Sustainable New Year's Resolutions for 2021

2 Jan 2021

Become zero waste

Going zero-waste might be one of the toughest sustainable resolutions to commit to this new year. But don’t let that keep you from trying - slowly reduce your waste bit-by-bit, a little more week-by-week, and who knows what your lifestyle may look like by the end of 2021. If you don’t get down to a completely zero-waste lifestyle, you can be still proud that you have reduced your waste and environmental footprint. If each and every one of us did this, just imagine the impact it would have on our environment. So, how can you do it?

Start composting

Do you know how to compost? If not, don’t worry. Learning this valuable skill will further reduce your waste and there’s a plethora of information on the internet to draw from. Nowadays, state-of-the-art composters make the process even easier! Adding your kitchen and garden waste to a compost bin will cause it to decompose and create amazing fertiliser for your garden. If you want to cut down the composting process to as little as 12 weeks, the Aerobin Hot Composter is the solution for you.

Grow your own food

If you have a garden or – if you’re really lucky – an allotment space, you have the opportunity to grow your own fruit, vegetable, and herbs. This is definitely something to commit to doing this year. Grow Your Own Kits make growing your own produce simpler than ever before, and with the possibility of further lockdowns and with food currently flying off the shelves, why not grow your own delicious fruit and vegetables? Not only will you be benefiting from eating healthy, organic food, you will also benefit from the countless mental benefits that gardening provides.

Teach the kids

Our range of Children’s Growing Kits let you and your little ones grow fruit and vegetables that the whole family can enjoy. With easy-to-follow instructions and advice, you can watch on safe in the knowledge that your kids will soon be master gardeners. Gardening really is fun and education for all the family!

More time in nature

Here’s a simple resolution that everyone can do. Find a local park or somewhere away from the noise – even if it’s just a garden or a balcony with your favourite plants. Being in nature has endless benefits for your physical and mental health. Dedicate to taking some time to read, to meditate, or just be in nature and watch as your well-being improves.

Invest in a water butt

One of the most useful and precious resources on the planet is water. Though we love to moan about the infamous British & Irish weather, we are incredibly fortunate that rainfall in the UK and Ireland is such a regular occurrence. Even so, we are all too familiar with hosepipe bans and often we experience droughts during particularly dry summers. Even so, 2020 also saw the driest May on record in East Anglia with less than 5% of the normal rainfall. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be an isolated incident.

Increased demand for water puts intense pressure on our water network as well as the environment. The new National Framework for Water Resources has warned that Britain will run short on water between 2025 and 2050, stressing that the average person needs to reduce their water use from 143 to 110 litres per day.

It's important that we all stay mindful of our water use to save water where we can, especially as avid gardeners. This can be as simple as using a watering can rather than a hose. The most useful way to make sure you aren’t wasting this precious resource is to catch and collect your own water to be used in your garden using a water butt, attached to a downpipe, ready to catch rainwater.

Get a bamboo toothbrush

There are approximately 3.5 billion toothbrushes used annually across the world and the vast majority of them are plastic, meaning they hang around for centuries. Strange to think the first-ever plastic toothbrush is probably sat in a long-forgotten waste tip somewhere waiting for a future equivalent of the fictional rubbish robot, Wall-E to discover it again. Switch to a bamboo toothbrush this year which is biodegradable to replace those plastic toothbrushes which can’t break down.

Plant a tree

Plant a tree in your garden or somewhere else. It will only bring happiness to you and nature. It doesn’t even have to be a tree. Just plant something and get your hands dirty.

Conclusion

Trying to reduce our impact on the environment is incredibly important. As a community, we can try to reduce our use of single-use plastic items as well as our use of Earth’s precious resources such as fuel, food and water. In early 2020, the UK government’s waste advisory board reported that 4.5m tonnes of food a year is wasted, which amounts to a total worth of £14bn. This amounts to £700 for an average family with children. We can all make a difference by making small changes, we can try to not buy items we do not need. Making a shopping list for the week is a simple and easy way to reduce food waste. This same principle can be applied to single-use items such as plastic straws and drinks that are sold in plastic bottles. Try to buy items that will last a lifetime. Cleaning products are now available to buy that not only use completely natural ingredients but also feature containers which are completely reusable. If we all make these small changes, we can help curb the tonnes of waste mounting in landfill.