ENVIRONMENT

Tryst with Green Living

What is sustainable living? It is a philosophy that encourages you to make choices that will optimize your health, the health of your community, and the health of the planet, by choosing to use resources mindfully, and by choosing to buy things that last for a long time, are multi-functional, and are non-toxic to your health. It does not mean you have to throw away your current lifestyle. You have to do it for yourself and the unconventional droughts and floods you are facing right now.

Many of the articles, facts or documentaries we read or watch on sustainable lifestyle predominantly come from the first world countries where standards of living, opportunities and public responsibility are much higher than what we have. Nevertheless, we are the ones who are going to be affected the most due to the virtue of our topography and being a woman worsens that. For instance, a woman of colour in Jakarta (which is sinking at the rate of 25 cm per year) is unequivocally more affected by climate change right now than a white man in the United States.

The first step to begin a sustainable lifestyle is to know “Why you are doing this? What point are you trying to prove? My point was to quit multinational cooperations and stop supporting voracious companies. End of the day, climate change or plastic consumption is rooted in these companies who take no responsibility on providing better for the people and only work for their gain. If you are a 19-year-old, student, drowning in assignments, dependent on your family and living in a family you must be questioning if it is even possible to live in a lifestyle like this. Over the last two years, I have worked to make this lifestyle accommodable with me in the least irruptive way as possible. Although I will disclose, I do slack now and then.

Living and being dependent on your family comes with its own set of challenges. Although my family is in favour of me following this lifestyle that doesn’t mean they follow as I do. For instance, I use a bamboo toothbrush while my sister uses an electric toothbrush. This

candidly shows how adverse people in a family can be even after understanding its impact.

The worst effect on my attempt for green living is covid-19. My plastic consumption has almost doubled since the lockdown. No, I am not talking about odd bits and pieces of plastic-like straws and chocolate wrappers. It is also about using sanitizers in a plastic container, nonbiodegradable masks and everything we are letting slide these days for our health. Ironically avoiding the use of plastic once doesn’t have an immediate effect on our health. So, you will only see this effect after much time. Like asthma and other breathing problems, you may sustain in your future is due to the choices you make now.

FOOD. One of the most vocal points of sustainable living. If you think being vegan is a cure-all like the west, then you are wrong. Living on plant-based diet sure is 100% good for the planet but eating locally and seasonally is more important which is often not conveyed by these so-called vegan gurus. For instance, the avocados available here are strenuous to grow and therefore expensive while a lot of vegan bloggers show avocadoes as a bare minimum in their diet.

easiest way to use my kitchen waste through Max La Manna’s book “More Plants Less Waste”. He uses vegetable waste like leafy greens stem, corn stock, onion peels, carrot tops, etc to make vegetable stock used to make soup. Another trick is using citrus discards to produce a non-toxic homemade home cleaner.

The key for living a green living is learning, understanding and implementing. If you start to learn and question your life choices and execute it to change in small ways- that is progress. You will fail sometime and succeed most times but remember your goal. Start with tiny changes like using a reusable straw/cloth bag/water bottle, switch off appliances and plug them out to save electricity and use less fossil fuels. Buying less is an easy way to reduce your waste. Be it clothing or food less buying is proportional to the less waste you generate.

Don’t mistake this for greenwashing or whitewashing. I am not trying to enunciate consumer guilt. I believe that “social change will bring political change”. The small steps we take as an individual will bring change in the functioning of the profit-driven system. The choice we make as consumers in choosing to support the fossil fuel industry or sustainable brands is on us.

I believe that sustainable living is mattering, especially if you’re living in a big city in a mainstream manner because you need to control the things that can be controlled. There are so many things that are out of our control. The air we breathe, the fuel that we use. But if you control the things that you can control, like the products that you put in your body and on your body, and the way you store your food to ensure that chemicals don’t get leached into it, then I believe that you can positively impact your health by controlling those things.

Here are two physical stores from Hyderabad who are working to help consumers shop consciously.

Khadi Eco Basket 1-8-156 /160, 1st Floor, Plot no. 10 Pender Ghast Road, Hyderabad, Telangana 500003. ContactNo.091009 59697

Plantarium-Plant based store & Café 4th Floor, Diamond Park, above HDFC Bank, Vinayak Nagar, Gachibowli, Hyderabad, Telangana 500003. Contact No. 090149 21819