Guide to Sustainable Living

Your Journey Starts Here

Welcome to the start of a more sustainable life. It’s brilliant to have you here.

I want to start by saying you can make a difference.

Some say that individual actions don’t matter. They’re not going to move the needle and they won’t help the environment. I say they’re wrong.

Although the transition to more sustainable ways is in motion, we still live in a world of poor climate leadership (Cop 28 anyone?) and big business who’d rather make profit at the expense of the planet. We need this to change. And fast.

And here’s the kicker: Change isn’t going to happen without the will of the people.

Putting pressure on governments and businesses are individuals. Us. Me and you. We need individual actions to get us there. It matters.

“I am one person,” said 8 billion people.

Large scale systematic change is always preceded by small actions that come before them. It’s true for any kind of major societal change in the past. These all started with individual actions, leading to a change in public opinion and eventually to law change.

We need to take personal responsibility and together with collective action we can make a widescale positive change.

Tiny Eco Mission Statement

Tiny Eco is here to help you reduce your impact on the environment and live a more sustainable life.

The plan of action to achieve this is by making more sustainable, climate friendly, everyday choices. Bit by bit, the positive actions will compound.

Tiny Eco commits to sharing genuine, helpful and reliable information in the form of articles and guides across all major areas of your home life.

Armed with this information, you can then start to make swaps, switches and habit changes to achieve maximum positive impact for you.

What does sustainable living mean?

So, what does sustainable living actually mean?

Well, it’s a broad topic. This is perhaps where some confusion and misalignment has come in between people and groups looking to make a positive change.

For me, sustainable living revolves around three main areas:

🌍 Reducing carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions

🌳 Enhancing biodiversity and the wider environment

🀝 Being more ethical

There’s a special fourth area too:

🌱😊 Sustainable living has to be sustainable for you

This last point is really important. Sustainable living isn’t all or nothing and perfect doesn’t exist. It has to be enjoyable and realistic for it to be a long-term approach. This is why making small everyday eco living upgrades can be a good strategy.

But the more sustainable we can be in our personal lives, the better the impact we’ll have. And the more people we can get along for the journey, the bigger the impact we can have.

So, how do you even start to go about achieving any of these big ideas?

Where to start?

We start with the things we can control.

These are mainly the choices we make in our own homes and in our own lives. It’s best to break sustainable living down in manageable areas.

According to the book, ‘How bad are bananas? The carbon footprint of everything’ by Mike Berners-Lee, there are four key areas that make up an individuals carbon footprint.

The four biggest areas are:

🏠 Home (25%) – Household energy use and maintenance

πŸš— Transport (27%) – Cars, flights and other transport modes

🍽️ Food (25%) – Food and drink from shops, plus eating out

πŸ›οΈ Everything else (23%) – Shopping, public services, finances

carbon footprint breakdown pie chart TEHL

Tiny Eco primarily helps to address sustainable living in the first category (home) and the last category (everything else).

But we have plans to go into all of these areas to help both you and us to progress in our sustainability journey.

Quick Start: Best places to go from here

To help you move forward in your own personal sustainable journey, here are some posts I’d recommend reading up on first.

🏦 Most ethical bank accounts to switch to

🏑 Can living small be the next big thing for the environment

πŸ“– 15 best books on sustainability and the environment

Explore more topics on sustainable living

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Who’s behind Tiny eco?

ben teddy in nature tree trunk 450x600

Tiny Eco was started by Ben Hardman in 2019.

Ben is a writer and an environmentalist who’s passionate about creating positive change in our world.

You can find out more about the story on our about page.

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