10 Actions You Can Take to Live More Sustainably

If you want to live more sustainably but aren’t sure where to start, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve put together a list of 10 actions you can take to get the ball rolling and begin living in a way that is better for people and the planet.

1. Prioritise Where You Shop

Given that half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture, our food choices have a major impact on the environment]. Where you shop matters. Every dollar you spend is a vote for the kind of world you want to live in.

Use our Ethical Shopping Pyramid to help guide your decisions.

Ethical Shopping Pyramid

2. Eat Less Meat

Australia is one of the top meat eating countries in the world, consuming around 110 kg per person each year. This is nearly three times more than the global average!

Meat consumption on this scale is environmentally destructive, involving extensive land clearing, loss of biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions from the cows and sheep themselves, as well as emissions associated with growing animal feed, transportation impacts… the list goes on.

If you are a keen meat eater, maybe start off small and choose to go meat free one day a week. For ideas and inspiration on introducing meat free days in your household, see our Meat Free Week Recipe Book and Meat Free Mondays website.

3. Buy Seasonal and Organic Produce Wherever Possible

When you buy organic, seasonal produce there are so many health and environmental benefits.

Buy Organic

Buying organic or biodynamic produce is better for the environment because no synthetic chemicals, pesticides or genetically modified organisms are used in the growing process.

Organic producers are often smaller family farmers, so by purchasing organic produce, you are supporting them and the local economy.

Look out for the certification mark or have a chat to the folks at your local farmers market to learn more. Some producers are not certified organic but follow organic farming principles.

When you buy organic and biodynamic food, you’re supporting better land management practices that improve the health of people, animals and the environment.

Buy Seasonal

Buying produce in season is also important, and there are many reasons for this. Out-of-season foods (like tomatoes in winter, for instance) have been grown in artificial conditions, or grown far away, picked prematurely and transported long distances to get to your local shops. This significantly increases their environmental footprint.

When we eat foods out of season, we miss out on eating food at its prime – when it tastes best and has a higher nutritional value.

We also miss out on eating a varied diet – when you eat seasonally, you break out of the rut of buying the same fruit and vegetables all year round. You learn to get excited and celebrate every time a new food comes into season!

Food in season is also cheaper as it is usually plentiful and fewer resources have gone into growing it, which should counter the increased cost of buying organic. And remember that often it’s not the organic fruit and veg that is price prohibitive, it’s when you add meat, cheese and dairy to the mix that you might have to take out a second mortgage. Keep these items in moderation and you might even have a few pennies left over for a meal out or a beer with mates.

If you’re unsure about what is in season right now, check out our Seasonal Produce Guide.

4. Reduce Food Waste and Compost

In 2021, Australians wasted 11% of the food they bought. We racked up a national food waste bill of $10.3 billion, or enough to feed 1.1 million households for an entire year.

While there’s no doubt that systemic change is needed to curb food waste, we play a key role in driving that change, and it all starts in the home.

Plan Ahead
Planning meals before shopping is a simple way of making sure that you use up what you already have, and only buy what you need. Avoid bulk-buy deals if it means buying more than you need.

Check Use-By and Best Before Dates
Before purchasing something, check the use-by or best before date and be sure that you can use it in time. That being said, if a product is past its best before date, don’t throw it out! Most products will last beyond their best-before date if they are stored properly. See the Victorian Government’s Better Health Channel for further information.

Use the Whole Fruit/Veg
Learn to use the parts of fruit or vegetable you would usually throw away.

Store Carefully
Correct storage goes a long way to increasing the life of your produce. Visit Sustainability Victoria for storage tips for different fruit and veggies.

Get Creative with Leftovers
Avoid food waste by getting creative with your leftovers. See Love Food Hate Waste for helpful tips and recipes that do exactly this!

Compost
Setting up a compost bin means that any wasted food can be recycled in the form of nutrient rich soil for your home garden. Visit Milkwood for resources on composting and nutrient cycling.

5. Source Ethically and Sustainably Produced Meat and Seafood

When purchasing meat or seafood, whenever possible, source free-range, organic and/or regenerative options.

In Australia alone, we raise hundreds of millions of animals in factory farms in unethical conditions each year and it’s not pretty.

Visit our Ethical Food and Fibre 101 Guide to learn more about the differences between industrial and regenerative animal farming practices.

6. Grow Your Own Food

Growing your own food reduces your food miles to food steps! It’s climate friendly, enables you to eat seasonally, reduces the money you need to spend on food and gives you a greater connection with how food is grown.

Even if you only have a balcony or tiny courtyard, growing food is supremely satisfying and helps you build an appreciation of the seasons and how hard it is to actually grow great, perfect looking produce. You’ll be happy to pay a dollar or two more for fair food in no time once you gain even a tiny sense of the effort involved.

If you have enough space also get some chooks as they provide you with daily eggs and you can feed them your food scraps.

Visit Milkwood for resources that will help you to grow at home from seed to harvest—including resources for renters and people with limited space.

7. Prioritise Whole, Unprocessed Foods

Whole foods are foods that have not been processed or refined. They include unpolished grains, fruit and vegetables, and unprocessed meats. Whole foods do not contain added salt, sugar, flavouring agents or preservatives.

This means that less energy and resources have gone into producing them, and because they don’t contain all sorts of unrecognisable ingredients, they are also better for you.

If you do a bit of prep work beforehand, most wholefoods can be bought completely package free!

8. Avoid Packaging, Especially Non-Recyclable Plastics

These days more and more fresh food items are being unnecessarily packaged in plastic for ease of transport. There are also far more processed foods on the market which come in packaging. Just think about a supermarket and how many products across every aisle come wrapped in some form of packaging, with most soft plastics not accepted by kerbside recycling programs.

Every piece of plastic ever made is still on the planet today. It never really goes away, it simply degrades into smaller pieces and pollutes our oceans, waterways and soil. Australians throw away around 1.9 million tonnes of packaging each year. Plastic is literally choking our planet and much of this is due to food packaging.

Ideas for reducing packaging waste:

Bring Your Own
Shopping bags or baskets, as well as bags for produce or dry goods, invest in a good quality reusable drink bottle to avoid buying bottled water.

Choose Unpackaged Fresh Produce
Make a rule not to buy fresh produce that has been pre-packaged and never place it in a plastic bag, it can go straight in your trolley or basket. Additionally, choose fresh rather than tinned produce where possible.

Buy From Bulk Food Stores or Local Co-ops
These shops sell non-perishable items such as rice and lentils in bulk. Take your own containers, otherwise buy in bulk and distribute it amongst your friends and family.

Make Food From Scratch
Prepare food from scratch and freeze the leftovers rather than buying packaged meals. Reduce takeaway foods as much as possible, even if they’re compostable.

Reuse Where You Can
Keep glass jars for preserving or storing food in your fridge, freezer or pantry.

Shop at Farmers Markets
Very little packaging is used at these local markets.

A Note on Compostable Packaging

Compostable packaging is a common alternative to plastic and it is often thought to be more environmentally friendly. But because of a lack of clarity around how to dispose of it correctly, it’s likely that compostable plastic will end up either in landfill or as pollution in our environment. This makes it just as harmful as normal plastic.

Even if disposed of correctly, there are not yet systems in place that can deal with the volume of compostable packaging waste produced.

If you do use compostable packaging (as a last resort), we encourage you to reuse it as much as possible, and check with your local council about the best way to dispose of it.

9. Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle

You’ve heard of the 3 Rs right: reduce, reuse, recycle? Well now there’s 5.

1. Refuse
2. Reduce
3. Reuse
4. Repurpose
5. Recycle

This waste hierarchy ranks the best ways to manage your waste in order of what’s best for the environment. When people think about how to deal with their waste, recycling is often seen as a great option but as you can see there are a lot of other possibilities to work through first.

Refuse

Chances are your home is filled with stuff you don’t need; stuff you haven’t touched in years; stuff that just collects dust. Everything we buy has an environmental as well as a human cost, so think twice before making your next purchase and ensure you really do need it.

Reduce

Do we really need a different product for every single different application? How different is a bench cleaner to a floor cleaner? A floor cleaner to a bathroom cleaner? Marketers are great at convincing us we need different products for everything we do, but it’s simply not true. Avoid buying what you don’t need and you’ll not only save money, but help to reduce the embedded environmental cost too.

Reuse

Swapping single use disposable products for reusables is one of the easiest ways to do your bit for the environment. Start with a reusable coffee cup, drink bottle and straw and then take it from there…like lunch kits, mesh produce bags, cloth bags and more.

Repurpose

Take what you’re no longer using and either use it for another application, or give it away to someone in need or to an op shop so that others can enjoy your pre-loved item.

Recycle

Recycling is a last resort. While it helps to reduce landfill and virgin resources, it still requires non-renewable resources such as water, energy and gas. In Australia, most recycling is shipped to developing countries for processing in questionable conditions for the environment and workers.

While Australians are good recyclers, complicated labelling and different recycling programs across councils have been cause for confusion. See Planet Ark’s summary of the simplified Australasian Recycling Label to help you work out what can and can’t be recycled.

10. Ask Questions

As a consumer, you have the power to avoid purchasing items that don’t fit your environmental and ethical standards. The only way that shops, restaurants and supermarkets will change what they serve or stock is if sales decline and they recognise that their customers want something else.

Some powerful questions to ask:

• Where does this come from?
• What farm produced this?
• Was this grown organically or chemical free?
• Where was this seafood sourced, and how was it caught?
• Can I please have my drink served without a straw?
• Can you please wrap my sandwich to go in this cloth bag/napkin?