Lifestyle, travel and sustainability blogger Zanna Van Dijk has amassed a huge following on her award winning blog, where she honestly discusses everything from palm oil to periods, workouts and recipes.
Zanna is also refreshingly open about the fact that aiming to live sustainably is a challenge and most definitely an ongoing process.
‘It is definitely a lifelong journey, it is almost impossible to become 100% eco-friendly overnight,’ she admits. ‘Honestly, I don’t think that if you live in the Western world in 2020 you can have a completely sustainable lifestyle just because of the way society is built.
‘There are endless ways we can live a little more consciously and it can be overwhelming when you open yourself up to them all, so just start small and keep going!’
So here are a few of Zanna’s tips for small changes we can all make to help our the environment….
Go without gum
Did you know chewing gum is made from plastic? If that thought alone isn’t enough to put you off it, then the fact that over 100,000 tonnes of gum are thrown away every year might convince you to give it a miss.
Munch mindfully
From your coffee cup lid to plastic straws and cutlery, eating on the go can be an environmental disaster. Invest in a metal or bamboo straw and cutlery as well as a reusable coffee cup and water bottle, and get in the habit of always carrying them with you.
… And munch less meat
It isn’t just the material our food is packaged in, or the utensils we use to eat it that can affect the environment. Growing – or feeding! – and transporting our food is a huge contributor towards climate change. Ultimately, I try to eat consciously. I reduced my meat intake and eat more plants. I source any animal products I eat responsibly. My general approach is that when I cook for myself, I cook plant based and when I go out to eat I choose (mostly) vegetarian options.
…And munch local
I try and eat produce that is grown locally and is in season – minimising the time taken between picking and hitting the plate. This not only means less transportation of food around the world thus reducing the amount of carbon used, but it also supports local growers and therefore the local community and economy.
Flush with pride
Toilet paper is responsible for a vast number of trees being cut down. There are lots of toilet paper brands now that use 50% or more recycled materials and even some that give a percentage of profits to charities that work to offset deforestation.
Careful with your cuppa
Most teabags actually contain plastic, even though most of us throw them in with food waste. This plastic can then end up back in the environment causing harm. Try and chose a brand with totally plastic free bags and dunk with pride.
Periods matter, period
There are some pretty shocking facts around sanitary products and the environment. Like did you know that regular tampon or pad, laced with plastic, can take up to 500 years to biodegrade? Or that in 2016 the Marine Conservation Society found 20 tampons or sanitary items for every 100 metres of shoreline?
Why not try out instead either a menstrual cup, which you can re-use again and again, or period pants (made of a special absorbent and hygienic material), that you wash after each use. Many women in the UK and across the world face period poverty and just don’t have options around their period, which makes it even more important that those of us who do explore sustainable choices.
Learn more about how to live sustainably with Zanna on her podcast; Small Steps, Big Impact, in association with Dove.
‘I am so excited about my podcast Small Steps, Big Impact,’ Zanna says.’I hope it will make sustainable swaps feel more accessible for all, by breaking them down into easy and achievable steps that we can take to live a little more consciously.
‘The guests are incredibly inspiring and their stories need to be heard, I can’t wait to share them with the world and hopefully encourage the listeners to start their own sustainability journey.’
Listen to Small Steps, Big Impact here.
To find out more about what Dove is doing to support the fight against plastic waste visit dove.co.uk.
The problem with plastic
- Producing the most common form of plastic requires the non-renewable fossil fuels petroleum (oil) and gas. Extracting these and the production itself both produce greenhouse gasses that harm our ozone layer.
- Plastic takes thousands of years to break down – mainly sitting in landfills or in our oceans (over 5 trillion pieces of plastic are already floating in our oceans). Some evidence shows it never really disappears but simply becomes a kind of plastic dust, which is toxic.
- We keep producing more! The world produced 2.1 million tonnes in 1950. In 2015 we produced 406 million.
- In total, it is estimated that we have produced 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste. Only 9 percent of that was recycled, 12 percent was incinerated, and 79 percent accumulated in landfills or environment.
source https://metro.co.uk/2020/10/15/sustainability-swaps-lifestyle-green-blogger-zanna-van-dijk-how-has-done-bit-13143761/
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