How green is your personal lifestyle

Latest Articles

How green is your personal lifestyle

Downsizer Forum Index -> Conservation and Environment

Author

Message

Florence

Joined: 15 Mar 2025
Posts: 301

Posted: Sun Nov 30, 25 4:35 pm Post subject: How green is your personal lifestyle

'Fess up - how green are you personally?

Used to be a lot more so. Then the income went up and things started to go downhill.

At present not on a green heating and lighting tariff at home - not sure why either. Will look sternly come May.

Clothing is all new - not a sign of second hand. Used to be everything but shoes and underwear. Have put on weight so don't seem to fit anything second hand at present.

All of the furniture (and furnishings) is from local sources and only the sofa second hand. Likewise cookware. The furniture was rebellion from a lifetime of mostly second hand.

So what is a green lifestyle?

gz

Joined: 23 Jan 2009
Posts: 9472
Location: Ayrshire, Scotland

Posted: Mon Dec 01, 25 7:38 am Post subject:

Clothes secondhand or homemade from the stash of fabric unless absolutely necessary. Shoes the same.

Grow what food I can which isn't as much as I used to... different garden, no allotment. Most cooking done from scratch and definitely no fast food.

No heating unless necessary, but I don't take it to an extreme.

Public transport/walk/bike where possible.

Drive with light feet.

When I do travel abroad I go for a long time...the last time to NZ was only two months..shorter than usual....and when there I carry on as I would here...but without the car travel.

No-one is perfect but we can all do our best.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 16788

Posted: Mon Dec 01, 25 9:48 am Post subject:

Not really sure. As all electricity goes in and comes out wherever, not sure the green tariffs really do a lot as currently it is cheaper to generate from renewables than fossil fuel. Heating is mixture of gas, wood and some eco-coal, cooking mainly gas or electric, but use the fire or our charcoal sometimes. Use a hybrid car, but walk to local shops when possible. Longer journeys need a car as limited bus service.

Have had most of my clothes for years, and spin wool for jumpers, most of which is local. Clothes get worn as long as possible, so most aren't fit for anything but the rag bag when they are finished with.

Grow some of our own fruit and veg, make wine, cook mainly from scratch. Furniture dates from 1960s onwards, and although we buy new we buy it to last.

Very little waste, as peelings etc. go on the compost heap, recycle what can be recycled, and reuse what can be reused. Think we are below average in terms of usage of most things, but as with everyone, could do better.

Our work to manage the woods and supply local firewood and charcoal is as green as we can afford or manage to make it now. Although electric tractors etc. are now available they are beyond our price range and limited electricity in the woods would mean having to drive them home to recharge.

Florence

Joined: 15 Mar 2025
Posts: 301

Posted: Tue Dec 02, 25 11:53 am Post subject:

Trouble is that when things here come to the end of life there's no such thing as passing on second hand. It's real end of life stuff.

Last time there was a proper clear out it was a case of local van man to the tip as not being a driver.

I did have a clear out of "stuff" from the years via Facebook to clear space earlier in the year. Lot of it was unnecessary cookware now that there's no allotment produce.

Am about to look again.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 16788

Posted: Wed Dec 03, 25 8:21 am Post subject:

Agree. When we get rid of clothes, they really have had it; holes either from wear or sparks from the kiln. I am considering putting buttons on my work fleece as the zip has gone and not worth the money to get a new one and it would be a horrible job sewing a new one in. The fleece is quite big, so even over a sweatshirt it will do up with buttons. I patched my work trousers recently, and sons work trousers have a gusset in them where he keeps tearing the crutch getting in and out of the tractor.

I did get rid of a couple of rubbish bags full of clothes to my great nieces a few years ago. Some of them dated from the 1960s and had come into fashion again at least twice in that time.

Some of them went to charity shops, but the best of them got reused I think.

Florence

Joined: 15 Mar 2025
Posts: 301

Posted: Wed Dec 03, 25 12:58 pm Post subject:

Do have a way of buying less plastic for the house supplies. I'm part of a Suma home buying group. Suma is a workers' cooperative which can make it interesting sometimes.

So long as we can order Â£376 between us we get it delivered free. Group has declined in numbers over the years and only one member is of long standing. We had to have a reboot after one of the known home group splits.

However it works. Well till it doesn't.

For me, things like shampoo, conditioner, washing up liquid, toilet cleaner come in 5 litre containers and contents are decanted into collected bottles for use thereafter. Some of the group buy dried pulses in quantity and such as well.

Mostly the prices are wholesale. Can be as green, ethical, vegan, vegetarian as you choose. Daughter and husband have left the country (England) and moved to Scotland so the system no longer works for them as it's the usual charge more for delivery to Scotland.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 44737
Location: yes

Posted: Wed Dec 03, 25 2:30 pm Post subject:

i do not know

as far as possible i go for the low impact, low energy, re-used options

however i eat meat, have gas heating(and good clothes to reduce it), need taxis to get to places(some are electric), need assorted meds and often decide that cleaning plastic to send it to "recycling" is greenwashing

over 4 decades i might have been more green than not green, whatever green means

risking life, limb, liberty and sanity to protect places and critters , planting a temperate rain forest etc probably counts

not for me to decide

ps showing the food bank folk where to harvest "wild"(old planted and moved on from) apples was rather satisfying, is that green or community?

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 16788

Posted: Thu Dec 04, 25 9:10 am Post subject:

Probably a bit of both Dpack.

I am currently using shampoo bars, but have yet to find the right one. I want something that just cleans my hair but ideally doesn't contain certain ingredients as I have developed a mild sensitivity to some things shampoo contains, apart from the plastic containers.

Talking of greewashing. It seems that a certain company are selling ladies underwear as 'compostable' even though they contain elastane. They are also made of Tecal which is a type of rayon, but uses a 'closed' system so the solvents don't get out much, unlike traditional rayon which uses some rather nasty solvents that aren't recycled. I will be writing an article about it for our coppice group newsletter, but that will be in the spring, as I already have one technical article about biochar, and I think 1 technical article per newsletter is quite enough for most of our members.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 16788

Posted: Thu Dec 04, 25 9:11 am Post subject:

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 16788

Posted: Fri Dec 05, 25 8:32 am Post subject:
Although I know our lifestyle is far from as green as it could be, if everyone took the same view as most of us, there would be a lot less food waste, single use plastic and general poor lifestyle than there is now.

	Downsizer Forum Index -> Conservation and Environment	All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1

View Latest Posts