3 Easy Ways To Live A Sustainable Life

If you have ever wondered how you can live a sustainable life and reduce your energy bills but never quite knew how, then read on.

There are many ways of living sustainably and reducing your costs yet still live a comfortable life. Some examples are solar power, wind power, plain old recycling and other various renewable energy ideas.

Solar Power
Solar power is becoming a major player in offsetting your energy costs, but it is also one of those things that people often think about using yet just don't know where to begin. It's all very well researching online, but until you actually get to see one in action, it's all theory.

Building your own solar panels is not as daunting as it first seems and it is also not as expensive either. Many times folks think that the cost of building their own in prohibitive, but it just is not. The power companies would like you to think this because if everyone built their own, they would be down in their profits.

Wind Power
Just as with solar power, wind power can easily reduce energy costs. Some schools are now harnessing the power of wind to such an effect that they are actually selling some of the power produced, back to the power company!

Now, no-one says that building your own wind turbine will be easy as there are planning restrictions in place to prevent large structures from invading other people's privacy, but there are ways around it, all you have to do is check with your local planning commitee and perhaps become a little 'creative'.

Plain old recycling
If the first two are a little beyond you at the moment, then you can just recycle! It is easy to do and at no cost to you either. If you can shop at local markets, or stores which do not have products which are massively overpackaged then that is a great start (and often more inexpensive than the major stores), but if you do find you have to shop at the local big store, then any recycling you do will help to combat this. Any food you buy and do not eat can usually be recycled too, either in a compost or leave out to attract wildlife into your yard.

About the Author
Evie Cassidy has been 'going green' for a few years and has decided to start writing about it in the hope it will encourage other people to think about aspects of saving money while also helping to reduce the overall effect of global warming.She invites you to take a look at www.reduce-reuse-recycle.org to see what else you can do to live a more sustainable life. It is not hard, promise!

Art And Design For Sustainable Living - Video

Rebecca Brayton: Sustainable living is a dream that many people strive for but you shouldn't have to sacrifice style and design to get there. Hi! I am Rebecca Brayton and welcome to watchmojo.com and today we'll be speaking with Sarah Richardson, the brains behind CO. So first tell us about the idea behind CO.

Sarah Richardson: CO has been something I've been thinking about for a number of years now. It comes from my own experience working in trade and sustainability and my travels around the world where I have discovered amazing communities, making incredible things at very little. Two years ago, I was working in South Africa quite a bit and I would say that was really the tipping point for me when I decided that these products really were something that would be interesting to people in the West. They are contemporary, they are cool, they are funky and they are sustainable. That's fit in well with my own personal philosophy that we should be using globalization to enhance sustainability as oppose to allowing it to erode.

Rebecca Brayton: What can we consider sustainable and what is sustainability mean?

Sarah Richardson: There are three aspects: There is Social Equity, Environmental Protection and Economic Well-Being. Here, when we talk to people about sustainability, generally, the environmental issues are at top of their minds. When you go to other countries and talk about sustainability, you'll get quite a different answer. I mean the environmental issues are important but they are not as important as the issues of equity and the guarantee that workers have safe working environment and they are paid at decent wage.

Rebecca Brayton: What qualify something as sustainable?

Sarah Richardson: What we've done is we've developed a list of eight indicators of sustainability that we use here at CO. They range from energy efficiency to organic to recycled. When we consider a piece, we go through our indicators, we see which ones match up, now no one hits all eight indicators, but what we are trying to do is have at least three or four that are relevant for the products that we carry.

Rebecca Brayton: Would you say that sustainability is something that's attainable for everyone?

Sarah Richardson: I think sustainability is attainable to a certain degree in the choices we make. That means the choices we make as people in terms of what we are going to buy and it seems the choices we make in terms of what kind of businesses we're going to support. At the same time, we also think about where the things that we consume come from and who is making them under what conditions they have been made and we're trying to bring in things that will support that angle of sustainability.

As consumers that's interesting, we have a lot of power and often we can move faster than governments in terms of promoting sustainability. And what I am hoping is that this gallery offers people just another choice.

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