Consuming better is a noble goal and one that many people are now striving towards.

But to be a Sustainable consumer, you will need to make some key choices and decisions as you just can’t do it all.

These decisions are what we call “sustainable consumption choices”. Some have a bigger impact than others and at the end of the day, they are what determines how much of an impact your environmental footprint makes.

So where should you focus your sustainability efforts?

What decisions are worth making?

These are the questions our guide will answer.

Sustainable Consumption Choices, All About Prioritising

For example;

• Turning off the TV at the socket each night to save electricity from standby modes | This choice has a small impact on your overall energy usage.

• Installing solar panels and using renewable energy to power your electronics | This has a large impact for your entire household.

What you need to understand is that there’s a great deal of prioritising when it comes to sustainable consumption choices. Living a 100% sustainable lifestyle is something close to impossible to achieve for most people. That’s why we have to make choices in what domains we focus our sustainable efforts in order to make the biggest impact possible on an individual level.

You’ll also need to be wise and do a little research (we’ve got you started with our research on general consumption impacts below).

Don’t forget that “consumption” isn’t just the things we obviously consume, like food and energy. It also applies to our lifestyles, commuting, housing, hobbies, clothing, gardens… pretty much any action we take that has an impact on the planet.

So, it’s not the same as sustainable consumer behaviour values?

When you delve into sustainable consumption and more specifically into how to consume better, you’ll come across the concept of ‘sustainable consumer behaviour values’ which are super important.

They’re actually something you should think about before sustainable consumption choices!

The behaviour values are what define your behaviour and goals. To make your sustainable choices and create a bigger impact, you first need to know what your goals are and what concepts you want to base your lifestyle on.

To see how behaviour values and choices fit into sustainability overall, give our overview article a read – Our Guide to Sustainable Consumer Behaviour.

How to Overcome Motivational Imbalance

You might know that one particular sustainable choice will be really great for you – it may enrich your life and also benefit the planet. But if it’s going against what society has taught you is normal from day one, it’s going to be very difficult to make that choice.

It’s society sending you mixed messages. And it can take many different forms. Here are two simplified examples;

• You’re invited out to a meal with friends. The sustainable consumer in you wants to decline the fortune cookie (wrapped in plastic) and offer for coffee afterwards (huge environmental and ethical issues). But to decline these things would be rude and your friends would think you are weird.

• You’re going food shopping for the week. You have an amazing Japanese recipe for tofu, but it requires some exotic ingredients that have travelled halfway around the world and come in plastic packaging. Even though you know that choosing tofu and reducing meat consumption makes the biggest impact, you still feel guilty for getting those exotic ingredients instead of British-grown wonky veg at the supermarket. 

This is motivational imbalance. You know that doing that one thing is great for sustainability, but there’s pressure and expectations for you to follow the norm and do something else.

The best way to overcome motivational imbalance is to create clear, defined goals and confirm what behaviour values are most important to you. Sticking to your guns isn’t always going to be easy, but knowing in your heart what is the best choice will make it easier to see it through.

Where to Focus on Sustainability

As mentioned, the concept of sustainable consumption choices is about prioritising. Now that we’ve got the general concept down, here are some key areas where you can focus your decisions on.

As we mentioned in our previous article, the Environmental Impacts of Products Review highlights that some areas (car/air travel, building structures, energy consumption, electronics) are more “important” than others (clothing, communication, education, healthcare).

Sustainable housing and households

House building materials

The very foundations of your house should be sustainable. So, when you come to move home or buy your first one, give a priority to homes that are made from small-impact materials:

• Wood, stone and brick,
• Locally sourced materials (check nearby quarries),
• Reclaimed materials – reuse wooden beams, bricks and roof tiles from other buildings.

Resource consumption

This is about how you power your home and the resources you bring into it. Think about:

• Solar panels and renewable electricity sources,
• Self-sufficient water, e.g. spring water or well water,
• Self-sufficient drainage, e.g. septic tank or soak-away.

To reduce energy consumption, you should also prioritise insulating your home and making it as energy-efficient as possible.

Wall/roof insulation, double glazed windows, door seals, etc. These insulating materials may not be overly sustainable, but they will drastically help reduce your overall energy consumption.

Electronics

Electronics are such huge parts of our lives. We’re not talking about the non-essentials, like the latest iPhone or bluetooth speaker set. Fridges, freezers, lightbulbs… we can’t live without them. When it comes to buying home electronics, always choose the most energy efficient option. 

We’ve created some energy efficient product guides to get you started:

• Energy efficient fridges
• Best TVs for energy efficiency
• Energy efficient kettles

Prioritise the most energy-guzzling gadgets – look at the energy rating and kWh per year. These large electronic household items are powered up 24/7 so they should be your first sustainability target.

Gardening

Gardens are mostly green, but they can be even more sustainable. While gardens aren’t the top priority, once you’ve ticked off all the things above you can start thinking about:

• Wild grass lawn or meadow – mow every few months, rather than weekly (and great for biodiversity/soil health too),
• Clever space – use an outdoors clothes line, collect rainwater for plants, etc.
• Natural features – create a rockery, build a natural swimming pool, instead of plastic lawn features.

Sustainable food

Bulk shopping

Buying foods not wrapped in plastic is great, but that’s not where the efficiency problem lies. This ties to transport. Every weekly shop in the car adds to your mileage.

Bulk shopping provides the more efficient solution – the majority of dried goods can be purchased in bulk and this has numerous benefits:

• Smaller weekly shops for fresh food can be carried by hand or fit in a bicycle saddlebag or basket
• Fresh foods, like meat and veg, can usually be purchased locally
• Bulk dry foods can be shipped all at once, by a delivery driver who’s making lots of rounds in your area regardless
• Bulk food options tend to have less packaging – e.g. a very large sack of rice vs 20 small supermarket bags

Bulk shopping lets you hit many sustainability goals in one fell swoop. What can’t be purchased in bulk can be bought locally instead…

Local produce

Even if your local greengrocer doesn’t sell wonky veg, or wraps all their loose veg in plastic, they’re still usually the more efficient option.

This is for a few reasons:

• Supermarket food is shipped back and forth across the country to be sorted before it’s at your shop – but local produce often goes straight from farm to farm shop
• Some local produce stores can order in special foods on request
• If you’re living zero-waste, independent stores are more likely to be flexible with packaging
• You’ll join the community and engage more with the people working the land in your area (see our article about behaviour values to understand why this matters)

Consumption of meat

The biggest and most important debate when it comes to sustainable food is the plant vs animal discussion.

In terms of sustainability, plants always win. Producing them to harvesting them to transporting them – it’s all more sustainable than meat, which requires more space, more nutrition to grow, more manpower to control (electric fences, etc.), refrigerated lorries to transport, shorter use-by dates… the list goes on. 

Buying local meat from the butcher negates some of the transport inefficiency, but overall it’s still not great.

If you need a source of protein that’s a bit more sustainable but isn’t from plants, consider keeping your own chickens for eggs.

Sustainable travel

Holidays with ethical values

Air travel just isn’t sustainable. The amount of fuel it takes to get up in the air is crazy! In 2018, a researcher found that a round-trip airplane flight from Vancouver to Toronto (about 2,000 miles as the crow flies) creates the same amount of emissions as driving a car for a year. 

Public transport is the best way to go. It doesn’t have to be a bus either – there are some pretty luxurious trains travelling across Europe!

Read our Complete Sustainable Travel Guide to learn how to be a responsible tourist.

Commuting

Walking to the shops once a week for your food shop makes a small difference – the best way to make a big impact with your travel is to stop the most regular car journey. Yep, it’s your commute to work.

The best option is to walk or cycle, but this has a few difficulties if you wear office clothes and live somewhere rainy! So, organise a car-share or try public transport instead. This will help you drastically reduce your car travels weekly.

Sustainable living

Sustainable fashion

Fast fashion is not sustainable. This is the concept of quickly and cheaply made clothes that will only last you one season. Then you go back to the shop and buy something else.

Buying sustainable clothes requires shopping from ethical brands – ones that have an overall low environmental impact. To use H&M as an example, they have a “conscious” line of clothes that are made sustainably… but that doesn’t outweigh the huge impact the rest of the company has on the world!

Sustainable fashion often requires you to shop smaller and avoid shopping new, if you can. Charity shops, bespoke clothes makers (check Etsy), and vintage wear can be very very chic and better for the environment too.

Hobbies and activities

Applying sustainable practices here will do wonders for personal growth. Besides these hobbies, try to work sustainability into your habits too. 

The biggest impact you can make is by dropping commercial experiences. Things like spa days, theme parks, and any other activity that’s created by a large corporation with a huge environmental footprint.

With sustainable energy powering your home and the most energy-efficient TV in your lounge, watching Netflix is a little more sustainable than it once was. Other low impact hobbies you can switch up include:

• Running in nature, instead of gym workouts,
• Gardening, growing and nurturing if you love trips outdoors,
• Sewing with used fabrics, baking and DIY fixing if you’re a creative person,
• Reading and learning languages if you like to stay indoors all day,
• Volunteering in the community for events, if you’re a busy-body.

Another sustainable and rewarding way to spend your days is to reconnect with family and have some quality time together.

The Goal – A Sustainable Future

Sustainable consumption choices can make a real difference. Balancing the little things and the big things can make a serious impact on your environmental footprint and actually enrich your quality of life too.

Once the decisions have been made, it’s time to bite the bullet and start buying things… or not buying things, as it turns out! Learn about buying better next.

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