5 Green Choices That Won't Cost The Earth
On the challenges of sustainable living when you’re broke, ditching the guilt, and green ways to stretch your purse strings
Living sustainably when you are financially poor is bloody difficult. There, I’ve said it.
If the last 5 years of solo parenting have taught me anything, it’s that my beliefs about eco living, sustainable living, GREEN living, whatever you want to call it, were pretty naïve in the early days when I had a regular and healthy paycheck, zero debt and only myself to feed and clothe. Being Earth Kind when money is a daily concern, when your monthly energy bill is equal to more than half the cost of your mortgage, (even with your frugal approach to turning the lights on) and when all the options for cheaper food are (an expensive) bus and train journey away, can feel almost impossible. It can be hard to keep swimming.
It was the summer of 1998 when I first signed up to Greenpeace – on a street corner in Camden Town after an afternoon wandering Camden Market and feeling inspired by stalls selling recycled cutlery bracelets and handwoven recycled yarn table mats. I’d always been draw to the idea that something that was no longer useful in its current form, could be transformed into something new, and useful and therefore have it’s life extended in some way. I loved the idea that these newly useful things would have a history – my grandmother’s teaspoons turned into rings, an unloved jumper unravelled and knitted into matching legwarmer-sock combos, family sized Campbell soup cans reimagined as plant pots.
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