accept that as a low-income individual with full time commitments there are sacrifices I will need to make. By spending my money wisely and thinking of currency as a vote, I feel a big difference can be made on an individual level. Corporations will follow the trends they see in consumers spending and this can already be seen when looking at the new products being released. You don’t need to be rich to make changes towards sustainability.
