Pearl Boorer, Data Ops Executive
As someone who considers themselves to be quite conscious regarding sustainability, I thought I would find this a very easy challenge, however it was much more challenging than I thought! I started the week with the plan of only eating seasonal fruit and veg from the UK, not taking any form of transport apart from walking or cycling and cutting down on using unnecessary energy.
It was much harder than it sounds! My local Co-Op is great but, 6PM is not the optimum time for having my pick of the seasonal veg, however, it had much more UK sourced produce than the Tesco Metro. Luckily, we are around the ‘harvest’ time of year so there were lots of berries to choose from. Broccoli, lettuce, sweetcorn and cucumber are all in season so I was able to make some very sustainable meals.
Not taking any transport was actually very easy. Living in east London, everything is really close and accessible anyway so that helped me see that there isn’t much need for me to use any form of transport on a daily basis. I went for a great cycle around the Olympic Park in Stratford this weekend which was lovely especially in the hot weather.
Cutting down on wasting energy was also harder than I thought. It was hard to get into the swing of turning off all the plugs before I went to bed, and on a couple of days I found myself turning them off in the morning when I’d realised I’d left them on…better late than never! Another way I cut down was by only filling the kettle with as much water as I needed, rather than filling the whole thing and boiling way too much water, being very diligent with turning off lights and not turning on the TV for background noise, which has been very peaceful.
I think I will definitely continue some of these habits and will be more mindful about how sustainable I’m being, as it can make a real difference to the world around us.