Sustainable Living for alL

Learning to live within our planets capabilities

 - without living like cavemen!

Sustainability UK - OUR AIM 

It is becoming clearer every day that, in terms of what we expect from our homes and lifestyles, humanity is living beyond its means.  Our aim is very simple; to work out how the individual can live more sustainably while still enjoying as many of the creature comforts we have become used to as possible.  No-one wants to climb inside a damp cave and live off berries and scavenged insects (well - almost no-one, and certainly not us!)

We are not highly qualified academics in the field - simply regular people wanting to do their bit.

This website is one normal family's** research and practice into how we can all live sustainably.  

** To clarify normal..... we're a sporty family of three (just one child, not 2.4 children!), living a 3 bed semi detached house.  We're all quite studious and love family nights in watching movies or playing board games - so "normalish".  We are muddling through life in the same way as everyone else. 

All this is done in our spare time as it is something we are passionate about.  Hopefully you'll like some of the ideas, take them up and share a few with others.

Clearly the pandemic has changed a lot in the world and, in our case, slightly curtailed what we do here as we've had to spend many extra hours on our normal jobs to keep our family afloat.  We hope this will change in 2021 for us and also everyone else.  Roll on the vaccines!

SUSTAINABILITY - DEFINITION

There are a number of definitions we've seen - but the one we like to use is

The reason we like this is it fits our ethos of not having to hide away in a cave, but we can live rich, fulfilling modern lives - but in a way which won't stop our descendants from doing so as well.  It is the definition first adopted by the UN back in the 80s.

We look at green energy, sustainable development, the climate crisis, plastic waste and much, much more.

SUSTAINABILITY RESEARCH

There are two main parts to this site.  In the first, we wanted to improve our knowledge about the various sustainable living issues, using as much scientific data as we could lay our hands on.  

We have tried to present this in a simple and readable form - so that it is accessible and (hopefully) useful.

SUSTAINABILITY IN PRACTICE

Secondly, we wanted to put as much of this research as we could into practice, with our own projects, both current and planned, that would make a big difference if enough people had a go.  There are projects to suit all pockets (we can't afford some yet - but hopefully in time....)

Essentially sustainability is about sourcing what we use better (eg clean energy or sustainable foods etc) and making fuller use of what we have (eg avoiding fast fashion or leaving lights off).

We hope you find the site useful and would love to get feedback from you.

This site makes no income, we fund it ourselves and is purely about getting the message of sustainability out to as wide an audience as possible so we might make individually small, but societally huge changes to improve the path our planet is on.

WHAT IS SUCCESS FOR SUSTAINABLITY UK?

Put simply it's about changing the habits in one area of someone's life to make them more responsive to the needs of the planet.  When that person then becomes a second, a tenth, a thousandth and each adopts a couple of changes - all the better.  

We're all in this together and together we can make a massive change.

We are on Twitter - as you can see below.  Please follow us on there, we love when people become part of the conversation.

sustainably handing on to the next generation
Images kindly provided by William Warby and Chris Lim under wikimedia commons. Files licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-share alike 2.0 Generic Licence