Callum Roberts – Student living sustainably: Week 1

Callum Roberts

My first week living sustainably

As mentioned in the previous post, Callum is going to make an effort to live as sustainably as a student can. Let’s see how his first week went.

Okay from my first week I can sum up the following: I have a memory like a sieve and my flatmates will never let that go.

In General

I would say that I managed okay in my first week. A lot of it is memory-based; REMEMBERING to turn off lights and chargers, REMEMBERING to bring my own bags when going shopping. But phone reminders (and flatmate reminders) can help mitigate that. Walking everywhere was a fairly straightforward part of sustainable living, even when the chilly weather had me pining for a nice warm bus.

Shopping

Initially not too hard; you can easily pick up vegetables with little to no packing. Going meat-free was a bit of a challenge however and I regret to say I was not very successful. BUT that is not to say that it was a wasted effort, simply another area of sustainable living that I can try again with again next week! Also, if you make a concerted effort to check the packaging as you buy, it is relatively easy to minimise the amount of non-recyclable packaging you must dispose of.

Recycling

I did find an innovative  (if somewhat) niche use for some containers and packaging. I am a fan of model-making and I find that some packaging such as the netting that satsumas come in if sprayed green makes a convincing camouflage netting for miniatures. Moving away from models, if you haven’t been keeping to your ‘no bottled water’ rule you can still minimise it by cutting the soft drink bottle in half you can make a neat holder for pens and pencils. This doesn’t work with all bottles but nine out of ten it works quite well.

Lush

Okay so hear me out. If you buy regular shampoo and/or body wash, you use it for a while and then have to throw away the plastic bottle. Lush products, however, DO NOT use plastic packing and last a lot longer. Although they are more expensive, they do last a lot longer and is a lot more cost-efficient.Callum