Jen Gale - The sustainable(ish) living guide : everything you need to know to make small changes that make a big difference

For our kids and their futures

Contents

First and foremost I need to thank my agent Kate Johnson at MacKenzie Wolf, without whom this book would have remained half-formed in my head, and I would never have been brave enough to make it a reality. Thank you Kate for getting it straightaway, and for holding my hand through the whole process.

Thanks also to the wonderful team at Green Tree and Bloomsbury, especially to Charlotte Croft for editing some of my ramblings into salient points, and to Holly for so efficiently keeping me up to speed with every step of the process.

The saying about it taking a village to raise a child is also apparently true for writing a book. I said in the introduction that Im not an environmental scientist, or an expert, so I am hugely grateful to all the actual experts who answered my questions, provided quotes, insights and the benefit of their far superior knowledge and experience thank you to all of you for contributing, and any errors are mine!

A big thank you to my brilliant friend Michelle, for her unswerving support of both me and all things sustainable(ish), for the endless Skype messenger chats, and the kicks up the butt.

To William and Samuel the sheer terror of what might be lying ahead for them stops me regularly from throwing in the towel and keeps me going when it all feels a bit too hard and I start to feel overwhelmed at the enormity of the task ahead for humanity.

And of course, thanks to my amazing husband, Ben who has always believed in me, especially when I didnt or couldnt.

Lastly, my thanks to each and every person who reads this book. To misquote Anne-Marie Bonneau, aka the Zero Waste Chef: We dont need a handful of people doing sustainable living perfectly, we need millions of people doing it imperfectly. Heres to your imperfect journey.

The world is changing around us. And its changing at a terrifying rate. In just the last few years, it feels like climate change has gone from being this kind of some day threat to something that we see the effects of every day. Were seeing more and more extreme weather events, air pollution is increasing, and our oceans are drowning in plastic. There is a very real possibility that ours will be the first generation to have kids whose quality of life is worse than our own. Left unchecked, climate change could create something akin to an apocalyptic scenario, in our lifetimes . Rising sea levels will lead to a loss of land for both living and farming, our polluted oceans will become less and less able to support life and our polluted waterways will mean a lack of clean drinking water. All coupled with a rising population. Its the perfect storm.

And it terrifies me. It terrifies me almost to the point of paralysis. These issues are so big. So complex. Surely someone somewhere with more power/influence/money than little old me has got a handle on this? Surely the governments of the world, big business bosses and manufacturers have got our backs? How can I be expected to create change when the worlds leaders dont seem to have either the will or the power to do so?

But in among that terror I cling on to hope. Because its the only way. We have to hold on to the hope that as a global society we can turn this ship around. That we can put aside our political differences, our personal greed, our belief that money makes the world go round, and come together to fix what is the biggest problem humanity has ever faced.

Not the most uplifting start to a book, is it?

But I think we need to get really clear about the extent of the problem were dealing with. Weve got to stop kidding ourselves that it will all be OK, and that someone else is going to fix this mess without us having to change anything about how we got here in the first place. Im guessing if youve picked up this book youve got some kind of inkling about the situation were in.

Times are changing. Maybe too slowly, but change is starting to happen. Even in the process of writing this book, it feels like there has been a real shift when it comes to all things planet, and climate and plastic. The phraseology has changed it used to be global warming, then we moved to climate change, both of which dont sound too worrying, do they? Well, now were on to no holds barred climate crisis, and climate emergency leaving us under no illusion that we need to act. And thanks to the likes of teenage activist Greta Thunberg, the student climate strikes, Extinction Rebellion, and of course national treasure Sir David Attenborough, were talking about the climate, and the catastrophic impact human activity is having on it, more than ever before.

This leaves lots of us looking for ideas and answers, and its amazing for someone like me (whos been blogging about this stuff for the last seven or eight years) to go from feeling like Im banging my head against a brick wall even a year or two ago, to now starting to feel like were pushing on an open door when it comes to ideas and answers.

I dont have the answers, Im afraid. But I do have lots of ideas of changes you can make, in your life, in your home, that will make a difference. Changes you can make without having to wait for the government to be pressured into action. Without having to wait for big business to find a conscience. And the good news is Im not going to tell you that you have to eschew modern society, sell your house to move into a yurt in the woods, and start knitting your own yoghurt. You can absolutely do that if it appeals, but there are other options. There are ways to fit sustainable living into the life you lead. To change your impact without radically changing your life. But we all know how hard it can be. What were talking about here is changing habits. Habits that weve probably built up over years without thinking about what were doing, or the impact it has. Changing habits is hard work; ask anyone whos been on a diet, or given up smoking. Its about creating a new normal one thats better for us, better for our cluttered homes, our bank balances, and the planet. And we can do it one simple step, one change, at a time.

Im not a natural tree-hugger. I was brought up in the middle-class affluence of the 1980s with baby boomer parents whose natural kickback against the austerity of the post-war years seemed to be to buy, and to buy new. At the age of about 12 I decided I wanted to be a vet and spent the next 15 years or so of my life working towards that dream, and the next 10 years realising the dream wasnt all it was cracked up to be. Shortly after graduating, I met my now husband and when we set up house together we gaily spent days traipsing around Ikea, never once thinking that we might be able to get the things we needed secondhand, or that we might not actually need the pack of 100 tealights and the novelty plastic watering can that somehow found their way into the trolley as we wandered through the market hall. And then one evening (seven years, one wedding, and two kids later) I sat reading a magazine article about a lady who was partway through her secondhand safari a year of buying nothing new. And I somewhat randomly and naively thought it sounded like a fun challenge that we could have a go at too, little knowing that it would genuinely change my life.